Dead to Me Review

Liz Feldman created Dead to Me for Netflix, with Will Ferrell and Adam McKay among the producers, and built it on two women who should never have become friends. Christina Applegate's Jen is a realtor whose husband was killed by a hit-and-run driver, and she is angry at everyone; Linda Cardellini's Judy, whom she meets at a grief group, is warm, needy and hiding something about that night, which the show gives away early and then spends three seasons protecting.

The two leads are the whole case for it. Applegate's rage is funny until it is not, Cardellini makes Judy's need to please both touching and alarming, and their friendship is the most convincing thing in every season. Applegate was nominated for an Emmy for each of the three, Cardellini once. James Marsden enjoys himself in two roles, and the dialogue is quick, profane and cruelly funny.

The plotting is the weakness. Each season escalates through cover-ups, a Greek mob subplot and coincidences a soap would blush at, and the Rotten Tomatoes consensus on the final season conceded that the twists had begun to feel overplayed. That season was delayed by the pandemic and then by Applegate's multiple sclerosis diagnosis, and it ends on the friendship, the right place. The look is sunny, anonymous California.