Happy Face TV Review: Dennis Quaid and Annaleigh Ashford deliver a twist on true crime series

Last Updated on March 19, 2025

Plot: Happy Face is an incarcerated serial killer who is also Melissa Reed’s once-beloved father. After decades of no contact, Keith finds a way to force himself back into his daughter’s life. In a race against the clock, Melissa must find out if an innocent man is going to be put to death for a crime her father committed. Throughout, she discovers the impact her father had on his victims’ families and must face a reckoning of her own identity.

Review: The most common subjects for new drama series are podcasts or true crime stories. When a producer gets their hands on a podcast about true crime, you can guarantee a streaming service will give it a full series order. While big names like Jeffrey Dahmer or the Menendez Brothers get the most media exposure due to their lasting scars on the news cycle, there have been equally horrific monsters whose stories are not nearly as recognizable. The Happy Face Killer, Keith Jesperson, was active in the early 1990s and claims to have killed over a hundred people despite only eight having been corroborated. The fact that Jesperson was married with children made the heinous nature of his crimes all the more disturbing. Still, it was the memories and interviews with his daughter, Melissa Moore, that provided a different insight into the mindset and crimes he perpetrated. Inspired by Moore’s book and podcast, Happy Face is rooted in the true story of what coming to terms with the monster that was your father can lead to, combined with elements of fictional mystery/procedural dramas. An entertaining series, Happy Face has some great turns from Annaleigh Ashford and Dennis Quaid but struggles with being a true crime story or just another crime procedural.

The eight-episode first season of Happy Face opens with Melissa Moore (Annaleigh Ashford) working as a make-up artist for the daytime talk show hosted by Dr. Greg (David Harewood). Living a happy suburban life with her husband, Ben (James Wolk), and children Hazel (Khiyla Aynne) and Max (Benjamin Mackey), Melissa’s boss receives a call from her father, Keith (Dennis Quaid), claiming he will reveal the details around his ninth victim but only to Melissa. Partnering with producer Ivy (Tamera Tomakili), Melissa visits her father in prison, believing his claims to be a way to get media attention and time with his estranged daughter. But, as Melissa and Ivy look into Keith’s evidence, details line up that may support his identity as the killer. This also stirs additional trauma for Melissa, who has successfully come to terms with her father, or so she wants to believe. As Melissa reopens her past, she also discovers more about her knowledge of her father’s crimes than she originally thought.

Annaleigh Ashford, a veteran of Broadway productions, has proven herself very adept at comedy and drama. She has exceptional turns in Masters of Sex, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and Welcome to Chippendales. Ashford holds her own opposite Dennis Quaid, who continues his streak of transformative performances over the last few years, including Reagan and The Substance. Quaid plays Keith Jesperson as a bizarrely confident and cocky everyman who is a stereotypical dad with an evil streak lurking just under the surface. When Ashford and Quaid share the screen, Happy Face works brilliantly as it looks at how father and daughter view shared moments from their past in radically different ways. The dynamic feels similar to the one shared between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, but it is all the more chilling that these two people actually existed. As Melissa tries to reconcile the mystery she is working on, she must deal with whether it further distances her from Keith Jesperson or draws them closer together.

When Ashford and Quaid are not sharing the screen, Happy Face is not nearly as strong. Melissa’s home life is complicated by her husband becoming concerned as he sees how having her father back in her life impacts their family, especially eldest daughter Hazel, who is dealing with personal issues herself. While James Wolk is a solid actor, his scenes as Ben feel like filler and set-up material for future subplots rather than relevant to the main narrative. Equally, Melissa’s coworker Ivy is a great supporting character, but the investigation the two work on begins to lose steam halfway through the season. With each successive chapter of Happy Face, I became less interested in the series’ focus the more it pulled away from Keith Jesperson’s crimes and Melissa’s recollections of them. The balance of the Happy Face Killer with the new crime being investigated could have been better maintained, but it shows where this series could have stood to tighten things up a bit.

Showrunner Jennifer Cacicio wrote the opening and closing chapters of Happy Face alongside a writing staff that includes Andrew Gettens, Lauren Mackenzie, Adam Toltzis, Sal Calleros, Sarah Beckett, Erica Saleh, Inda Craig-Galvain, Bam Johnson, Tiffany Ezuma, and Brandi Nicole Payne. Michael Showalter, best known for his directing credits on The Eyes of Tammy Faye and The Big Sick, was not such an unusual choice to helm Happy Face. While he is known as a writer/actor in comedies, Showalter has directed recent true crime projects, including The Shrink Next Door and The Dropout. He is accompanied by helmers Ramaa Mosley, Darren Grant, and more, who balance the prison-set sequences following Jesperson with the investigation Melissa takes as she investigates her case. With a solid structure balancing flashbacks and narrative twists, there is nothing inherently distinct about the look or feel of Happy Face, which allows the unique approach of the story to shine.

Happy Face deals with the idea of duality and secrets but struggles with its identity as a series. Every true crime adaptation must take creative license with the material to increase the dramatic tension and entertainment value. Still, Happy Face sometimes feels like it is padding out the story that inspired the title with a plot taken from any conventional network procedural. It is far more interesting to see the connections and trauma shared between Keith Jesperson and Melissa Moore than watching Moore play amateur sleuth to solve a mystery. By the end of the series, the idea that this could be an ongoing drama about a podcasting detective who happens to be the daughter of a serial killer undermines the true story that it set out to tell. As good as Annaleigh Ashford and Dennis Quaid are in their respective roles, Happy Face would have worked better had it stuck to the true story and not this fictional and sensationalized one.

Happy Face premieres on March 20th on Paramount+.