Drama
Doctor Who
The good Doctor’s been flitting around time, space and the BBC since 1963. Now he’s also a fixture in the US, toting his curiously British brand of sci-fi in his highly mobile TARDIS. Just how safe is this contraption?
Ah. Murder. The great American art form.
He stabbed her to death. He dismembered her body, limb by limb. Then, he put her back together again… with a different head, of course.
That’s sort of how the average true-crime podcast goes these days. They’re all gruesome. Demented. Addicting. They’re either true stories or they’re based on true stories.
Maybe that’s why they’re so appealing.
Certainly Ava Bartlet thinks so. She lives and breathes this stuff.
Ava wasn’t always into podcasts that glorified murderers and carnage. But her life as a wife and real-estate agent has been on the decline for about three years now. It seems that these murderous podcasts, and a few too many glasses of wine, are all she has.
Her husband, Nathan Bartlett, is a former tennis star who lost himself after he got injured. The rich, boujee life he promised them is nowhere in sight. The only thing Nathan’s into these days, what with his lack of friends and his recent work demotion at a ritzy tennis club, is rewatching YouTube videos of his victories and waiting for Ava to have their baby.
And if all that pressure and failure wasn’t enough, Nathan and Ava’s California house needs like, a bajillion dollars in repairs–which they obviously can’t afford.
But they’re not completely out of hope.
An attractive plumber named Matt, who Nathan randomly Googled, is willing to trade his plumbing-and-repair services for summer tennis lessons from Nathan.
Seems too good to be true.
Maybe that’s because it is.
Why would this handsome new mystery man want to help Nathan and Ava? Why does he then want to spend his evenings with Nathan at the bar, checking out younger, attractive women and encouraging Nathan to do the same? Why is he so willing to share all these personal but just-vague-enough details about his life?
Maybe he’s a serial killer.
Sounds crazy, right? I mean, he seems like your average Joe. But Ava knows her serial killers. And the one she’s been tracking on the news–the Westside Ripper responsible for the death of seven young, attractive women–has just left a little piece of information behind.
A blue boot. The kind that Matt wears when he works at their home.
The only logical solution is to call 911 and put Matt away for life. But what if there was another option?
What if Ava could take her love for true crime podcasts, convince Nathan to join her, and blackmail Matt into being on their show?
They’d make money and they’d be able to keep him away from his bloodthirsty urges.
What could go wrong?
Peacock’s Based on a True Story comes from the mind of Craig Rosenberg and producers Jason Bateman and Michael Costigan. And given its nature, it’ll come as no surprise that it comes with a TV-MA rating.
Now, shows about serial killers are nothing new. Especially recently. The Netflix original, You, which is headed for its fifth and final season, has taken viewers on a wild, gory ride and they continue to beg for more.
But why are people so into this? This is the question that Based on a True Story asks, and sort of answers. For Ava, it’s because her marriage is passionless, her job is unfulfilling and, in order to not think about who she thought she’d be at this point in her life, she’d rather tune into something weirdly entertaining, intense and intriguing.
Sort of like this show. And I say that loosely.
Based on a True Story is, of course, not based on a true story. But it is a well-made comedy that often blends into a psychological thriller with an interesting angle on our culture’s fascination with serial killers.
And as you’d expect, it’s riddled with content issues.
The first issue that stood out to me (yes, more than the serial killer himself) is the fact that this show glorifies extramarital affairs and tells viewers that they’re perfectly normal, everyones doing it, and so should you. Ava and Nathan both fantasize about other people (often graphically, and we see this on screen) and they recognize how easy it would be to stop working on their marriage and just fulfill their impulse desires.
The next issue is that marriage is presented as too difficult and inevitably depressing. I mean, Ava’s pregnant, and the first episode suggests that the pregnancy was an attempt to fix their marriage.
And then, even if we push aside these issues, we’re left with plenty of gore as we see this attractive, charming serial killer stab women and leave bloodied messes behind him. We’re also bombarded by a ton of harsh profanity, plenty of drinking, graphic sex and desired affairs.
I’m sure you didn’t think this was a family show to begin with, but I’m here to just confirm that even if this show was based on a true story, it’s not the sort of story you’d want to present to your family.
Ava and her husband, Nathan, meet an attractive plumber who helps them repair their home. But his too-good-to-be-true attitude and offer comes at a price.
A serial killer stabs a woman in the chest and stomach multiple times. Blood spurts everywhere and she’s left, dead, in a pool of her own blood. Ava listens to a gruesome podcast that talks about a woman being killed and dismembered.
Women sport crop tops. In a fantasy sequence, Ava is seen naked from behind (including her butt), having sex with a man that’s not her husband. Ava and Nathan make comments about how attractive other men and women are, often in front of the other. Ava’s friends praise Ava’s younger sister for going out and having sex with random men she finds on a dating app. All of Ava’s friends admit that they’re having affairs, as are their husbands. Ava makes a few crude sexual comments.
Men and women alike consume wine, hard liquor and take shots. A few people become inebriated.
God’s name is misused a few times. The f-word is heard more than 30 times and the s-word is used over 10 times. Other profanity includes multiple utterances of the word “a–.”
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
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