You can’t spell “prestige TV” without “Jesse Plemons” (and it’s also becoming increasingly difficult to spell “prestige movie” without “Jesse Plemons”), so HBO Max has chosen to surrender to the current by casting none other than Jesse Plemons in upcoming original series Love And Death. The show comes from David E. Kelly, who is producing and writing, and it will also star Elizabeth Olsen. The official logline, which is extremely snappy, says Love And Death is about “two church going couples, enjoying small town family life in Texas, until somebody picks up an axe.” That’s the kind of axe that someone would use to chop down a tree—or, more relevantly, kill a person—and not an axe like a cool electric guitar, but that would also make for a very exciting TV premise.
The show will be based on John Bloom’s Evidence Of Love: A True Story Of Passion And Death In The Suburbs, which means it’s based on a true story, so any character or plot details (beyond someone picking up an axe) run the risk of spoiling what happens in the series. So maybe don’t Google these names if you want to go in fresh, but Plemons is playing someone named Allan Gore and Olsen is playing someone named Candy Montgomery. That’s all you’re going to get. Don’t look up these people unless you want to potentially ruin the show.