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the true crime that's worth your time
This is a great weekend to catch up on everything that dropped earlier this week. For whatever reason, Monday was a big day when it came to true crime (or genre adjacent) content drops, and I am here for it. Here’s the rundown of what I’m dipping into the next few days, please chime in with thoughts if you’ve already watched any of these — and please share what crimes you’ll be getting into over the next few days.
The Age of Influence
Hulu
Six episodes
Pitched as a series exploring “the dark side of influencer culture” (uh, is there a non-dark side?), this anthology-style show isn’t all true crime (though I will still watch the F Factor diet episode just because it looks fun), but fraud, scams, and cons seem the order of the day. As an Old who knows little about most of these folks (the exception being convicted steroid counterfeiter Tyler Bauman), I expect this to be the educational experience slash car-crash viewing I need to kick off my summer TV consumption.
Barracuda Queens
Netflix
Six episodes
This Swedish series is a dramatic adaptation of the real-life Lidingö League, a 1990s-era heist team that targeted Stockholm’s wealthiest neighborhoods. That sounds juicy, right? But this show plays fast and loose with the “true story” claims it makes — for example, the fictionalized series is about an all-female team of thieves, when in real life that gang was all dudes. I’m the last person to argue that we need more stories about men, but per Digital Spy, this was the real-life gang’s MO:
They pilfered everything from antiques and famous artwork to jewels and vintage wines – including lithographs signed by Chagall and Picasso. They quickly singled themselves out for having impeccably good taste, targeting prominent public figures, including the former Scandinavian Airlines chief Jan Carlzon and the writer Jan Guillou.
After they had packed the stolen goods into their family cars, which moonlighted as getaway vehicles, the Lidingöigan would often share a champagne toast and leave behind the empty flutes as their calling card – a bit classier than Home Alone's Wet Bandit thieves leaving the taps running, but essentially as dumb and insulting.
There were around 50 burglaries and 20 car thefts that the Swedish police believed to be connected to this one group, but they went years without the evidence to catch them, as the Lidingöigan racked up goods with an estimated total value north of £20million.
How we go from that to this show with a strong scent of Bling Ring, I do not know! But I’m going to give it at least 20 minutes to see if I can figure that out.
The Reptile Cult Murder
Investigation Discovery
Sarah knows I can’t resist garbage, so when she dropped a mention of this in the budget doc I felt incredibly seen. This show, reportedly about YouTube cult leader Sherry Shriner, is so low-rent that direct links or accessory content like a trailer don’t appear to be available, but per the SEO-chasing content out there, one can find it on platforms like Fubo and Philo. Maybe it’s on ID, too, but I can’t find it there.
Shriner was also the subject of a great New Republic longread from 2019, as well as Vice’s second season of The Devil You Know and a season of podcast The Opportunist, so I guess my drive to watch the ID show is my self-flagellating completionism as opposed to a belief that it’ll actually be good. But who knows, I’ve been surprised before.
And now I turn the mic to you all. What’s your true crime agenda this weekend? — EB
Hearsay
Shiny Happy People Goes Way Beyond Duggar Family Secrets [Vanity Fair]
Paid subscribers already know that Elizabeth Held’s Best Evidence review of Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets is impossible to top, so I didn’t try when I wrote this piece for Vanity Fair. Instead, I interviewed the show’s executive producers Cori Shepherd Stern and Blye Pagon Faust about how, show-wise, the Duggars were the peanut butter to get readers to swallow the pill of Christian extremism in the U.S. Faust and Stern are cool, fascinating folks (they were also behind LuLaRich, and Faust has an Oscar for her work producing Spotlight), and I’m hopeful their wish for a second season of Shiny Happy People comes to fruition.
Jay Johnston, actor from 'Bob's Burgers,' charged with storming US Capitol on Jan. 6 [USA Today]
The voice of Bob’s Burgers’ arguable baddie was a baddie in real life, we all realized in 2021, when some tweets from fellow comics outed him as one of the insurgents responsible for the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The 54-year-old was arrested Wednesday on L.A. and was charged with “civil disorder, entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds and impeding passage through the Capitol grounds or buildings.”
The CW Eyes ‘Dateline’-Style True-Crime Strand [Deadline]
With DC exerting new creative control of its characters and Freeform taking over the angsty young folks space, I guess it makes sense that the CW — a network that changed hands last year — is casting about for a new brand identity. So it’s “currently working on its own version of NBC’s Dateline, CBS’ 48 Hours and ABC’s 20/20, with its head of unscripted programming saying that the move will help tell untold stories and support investigative journalism.
Just kidding! She actually said “What’s nice about true crime is it also can be scaled, you can do a lot of episodes, and it’s very efficient.” Sounds like an impressive commitment to quality. Suddenly, Arrow doesn’t look so cheesy. — EB
Next week on Best Evidence: Ed Gein, OJ, and the Mob.
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