Why is TV about scammers and swindlers so popular right now?
There’s no doubt that stories about deception are engaging: false identities, trickery and comeuppance have made great drama since antiquity. But only a few months into 2022, two Netflix originals with swindling protagonists have become over-night sensations, and more are in the works. One has to ask: why now?
Simon Leviev stars in ‘The Tinder Swindler’ as self-proclaimed billionaire’s son, Lev Leviev. Lavishing the women he meets on dating app tinder with luxury meals and private plane trips, the love-bombing protagonist scams his victims by telling them he needs a little cash to close a deal, before heading off with it into the sunset. In a matter of days after its release, the movie shot into Netflix’s Top 10 chart in over 90 countries.
‘Inventing Anna’ features a similar false-identity fraudster. Based on the life of Russian-born Anna Sorokin (who Netflix paid $320,000 in rights fees), the mini-series follows her stint pretending to be a German heiress under the pseudonym Anna Delvey. ‘Delvey’ spent five years piling up bills in the names of her high society friends and defrauding as many financial institutions as she could manage, before being convicted for grand larceny in 2019. The show, in which Anna is played by a heavily accented Julia Garner, boasts the most viewing hours for a Netflix series since last year.
Such success has, of course, caught the attention of producers worldwide. Hulu’s ‘The Dropout’ is currently streaming weekly, and tells the story of Elizabeth Holmes, yet another swindler who used a carefully crafted persona to scam her way into high society. Apple TV+ will be offering up their own version starring Jennifer Lawrence, ‘Bad Blood’, later in the year. To top this landslide of fraudster filmography, Netflix released both ‘Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King’ and ‘Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives’ in March. The centrality of the swindling protagonist in each title says a lot about the marketability of deception in these shows.
But what’s making them marketable? Why are viewers so willing to watch series after series concerned with conniving grifters?
Perhaps it’s the recent feeling that the rich and powerful should be seen through a more cynical lens. In recent years upper class criminal have bubbled dangerously close to civil scrutiny, with Epstein’s sex trafficking scandal and consequential alleged suicide in custody being the most vivid example in the public conscious. After Prince Andrew almost went on trial for child sexual abuse earlier in the year, only for the matter to be settled out of court, many were left itching for publicized justice.
With a zeitgeist of speaking truth to power in the air, these shows provide the nugget of righteousness we’re craving by exposing their ‘protagonists’ for all the world to see.
Words by Kate Bowie
