A realtor, a retired tennis pro, and a plumber turn America's true-crime obsession into a business plan in "Based on a True Story," a 2023 comedy series led by Kaley Cuoco, Chris Messina, and Tom Bateman.
What is Based on a True Story about?
The premise starts small and gets stranger: three neighbors with unrelated day jobs realize that the public's appetite for true-crime podcasts and documentaries has turned into real money, and they decide to get a piece of it. What follows is less about solving anything and more about the ethics — and comedy — of packaging real tragedy for an audience that cannot get enough of it. Kaley Cuoco anchors the group as the realtor whose instinct for staging a house translates uncomfortably well into staging a narrative, while Chris Messina and Tom Bateman round out a trio whose friendship is tested by how far each of them is willing to go. Liana Liberato, Priscilla Quintana, Natalia Dyer, Alex Alomar Akpobome, and Aisha Alfa fill out a supporting cast pulled into the fallout as the podcast project grows beyond anything the three of them planned for.
About the cast
Kaley Cuoco leads a cast built for a workplace-comedy pace, with Chris Messina and Tom Bateman supplying the other two-thirds of a partnership that keeps shifting its own rules. Liana Liberato, Priscilla Quintana, and Natalia Dyer bring in the younger characters whose lives intersect with the podcast's rise, and Alex Alomar Akpobome and Aisha Alfa round out an ensemble built to keep the satire moving episode to episode.
Context & significance
Craig Rosenberg directs a show that leans on the real cultural moment around true-crime media — the podcasts, the documentaries, the amateur sleuthing — without needing to name any of it directly. The half-hour comedy format keeps the tone light even as the material it's mining stays dark, and that tension is the engine of the series rather than a side effect of it.
Watching Based on a True Story on Ktime
"Based on a True Story" streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, part of a Farsi-first viewing experience built for the Iranian diaspora. Watching requires a free K-Time account login; the show's page here is free to browse without one.