The recent HBO miniseries “Love & Death” tells a story that’s been told before. Like, a million and a half times before. The story of the axe murderer Candy Montgomery was first the subject of a shocking, detailed Texas Monthly article four years after the 1980 murder of Betty Gore first made headlines. There was a book released that same year about the case, and in 1990 we got our very first star-headed small screen treatment with “A Killing in a Small Town,” starring Barbara Hershey as the Wylie County woman whose killing of her friend and rival always seemed a little too random to wrap up neatly.
Since then, we’ve had not one but two miniseries centered around the crime. The first—last year’s “Candy,” co-created by “The Act’s” Nick Antosca and starring Jessica Biel in that wig—was a strange, terse, 5-episode attempt to figure out why Candy snapped so suddenly, and so violently.
This year’s “Love & Death,” starring Elizabeth Olsen wearing no wig, is altogether more traditional, and somehow even campier. So just how gay is it? Well strap in, because you’re about to find out.