Web Of Death · Sam Sheppard Jr. · The Murdaughs

The crime
Various “gruesome, mysterious and bizarre murder cases” solved by online sleuths using “digital footprints, DNA databases and the power of social media.”

The story
I expected to spend (what little I thought I could stomach of) Hulu’s six-part docuseries Web Of Death holding my eyeballs in an unrolled position, but the good news is, I didn’t have to do that. It’s fine! I only watched the first ep, on the disappearance of “rags to riches to [spoiler]” Florida lottery-winner Abraham Shakespeare, and the bad news is that it’s not great, or even very good — it’s at least ten minutes too long, for one thing, with too much filler, “click-send” b-roll, and talking-head interviewees affectedly tip-tapping on prop laptops.

For another, not-unrelated thing, for a show claiming to set itself apart from others in the genre by focusing on internet Sherlocks’/communities’ investigations, Web Of Death is rull weak on the process. The Shakespeare case was cracked because a bunch of Nosy Parkers on Websleuths.com ran down a bunch of barely accessible public records on Shakespeare’s so-called “business adviser,” but while more than one TH mentions how impressive and baffling it is that civilians managed to get that intel, zero screentime is devoted to explaining or recreating the getting itself. No, watching a Websleuth slide down a wikihole isn’t per se good television, but again, this is the show’s stated/titular brand, so watch a half-dozen old episodes of Catfish and break out how they adapt text and online research for a visual medium. Catfish isn’t perfect in that regard either (or at all; I haven’t watched in years), so maybe the production wants to look to love-fraud docs or financial-crimes material like American Greed for AV inspiration. It’s not easy to do, but it’s eminently possible, and if WOD isn’t going to get granular about the only semi-fresh aspect of its content brief, it’s hard for me to recommend it as worth spending the time on.