Suburban Madness

{{short description|2004 television film by Robert Dornhelm}} {{use mdy dates|date=April 2025}} {{Use American English|date=January 2025}} {{Infobox television | image = | image_size = | image_alt = | caption = | genre = Drama | creator = | based_on = | writer = Skip Hollandsworth | screenplay = | story = | director = Robert Dornhelm | starring = Elizabeth Peña Brett Cullen Rheagan Wallace Michelle Duquet Kennedy McGuckian Sela Ward | narrator = | music = John Altman | country = United States | language = English | num_episodes = | executive_producer = Neil Meron Craig Zadan | producer = Mark Winemaker | editor = Victor Du Bois | cinematography = Paul Sarossy | runtime = 89 minutes | company = Storyline Entertainment Sony Pictures Television | budget = | network = CBS | released = {{Start date|2004|10|03}} }} '''''Suburban Madness''''' is an American crime drama television film, based on a true story of the Murder of David Lynn Harris, starring Sela Ward as PI Bobbi Bacha of Blue Moon Investigations. It aired on CBS on October 3, 2004.

==Background== The filmmakers had read about the Clara Harris case in a ''Texas Monthly'' magazine article. Ward said the movie would present that story less as a true crime case than a "broader picture about marriage in America today."<ref name="catlin">{{cite news |last1=Catlin |first1=Roger |title=Marriage, motherhood less than apple-pie perfect; ABC series, fact-based CBS movie look behind the myth of America's happy homemaker |agency=Hartford Courant |date=3 October 2004}}</ref> She based her character on a private investigator she met before filming started.<ref name="collins">{{cite news |last1=Collins |first1=Dan |title='You Can't Make Up This Story' |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/you-cant-make-up-this-story/ |access-date=24 May 2023 |agency=CBS News |date=29 September 2004}}</ref>

Several critics situated the film amid a broader trend of movies and television series about suburban crime and dysfunction, such as the recently released show ''Desperate Housewives'' and TV movie ''Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman''.<ref name="catlin" /><ref name="hidek" />

==Plot== ''Suburban Madness'' is loosely based on the true story of 44-year-old Clara Harris, a successful Texas dentist and mother of young twins, who hired private investigator Bobbi Bacha, played by actress Sela Ward, to spy on her philandering orthodontist husband.

Clara discovers that her husband is cheating with a new secretary at the dental office, Lisa, who is recently divorced from her husband. Lisa, who is noticeably much more attractive than Clara has no trouble capturing all of David's attention. The two fall in love. After hearing from her stepdaughter Amy and a receptionist at the office about her husband's cheating, Clara tries to become more appealing to David, but to no avail. Clara hires Bobbi to follow David where he and Lisa have one final affair at a posh hotel, the hotel where Clara and David got married, no less. Despite Bobbi's warnings for Clara to stay away until the investigation is done, it ends with Clara, also accompanied by Amy, bursting in and attacking Lisa. David tells her that it's over once and for all and both women leave the hotel in tears. As David walks Lisa out of the hotel, he is run over by his once loving wife.

==Reception== ''Suburban Madness'' received somewhat poor reviews from some critics. ''The New York Times'' wrote that the story turned its real-life origins into "a banal made-for-television parable about adultery."<ref name="heffernan">{{cite news |last1=Heffernan |first1=Virginia |title=How Woman Dispossessed Became Woman Possessed |agency=The New York Times |date=2 October 2004}}</ref> The ''Star-News'' called it "overreaching," writing that the plot events did not cohere.<ref name="hidek">{{cite news |last1=Hidek |first1=Jeff |title=These wives lead lives of quiet, riotous desperation |agency=Star-News |date=3 October 2004}}</ref>

The film received fairly negative reaction in Texas due to its loose interpretation of some facts, somewhat inaccurate and stereotypical representation of the people and the area, and use of a Canadian filming location in the northern rockies that bears almost no resemblance to the real subtropical coastal communities of Friendswood and Clear Lake City, Texas.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

==References== {{reflist}}

== External links == * {{IMDb title|0410700|Suburban Madness}}

Category:2004 television films Category:2004 films Category:2004 crime drama films Category:American crime drama films Category:American drama television films Category:CBS films Category:Films set in Texas Category:Crime drama films based on actual events Category:Films directed by Robert Dornhelm Category:Films scored by John Altman (composer) Category:2004 English-language films Category:2004 American films Category:English-language crime drama films Category:Sony Pictures Television films