Amanda Peet stars as Betty Broderick
Sometimes it takes a good role to make you see a familiar performer in a new light. Amanda Peet is not to be missed in “Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story” (9 p.m., USA Network, TV-14).
It’s not just the 1980s hairdos and outfits that she wears so well. I feel like I’ve never seen her before! And I’ve viewed (and reviewed) Amanda Peet in a gazillion shows, from “Jack & Jill” (1999) to “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” (2006), “Brockmire” (2017) and “The Romanoffs” (2018).
I’ve seen Amanda Peet in so many shows, I feel like a stalker. She’s basically been typecast as the funny, sardonic, good-looking object of desire. “Betty Broderick” allows her to play the woman scorned, the mother of the children of the smart and ambitious lawyer Dan Broderick (Christian Slater at his unctuous best), who has come to see her as the obstacle to a convenient divorce that sets up his next chapter with a younger woman.
Well, Betty Broderick is no doormat!
In lesser hands, Betty’s actions, which include — in just the first episode — using a pickup truck as a battering ram, could be reduced to over-the-top camp. But Peet convinces us that Betty still loves Dan. We can see it every time she looks at him and every time he calls. That’s what makes her actions, and the trajectory of the series, so much more meaningful.
If “Betty Broderick” sounds familiar, it’s because it’s based on the true story of a scorned Southern California housewife who took matters into her own hands. It was such a famous case that it inspired a CBS 1992 made-for-TV movie starring Meredith Baxter. I’m making a wild guess here, but I assume it was the scandal of the minute before being eclipsed by the Buttafuoco saga that same year!
Now in its second season, “Dirty John” presents serialized looks at truecrime stories that have been explored on the podcast of that name. The first season of “Dirty John,” starring Connie Britton, streams on Netflix.
› Many have observed that life under quarantine has affected our sense of passing time. Days last forever, but months pass by in a blink. It seems just yesterday that everybody was streaming and talking about Netflix’s “Tiger King” docuseries. But that was so… March.
The makers of “The Truth Behind Joe Exotic” (9 p.m., ID, TV-14) must hope there is still an appetite for its particular brand of weird Americana. TV producer Rick Kirkham reveals what he saw at the G.W. Zoo and his impressions of the mercurial animal hoarder Joe Exotic.
› Netflix begins streaming the final season, or the second half of the final season, of “Fuller House.”
› TV-themed DVDs available today include the Irish series “Blood, Season 2,” as seen on Acorn.
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
› Auditions continue on “America’s Got Talent” (8 p.m., NBC, TV-PG).
› Stolen weapons on “FBI” (9 p.m., CBS, repeat, TV-14).
› All’s well that’s Orwell on the season finale of “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow” (9 p.m., CW, TV-14).