Death in Small Doses is a 1995 American true crime television film directed by Sondra Locke and written by Scott Swanton.

It was produced by Robert Greenwald Productions and stars Richard Thomas, Tess Harper, Glynnis O'Connor and Shawn Elliot.

Locke was drawn to Swanton's script due to its ambiguity concerning Richard's guilt, which she thought would keep the audience guessing.

Marking her television directorial debut, Locke found the tight schedule to be a challenge and noted that the nature of the true crime genre limited the dramatic scope of the story.

He insists they were happily married until one particular family trip to Arizona, in which Nancy visited Bill who was in a treatment center for his drug and alcohol problems.

The true crime aspect posed its own challenges for the filmmaker, as adhering to the real-life case meant having to limit the film's dramatic scope.

Locke also noted the directorial challenge of finding ways to keep the story moving while covering nearly 30 pages of courtroom scenes that had been pieced together from the real-life court transcripts.

Locke was keen to have Thomas portray the accused husband, feeling that the actor's "quality of innocence or directness" would play well into the ambiguity surrounding the character's guilt.

[7] Because her character mainly appears in sporadic flashbacks after dying at the start of the film, O'Connor described Nancy as "a real mystery" and felt that she had more creative freedom that usual in how she approached the role.

[2][8] It was shot on location in both Charlotte and Monroe, North Carolina,[8] with specific locales including the VanLandingham Estate[9] and the Union County Courthouse, the latter of which was used to recreate the courtroom scenes.

[11] Variety's Ray Loynd commended Locke's well-executed direction, Swanton's engaging story, and the cast's performance, with particular praise for the "utterly convincing" Thomas.

[12] On the other hand, People's David Hiltbrand was not impressed by the lukewarm suspense, but nonetheless found the film engaging thanks mostly to Locke's confident visual command.

[13] In a positive review, the Sun-Sentinel's Tom Jicha wrote that Death in Small Doses breaks conventional wisdom by proving that true crime dramas "can be provocative and gripping without being exploitive and titillating.

"[14] Jicha praised Thomas' compelling turn as the dubious husband, and predicted that the uncertainty over Richard's guilt by the film's end would stir up debate among audiences.

[19][20] John Koch's review in The Boston Globe found that the film spends too much time focusing on certain details of the investigation instead of building up the characters and human elements of the story.

Overall, Koch was highly critical of Locke's direction, writing that she "makes a jumble of what might have been a fairly suspenseful, if all-too-familiar, network based-upon.