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."^[1] She based her character on a private investigator she met before filming started.^[2]

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.^[1][3]

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.

Bobbi discovered that her husband is cheating with a new secretary at the dentist office, Lisa, who is recently separated 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 Bobbi about her husband's cheating, Clara tries to become more appealing to David, but to no avail. In the end, David and Lisa have one final affair at a posh hotel, the hotel where Clara and David got married no less. It ends with Clara, also accompanied by her stepdaughter and David's biological daughter, bursting in and attacking Lisa and 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."^[4] The Star-News called it "overreaching," writing that the plot events did not cohere.^[3]

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]}