Paramount+ True Crime Series With the Substance Star Got 58% on RT, but It’s 100% Worth Watching
The authors of this project show what goes on in the minds of the wives, children, and loved ones of serial killers.
The first two episodes of the series Happy Face have been released on Paramount+. The show is based on the story of a real-life serial killer truck driver who raped his victims and then came to their family and spent time with their children as if nothing had happened.
In the letters the man sent to newspapers, he signed off with a smiley face, earning him the nickname Happy Face. True crime shows usually tell about the criminals, but in the new show, everything is reversed.
Instead of following the killer, we follow the life of his daughter as she tries to come to terms with her father's dark past.
What Is Happy Face About?
Melissa works as a makeup artist on a popular true crime show. The woman hides from everyone that her father, Keith Jesperson, is the infamous Happy Face.
Somehow, her dad gets through to Melissa's boss and promises an exclusive. If the daughter comes to visit him in prison, the madman will tell about the ninth victim, which nobody knew about before.
Melissa thinks long and hard about whether she should go through with it: on the one hand, she can help the victim's family find peace; on the other hand, Melissa's relatives could suffer greatly from the attention of the press.
Happy Face Focuses Not on a Serial Killer, but On His Daughter
The true crime genre continues to be popular in all formats: books, podcasts, and especially movies. The public is always interested in getting inside the mind of a madman and understanding what real villains think.
Sometimes this becomes a problem: directors and screenwriters do not rethink the stories of killers, but simply tell the stories from the perspective of the criminals – then the viewer becomes a voyeur.
But Happy Face takes a different, more sensitive and thoughtful path. From the very beginning, all attention is focused on Melissa. The woman tries to lead a modest family life and struggles with dark memories of her childhood.
But her father appears out of nowhere and disrupts the plans: he forces her to stir up the past and forces her to make a difficult choice.
Happy Face Is One of the Most Unique True Crime Series of Recent Years
Happy Face also adds a family drama to the detective component: Melissa's relatives begin to feel the full weight of unwanted media coverage.
Melissa's memories also form a separate subplot. This is not just a true-crime story about living with a madman, but a strange coming-of-age story: a tale of teenage development filtered through the prism of the crime genre.
If the authors continue to delve into the psychology of broken characters in the same spirit, the series can be called the most important and unexpected discovery of 2025 in the genre.