General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Guilty Party

Guilty Party is an American dark comedy television series created by Rebecca Addelman for Paramount+, starring Kate Beckinsale as Beth Burgess, a discredited journalist who latches onto the story of Toni Plimpton (Jules Latimer), a young mother sentenced to life in prison for maiming and murdering her husband, crimes she claims she did not commit.¹ The ten-episode first season premiered with two episodes on October 14, 2021, and ran through December 9, 2021.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Network / format	Paramount+; half-hour single-camera dark comedy, TV-MA (L\|V)³^•⁴
Season	1 season, 10 episodes, October 14 to December 9, 2021¹^•²
Creator	Rebecca Addelman, previously a writer on Netflix's Dead to Me¹^•⁵
Lead cast	Kate Beckinsale (Beth Burgess), Jules Latimer (Toni Plimpton), Geoff Stults (Marco), Laurie Davidson (George), Andre Hyland (Wyatt), Tiya Sircar (Fiona), Alanna Ubach (Tessa)³
Production	CBS Studios in association with Funny Or Die and Mosaic¹
Reception	40% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (10 reviews); Metascore 38 on Metacritic; 5.7/10 on IMDb⁴^•⁵^•⁶
Availability	Removed from Paramount+ in early 2023 as part of a cost-cutting purge of original titles⁷

Spoilers

Premise

Beth Burgess is a journalist whose career has been discredited; a year later she is working at a pop culture website when she receives a letter from Toni Plimpton, an incarcerated mother convicted of murdering her husband Wallace.⁸^•⁹ Beth sees the story as her chance at redemption and sets out to prove Toni's innocence, but the case proves trickier than she imagined.⁸ Her investigation brings her into contact with Colorado gun-smugglers, clickbait culture, the doldrums of her marriage, and her own tarnished past.¹

The season finale, the tenth episode, aired December 9, 2021; in it Beth and Toni, both desperate to survive, realize that the truth may not always set you free.²

Production

Rebecca Addelman created the series and wrote the first two episodes, and served as an executive producer alongside director Trent O'Donnell, Kate Beckinsale, Mosaic's Jimmy Miller and Sam Hansen, and Funny Or Die's Joe Farrell, Jim Ziegler, and Mike Farah, with Becca Kinskey and Whitney Hodack as co-executive producers.¹ The series was produced by CBS Studios in association with Funny Or Die and Mosaic.¹ Jules Latimer, a 2020 Juilliard graduate cast as Toni, prepared for the role by watching documentaries and researching prisons in upstate New York, and contributed to shaping the character.¹⁰

Episodes were released weekly on Thursdays, with a runtime of roughly 30 minutes (listed as about 32 minutes by some guides).² The premiere episode was titled "The Last Real Journalist Working in Denver".⁹

Reception

The series drew mixed-to-unfavorable reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 40% Tomatometer from 10 reviews, with an audience Popcornmeter average of 50% from fewer than 50 ratings.⁴ Metacritic assigned a Metascore of 38, categorized as generally unfavorable, based on four critic reviews.⁵ Caroline Framke of Variety wrote that the show "swings from black comedy to high-stakes drama without finding its desired sweet spot somewhere in between" and keeps giving in to Beth's worse instincts without giving the audience reasons to care whether she succeeds.⁵ Carla Meyer of the San Francisco Chronicle gave it two of four stars, finding Beckinsale's performance highly watchable while questioning whether the material could sustain ten episodes.¹¹ IMDb users rated the series 5.7 out of 10.⁶

Cancellation and availability

Paramount+ did not order a second season, and the series was removed from the service entirely in early 2023 as part of a broader financial cost-cutting measure affecting several original titles.⁷ As of recent listings, the show is not available for streaming in the United Kingdom but can be purchased in a small number of other markets, including Australia, on the Apple TV Store, Amazon Video, and Fandango at Home.¹²

Other works titled Guilty Party

The name has been used for several unrelated projects:

Guilty Party (2017 web series), a YouTube drama about high-school bullying starring internet influencers including Tiffany Alvord, Kian Lawley, and Teala Dunn, told through weekly episodes and daily character vlogs; it ran from 2017 to 2018.¹³^•¹⁴
Guilty Party (production company), a UK-based television and film company launched in 2015 by producer Spencer Millman and actor-writers Simon Bird and Jonny Sweet, with StudioCanal holding a 25% stake and handling worldwide distribution.¹⁵
Guilty Party: A Murder Mystery, an in-person party game for 5 to 10 players in which a survey of the guests' real answers is used to generate an original murder mystery case.¹⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Drama and prestige series (individual series) › Crime and thriller series › Psychological and domestic thrillers

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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