If you don’t know what this is, DTF St Louis is one of those titles that makes you think HBO is getting into the NCIS: City Name or CSI: Wherever, but after sitting through the first season, I think most other cities won’t jump at the chance to be a series expansion should this want to become a new White Lotus for HBO. Boise? Denver? Jacksonville? I have a feeling they won’t be “Down To Film” (and yes, I know what DTF stands for).

The series, starring Jason Bateman, David Harbour, Linda Cardellini, and Richard Jenkins, spends seven episodes trying desperately to define itself while also acting like definition is beneath it. It wants to be a dark comedy with sharp social observations, uncomfortable sexuality, and quirky humanity. Instead, it often feels like actors who lost their script, and aren’t sure what their lines are, are afraid to ask, and aren’t sure if improvisation is allowed. There’s an awkwardness this series is unable to shake, all the way to the final scene.

Bateman especially never worked for me here. His performance feels strangely detached, but not in a purposeful way. More like someone trying to remember what draft of the script they’re acting in. There’s a lethargy to his line delivery that drains scenes instead of sharpening them, and when the show leans into absurdism, he never finds the rhythm necessary to sell it. I kept thinking about how much better he was in Black Rabbit, where his restraint actually served the material rather than suffocating it.

David Harbour doesn’t fare much better, though I found myself rooting for his character more than enjoying the performance. His desire to become an ASL interpreter gives the series one of its few genuinely human angles, and as a disabled critic, I appreciated the moments where ASL was integrated naturally into the story. Those scenes often had more sincerity than the rest of the series combined. Still, Harbour’s performance falls into the same trap as Bateman’s. Muted to the point of confusion. There’s understated, and then there’s looking like you accidentally wandered onto the wrong set.

Linda Cardellini probably comes away the best among the leads. The role feels spiritually connected to her work in Dead To Me, although this character carries herself with a little more confidence and a little less exhaustion. She understands the assignment better than most of the cast, even if the show itself never fully does.

And then there’s Richard Jenkins, who honestly feels like he escaped from a better series entirely. His befuddled detective, constantly blindsided by the increasingly bizarre and sexually adventurous details of the case, gives the show its few sustained laughs. Jenkins understands that confusion can be funny if played honestly, and he threads that needle far better than the material deserves.

The whole thing reminded me of a mumblecore experiment that desperately wanted to be edgy and profound but forgot the part where filmmakers like the Duplass Brothers actually know how to make awkwardness feel organic. Here, eccentricities are treated like automatic personality traits. The creators seem convinced that if something is weird enough, it automatically becomes insightful. Instead, most of it just sits there awkwardly, waiting for the audience to catch up to jokes that never really land.

Watching DTF St. Louis often feels like being at a party where everyone else is laughing hysterically and you’re standing in the corner wondering if you missed an entire setup conversation beforehand. What ultimately sinks the series for me is how uncomfortable its ending becomes once you step back and look at how the show framed itself for most of the season. The mystery itself grows increasingly loopy, but the tonal inconsistency makes those later developments feel less daring than simply misguided. The series keeps pushing boundaries sexually and emotionally without ever establishing why it’s doing so beyond wanting credit for boldness.

Ironically, one of my favorite aspects of the series was the audio description track. Alana’s narration was fantastic, perfectly calibrated for a show that seemed determined to resist genre entirely. The AD becomes especially useful during some of the series’ more boundary-pushing moments, whether it’s the bizarrely detailed discussions involving anatomy or Bateman’s insistence on riding around on those ridiculous bikes that somehow become recurring visual punchlines. The narration managed to feel more confident in its tone than the show itself.

DTF St. Louis is clearly trying to be something distinctive. I can at least appreciate the ambition. But ambition without clarity just becomes noise, and after seven episodes, the series never figures out whether it wants to provoke, amuse, unsettle, or comfort. It just sort of hovers awkwardly between all four. It’s kind of like how your son keeps telling you the music he’s playing fits some genre, but to you it comes across as utter nonsense. DTF St Louis is your child in the garage incoherently banging on the drum kit, because you wouldn’t spring for a proper drum instructor. Now, you’re paying the price, and with this analogy, the audience is paying the price for the lack of direction and clarity in this disappointing series.

Rotten: 4.7/10