Pat & Candy & Allan & Betty

NOBODY WAS SUPPOSED TO GET hurt.

- JUDY BERMAN

This is the irony that drives Love & Death, creator David E. Kelley's empathetic HBO Max docudrama based on the true tragedy that befell two young, churchgoing couples raising families in small-town Texas in the late 1970s. When starry-eyed Candy Montgomery (Elizabeth Olsen) talks pragmatic Allan Gore (Jesse Plemons) into having an affair with her, over the course of many anxious "strategy sessions," the lovers-to-be agree: neither of their spouses, especially Allan's psychologically fragile wife Betty (Lily Rabe), can ever find out about them. They set up rules, meeting only on weekdays, at an out-of-town motel. Candy packs them a meal to share, in order to conserve time on Allan's lunch breaks. As adultery goes, it's all kind of adorable-until it really isn't.

If you followed the media-magnet case as it unfolded, or watched last year's Hulu miniseries on the same subject, Candy, which contains many of the same dramatized scenes, then you already know that Betty Gore died on June 13, 1980, and that Candy stood trial for her murder. Considering how much exposure this story has already gotten, it makes sense that Kelley, in his best show since Big Little Lies, shows little interest in the investigative aspects of the story. In a corrective to rampant true-crime sensationalism, Love & Death paints a portrait of regular, unmalicious people trapped in a terrible predicament that they set into motion but do not, perhaps, deserve.

OLSEN'S CANDY IS a complicated woman. Beloved in her community and active in her church, the extroverted stay-at-home mom is languishing in her marriage, to quiet engineer Pat (Patrick Fugit). Her only outlet, aside from frank conversations with her dear friend and pastor, Jackie (Elizabeth Marvel), is a writing workshop. So when Allan-dorky, doughy Allan accidentally knocks her down, then gently helps her up, at a church volleyball game, Candy spins herself a fantasy.