Dirty John

Dirty John is very entertaining, though it’s not without faults. It doesn’t dig very deep, or present Debra’s daughters as full characters (their main roles are to look confused or upset, which is a waste of big talent), and its storytelling can be a little convoluted. But it never claims to be high art.

The main problem with Dirty John, though -- both the character, and the series -- is that as structured here, his web of lies begin unraveling pretty quickly.

It’s not nearly as compelling, and its continual efforts to make the characters and situations more palatable grow wearying.

Director Jeffrey Reiner gives this a ‘90s soap patina that works--to a point. The intelligence that Britton and Bana provide gets shoved aside in favor of scenes that look like they couldn’t possibly be true (but are). When “Dirty John” begins to unravel, we lose interest and feel as duped as Debra.

It may be that there’s simply too little life and too much Lifetime in this eight-parter, based on the highly popular podcast by Los Angeles Times reporter Christopher Goffard and played out at a formulaic crawl.

Dirty John is little more than a fancy Lifetime movie. ... There is some pleasure in watching the inevitable unfold, particularly since the cast is solid. Britton is, as usual, a sympathetic lead, even if her character is written to be shallow. And, as her daughters, Juno Temple and Julia Garner are formidable. ... As with Debra, John is written as a flat bad guy whose deeper drives are inscrutable.

Some of the essential vitality and veracity of the material has been lost. In its place, I can't point to much insight or advantage added by the new medium.

This dramatization feels less like “The Jinx” or “Making a Murderer,” and more like a weird mix of Southern California lifestyle satire and a “Dateline” episode.

The people and places--from the penthouse apartment Debra initially shares with Veronica to the beachside house she impulsively rents to hole up with her new beau--are all there, but the show doesn’t dig any deeper.

There are so many opportunities to flesh out both John’s story and the complicated and tragic Newell family history, and so far, the show eschews them in order to keep plugging away at the story as once written.