Elizabeth Holmes · Charles Orlando · Matthew Broderick

Where to begin with The Ashley Madison Affair? I’ve mentally written this lede so many times since I started in on the three-part Hulu docuseries, and I’m not happy with any of my drafts. A big part of this is because the show is very, very stupid — but it’s also so stupid that it can be a lot of fun to watch, especially with someone else amused by poorly manufactured true crime and bogus moral outrage. This is MST3K-worthy stuff.

I don’t feel that way about a lot of televised true crime. Typically, when it’s done poorly, it might still be engaging (if the case compels) but it doesn’t prompt laughs aloud. This series, from ABC News, does. And, to be clear, my laughter wasn’t directed at the users of the titular Ashley Madison website, a platform intended to allow aspiring adulterers to connect. No, it comes from the choices made by the show’s producers, and how its primary “journalistic” voice was presented. And (perhaps unlike many of the allegedly defrauded users of the website), it came a lot.

Over three episodes, the supposedly news-driven docuseries traces the rise of Canadian website Ashley Madison (did you know it was Canadian? I didn’t, until watching, so score one for ABC I guess), which since its founding in 2001 (!) has presented itself as a way for married people to discreetly meet other married people for hookups and relationships. That means that the world this show occupies is exclusively cis, heterosexual, and ostensibly monogamous — it’s also largely white and suburban, it seems.