Love & Death: Official trailer
American true crime series Love and Death has arrived on streaming platform ITVX after the seven-part drama first aired on HBO Max back in April this year.
The show stars Marvel actress Elizabeth Olsen as housewife Candy Montgomery and Breaking Bad’s Jesse Plemons as her neighbour’s husband Allan Gore.
Love and Death sees the pair embarking on a sordid affair which ends in murder.
The Emmy-nominated drama is available to watch as a boxset on ITVX and many fans are likely to have questions about the story.
Is Love and Death based on a true story?
The title card before the very first episode of Love and Death states: “This is a true story.”
However, there is a disclaimer at the end, which reads: “Love and Death is a dramatization [sic] of actual events.
“Dialogue, scenes and some events have been modified or created for dramatic purposes.”
READ MORE Love and Death’s Don Crowder changed careers after Candy Montgomery’s trial
These two title cards may be leaving some viewers wondering about the truth behind the show.
In an exclusive interview with Express.co.uk, Oscar-nominated American director Lesli Linka Glatter, who helmed several of the episodes and also served as an executive producer on Love and Death, broke down fact from fiction on screen.
The show took its cue from Texas Monthly’s two-part feature Love and Death in Silicon Prairie, which was originally published in 1984, and the book Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs written by Jim Bloom and John Atkinson.
Glatter said about the show: “I mean, we stayed very accurate to the circumstances and actions written in the article and the book.”
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However, there were certain moments where viewers could only get Montgomery’s version of events, such as her testimony on the stand for the murder of her wife’s lover Betty Gore (Lily Rabe).
Glatter stressed there was “only one point of view” in this scene as Montgomery was the “one who survived” the “horrible day” and this was something viewers had to keep in mind when watching the show.
The director said: “We stuck to the facts and most of what happens in the courtroom is all from court testimony, so we felt we could say that [about the disclaimers].”
She noted there were some scenes where “no one would have been there” and so the writers had to take some creative licence in these instances.
Glatter said: “All of that was based on fact and then the colouring inside of it was what we did.”
The director said some of the real-life events were too bizarre even for the writers to have made up, including the extensive months Candy and her lover Allan spent meticulously planning their illicit relationship before going ahead with it. Adding: “Yes, we followed all of that.”
Although the programme-makers did contact the real-life Montgomery, they didn’t end up having any dealings with her.
However, they did have Robert Udashen who was the technical advisor on set.
Udashen was the law partner to Montgomery’s attorney Don Crowder, who defended her during her 1980 murder trial, but tragically took his own life in 1997.
“So, we talked to various people around the crime but not to her,” Glatter said.
The director, who has also worked on Mad Men on AMC and Showtime’s Homeland, said she wanted to explore the psyche of women in small-town, conservative America during the late 70s and early 80s.
“They got married at 20, had the two kids, lived in the suburbs. They made a lovely home for their family, they had community and church and family. Why is it that you feel so empty inside?” Glatter said.
The director admitted she wasn’t a “true crime aficionado” but more interested in the “why” of the crime rather than the “how”.
While audiences will have to tune in to see how Love and Death pans out, Glatter shared a titbit about Montgomery saying the twist in the tale would be an ironic one.
Love & Death is streaming on ITVX now
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