‘Happy Face’ Release Schedule

Happy Face is a new Paramount+ true-crime series set to roll out eight new episodes this Spring. Adapted from the 2018 podcast of the same name, the docudrama concerns a teenage girl who discovers her father is secretly the Happy Face Killer, a serial kidnapper and murderer who took the lives of at least eight women in the 1990s. Dennis Quaid and Annaleigh Ashford headline the docudrama as the father-daughter combo.

With a relatively straightforward streaming schedule, Happy Face will air its eight-episode first season over seven weeks, ending on May 1st. Once hooking viewers with a double dose of terror, Paramount+ will issue a new weekly episode until the finale. Including episode titles and writers attached, here’s everything to know about when, where, and how to watch Happy Face in the coming weeks.

How Many Episodes Will There Be in ‘Happy Face’?

Happy Face is an eight-episode TV series premiering on Paramount+ on Thursday, March 20, 2025. The first two episodes will be released on the 20th before weekly episodes are rolled out every Thursday until the season 1 finale on May 1, 2025. ​​​​​​

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What To Expect From ‘Happy Face’

Michelle and Robert King (Evil) created Happy Face for Paramount+, a true crime drama inspired by the eponymous 2018 podcast and Melissa Moore’s autobiography Shattered Silence. The conflict concerns Melissa Moore (Annaleigh Ashford), a makeup artist on a fictional TV program called The Dr. Greg Show.

Melissa’s teenage daughter, Hazel (Aynne), receives an eerie phone call that leads her to Texas to investigate a murder, forcing Melissa to recall the time she discovered her father was the Happy Face Killer. Dr. Greg is analogous to Dr. Oz, who Moore worked for in real life.

Along with her friend and producer Ivy (Tamera Tomakili), Hazel ventures to Texas to investigate the murder of a woman named Heather Richardson. Hazel eventually realizes that her grandfather, Keith Hunter Jesperson (Quaid), might be the infamous Happy Face Killer, a Canadian-American serial strangler who murdered at least eight women in the U.S. and was known to send letters with happy faces on them to taunt the public.

Key characters include Melissa’s husband and Hazel’s father, Ben Moore (James Wolk), Hazel’s little brother Max (Benjamin Mackey), and her best friend and true-crime expert Eva (Momona Tamada). David Harewood plays Dr. Greg, the host of the TV talk show Melissa works for. Perhaps the most crucial character to stop Keith is Elijah (Damon Gupton), a Texas death row inmate falsely convicted of a 1995 murder committed by Keith.

Additional Happy Face cast members include Connor Paton, River Codack, Philip Granger, Jennifer Spence, Zara Nikou Sichani, Marci T. House, Ava Telek, Charles Zuckermann, Kathleen Duborg, and Jenn Lyon.