TV Pick of the Week: Love & Death - review by Yvette Huddleston

Elizabeth Olsen plays Montgomery and it is an extraordinary performance. We first meet Candy as she and her husband Pat (Patrick Fugit) chat with friends at a church social. Candy is an active and well-liked member of the choir and among her and her husband’s close friends are fellow Methodists Allan and Betty Gore (Jesse Plemons and Lily Rabe).

Seemingly out of boredom with her humdrum domestic life, which is a whirlwind of housework, baking, school runs and church events, Candy decides she is going to begin an affair with Allan. She confides in her beautician best friend Sherry (Krysten Ritter) whose advice to leave well alone she ignores and goes ahead with her plan. Candy is the kind of woman who gets what she wants. She and Allan play alongside each other on their church’s volleyball team and after a match one night, she propositions him.

Allan is confused and reluctant at first, but his marriage is going through one of its apparently frequent rocky patches. Betty is anxious and prone to depression which affects her mood and makes her sometimes difficult to live with. Besides, he finds Candy’s interest in him flattering. So begins an affair that is very well organised by Candy – she books the motels and prepares lunch for them, which she brings in plastic containers, to be consumed before their assignation.

They agree on the rules – no-one must ever find out, they don’t want to cause any hurt or upset for Pat or Betty. And neither of them must become too involved. Needless to say, all those intentions eventually go by the wayside. Allan feels guilty, then Betty falls pregnant and they go on a church-sanctioned married couples retreat which brings them closer together. Allan ends the relationship with Candy, and Candy doesn’t take it very well.

Some time later, while Allan is out of town on business, Betty is found dead on her kitchen floor, having suffered 41 blows from a woodcutting axe. The last person to have visited Betty was Candy, and eventually the police bring her in for questioning… Olsen is mesmerising in the central role – her Candy is chilling, calculating, manipulative and complex; her motive for the killing still remains a mystery.