# Happy Face (2025)

> A woman's estranged serial killer father forces his way back into her life just as an innocent man faces execution for one of his crimes.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/159263

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 8
- Episode runtime: 55 min
- Status: Canceled
- Genres: drama, crime
- Created by: Jennifer Cacicio
- Network: Paramount+
- Cast: Annaleigh Ashford, Dennis Quaid, James Wolk, Tamera Tomakili, Khiyla Aynne, Benjamin Mackey, Momona Tamada, Kathleen Duborg
- TMDB rating: 6.6/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13172612/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: tense, manipulative, intimate, bleak, unsettling

## What critics say

Audience reception is mixed, with viewers divided over the series' dark true-crime premise and its handling of a serial killer's family story.

## Synopsis

Happy Face (2025) is an American true crime drama series created by Jennifer Cacicio for Paramount+. Across a single eight-episode season, the story follows Melissa Reed (Annaleigh Ashford), the daughter of notorious serial killer Keith Jesperson, known as the Happy Face Killer. After decades without contact, Keith (Dennis Quaid) forces his way back into her life, and Melissa must determine whether an innocent man will be put to death for a crime her father committed. Her husband Ben Reed (James Wolk) and the Reed children add domestic pressure as the past intrudes on the present. The series is a limited run of eight episodes, adapted from a memoir and podcast, and it moves between the family's present-day unraveling and the grim facts of the murders. Its tone is tense, manipulative and intimate, built on dread and the uneasy closeness between a daughter and a father she cannot trust. Melissa's story becomes a reckoning with her own identity and shame. Fans of The Staircase, Mindhunter and Dexter will find resonance in its true crime grounding and its study of a family shaped by a killer. The series was canceled after its first season, leaving its central question open.

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