The Thing About Pam

2022 - 3 - 7

Renee Zellweger - pam hupp

Post cover — Image courtesy of "The Globe and Mail"

The Thing About Pam: Making fun of murderous women (The Globe and Mail)

The miniseries on NBC and Global has Renée Zellweger relishing the role of notorious killer.

In another part of town, the guys gather for a lecture about women, given by the visiting Professor Tricia (Nazneen Contractor). She asks them to name women they admire and explain why. Letterkenny: International Women’s Day (streams Crave from Tuesday) is a special one-off to allow the women characters to celebrate the event it says it’s celebrating. There’s a scene in the early going where Pam flops down on a bean-bag chair, still in her overcoat and sucking in that giant soda, and people stare at her. The engine of this bizarre but oddly compelling six-part series is her possible involvement in the murder of one Betsy Faria. And it’s the reality behind the drama series (it arrives weekly, you can’t binge it) that makes it unsettling but mischievous viewing. The subject of numerous Dateline shows and a podcast, Hupp is serving life in prison for multiple convictions. Clearly out of his mind in shock and grief, he cannot account for his movements with accuracy. That’s what Zellweger grasps and emanates – the plausibility of this monstrous murderer. In part that’s because Pam, in talking to the police, portrays Russ as a guy with a bad temper and a lousy husband to her friend who has cancer. Zellweger, aided by prosthetics and got up in large winter coats, is all fake sincerity as Pam. She practically winks at the camera. A key element of this strange satire is its picture of small-town life. Naturally, the younger woman sets out to destroy the villain and one hot mess of trouble ensues.

The Wild True Story Behind The Thing About Pam (E! Online)

Investigators struggled to believe that Russ really thought Betsy had committed suicide when the crime scene was so horrific, and when they brought him in for ...

She went on to enter an Alford plea (meaning a defendant pleads her innocence but understands there's enough evidence to be convicted) in June 2019, and was sentenced to life in prison. In light of the allegations, Lincoln County prosecutor Mike Wood said they intend to seek the death penalty. Russ had long suspected that Pam was the person who'd slayed his wife. He was sentenced to life in prison. And like anyone who has lost a loved one, Pam regretted that she didn't do more to save her friend. As Jeannette Cooperman wrote in St. Louis Magazine, investigators found that in addition to having her wrists slashed, Betsy had been nearly decapitated.

Renée Zellweger Makes The Thing About Pam Inexplicable (Vulture)

A review of 'The Thing About Pam,' a fictionalized adaptation of a true-crime story and podcast covered and produced by newsmagazine 'Dateline.

“For the first time, Pam wasn’t in control of her own story,” Morrison intones, but The Thing About Pam is so disparate in its methods and so mistaken in its centering of Zellweger that it loses its own sense of control, too. Brightly colored, chipper fantasy sequences in which we see how the narcissistic Hupp views herself (dressed in all white like an angel and adored by her family and friends or performing every role in a courtroom better than the actual judge, jurors, or bailiff) tip The Thing About Pam toward comedy. Instead, this fictionalized miniseries is partially a meta-experiment in the newsmagazine format’s reliance on dramatic reenactments, partially NBC patting itself on the back for Dateline helping to release an innocent man, and partially Zellweger doing the most, and The Thing About Pam cannot sustain all three. Betsy’s friend Pam Hupp was the last person to see her alive, and she points directly at Russ — around whom she spins accusations of abuse that the police accept without a second thought. But The Thing About Pam isn’t a documentary because that approach has already been done for this story by NBC itself in a podcast of the same name and five Dateline episodes. That is an actual line from my notes on The Thing About Pam, the NBC miniseries premiering tonight about the 2011 murder of Betsy Faria that the network’s long-running newsmagazine Dateline has covered for years.

'The Thing About Pam' review: Renée Zellweger headlines an odd ... (CNN)

Drama meets "Dateline" in "The Thing About Pam," an NBC series that seeks to turn one of the newsmagazine's salacious stories into a limited series, ...

In success, the project could theoretically open the door for other true-crime dramas that expand on such stories, which has obviously proven to be a fertile genre for streaming services and premium networks in both scripted and unscripted formats. You know the type." But the key player in the drama turns out to be Pam Hupp (Zellweger), a friend of the dead woman who happened to be the last person to see her alive.

Impressive performances steer the twisty true-crime story of The ... (The A.V. Club)

Renée Zellweger's fat suit is getting all the press, but Judy Greer and Josh Duhamel also get a chance to shine.

Greer’s Askey gleefully and repeatedly emphasizes to Schwartz how far away from the Troy inner circle he is, but Schwartz is undaunted, believing he has the truth on his side. So often unfairly sidelined to the best-friend-in-the-rom-com role, Greer is uncharacteristically wily as Askey, refusing to admit that she may have fingered the wrong guy and crafting any number of implausible theories to make that accusation stick. Like the podcast, The Thing About Pam is narrated by Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison, which adds a strange but compelling folksy flavor to an increasingly disturbing story.

'The Thing About Pam': How to watch Renée Zellweger in new ... (oregonlive.com)

"The Thing About Pam" is a dramatized version of a murder case previously covered in a "Dateline" report and podcast.

(“The Thing About Pam” premieres at 10 p.m. March 8 on NBC. You can live stream episodes on fubo TV, which offers a free trial. The six-episode limited series premieres at 10 p.m. Tuesday, March 8 on NBC. The final episode will air on April 12. If you watched the “Dateline” report, or listened to the podcast, you may already know about the true crime case that’s dramatized in “The Thing About Pam.” But if not, the new NBC series will offer its own version of events surrounding a murder, a conviction, and what role Pam Hupp (played by Renée Zellweger, in her first major TV role) played in all of it.