Love & Death

Love and Death is a seven-episode limited series about the real 1980 Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore case in suburban Texas. It follows a housewife whose deep unhappiness leads to a planned affair, an axe killing, and a self-defense trial that ends in acquittal. The story is set among late-1970s Methodist church circles in Wylie. The main cast fits that period for a white suburban community. A female pastor named Jackie Ponder is based on a real Methodist minister from that world.

The show centers on Candy’s sexual and emotional unfulfillment inside traditional wife, mother, and church roles and a sexless marriage. The story describes a hole left after she did everything right by the rules of her time. The drama frames churchy suburbia as having a dark side and a crack in the American dream. Methodist life can feel like a social club with hollow respectability and weak moral authority after key church figures leave. Soft critique of traditional domestic and religious norms sits behind the crime plot. There is no confirmed LGBTQ storyline and no modern activist speech on screen.