It’s been said the only fair way to judge a film or TV awards competition would be to have all the nominees perform the same work—and we actually have a small-sample version of that premise with the 2022 Hulu limited series “Candy” and the new HBO Max limited series “Love & Death,” in that both are fictionalized but faithful retellings of the events surrounding the true story of Texas housewife Candy Montgomery killing her friend and neighbor Betty Gore with an axe in suburban Texas in 1980.
While both series do a fine job of re-creating the late 1970s/early 1980s small-town community vibe and taking us through the paces of the case, “Candy” is slightly superior, in part because it takes five episodes to lay out the story while “Love & Death” stretches things to seven episodes—and frankly, the fact that “Candy” got there first makes “Love & Death” seem a little redundant and unnecessary.
