In this week’s episode of The Blotter Presents podcast, Sarah is joined by Jeb Lund to discuss fictional “true crime” series Truth Be Told. The Apple TV+ show has garnered some fairly scathing reviews, and Jeb and Sarah don’t deviate much from the herd.
Seriously, the document we use to keep the podcast on track reads thusly:
Discussion areas:
It's bad
Why's it so fuckin' bad?
As I love it when Sarah hates things, and Jeb is a very funny person, though TBT’s fake true crime is definitely not worth your time, Sarah and Jeb’s takedown of it most certainly is. You can listen to their full discussion of the show here. — EB
For this week’s Cold Case, Sarah and Jeb tackled an episode of Netflix series Dark Tourist. The series, if you haven’t watched it, is about people’s fascination with spots related to terrible events (a “haunted” forest in Japan, Escobar-related locations in Colombia — you get it).
In the episode they watched, which is set in the U.S., New Zealand journalist David Farrier (who hosts the show) met a Jeffery Dahmer fan in Milwaukee, took a couple JFK assassination tours in Dallas, and lived the Anne Rice dream of a “vampire” dinner in New Orleans. The show is a tough sell, as it’s hard to find a middle ground between commenting on these tragedy-centric pursuits and participating in them, and it’s unclear if Farrier has any idea how to balance the two. All in all, Sarah and Jeb suspect, the show has more wasted opportunities than it can handle. You can check out Dark Tourist here to check their work, or just listen to their conversation about the show here. — ELB
Don’t F**k with Cats is now available on Netflix. The three-part docuseries, which we covered here, was released in the US and UK today. Best Evidence subscriber Margaret Howie says that she just dipped into it, and that while “it's pretty engaging so far” she warns that — as you likely expected from the title — there is footage of animal cruelty. If you’re checking it out, let us know in the comments — it would be fun to trade notes! — EB
Thursday on Best Evidence: I have so many interesting-looking press releases in my Best Evidence email folder that I haven’t even opened yet! But I will for tomorrow, and will deliver you the best of them.
Christmas is coming. One gift you know they’ll get in time is a paid subscription to Best Evidence…and Sarah’s and my Christmases will be even jollier if we get to 2000 paid subscribers, as you know what that means: we’ll be covering the Theranos trial live and in person. Ho ho ho!
What is this thing? This should help.
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I finished Don't F*** With Cats, so here's my $0.02: At the beginning of the first episode, an amateur internet detective talks about there being two kinds of internet - the kind internet, where you go for a happy place, for pictures of kids being adorable and catching up with friends, and the cruel internet, where anything goes in terms of degenerate content because it's all for the lulz; just don't f*ck with cats. But by now we all know that there's no such division - the nice internet is always getting interrupted by the nasty internet, and there's never been all that many rules keeping the two apart, just layers and layers of outrage and contra-outrage. DFWCs is about an internet vigilante group, told mostly from within the group, based around videos of animal abuse posted online. There's enough of the videos shown, and described, to make anyone reach for the nearest pitchfork. Viewers sensitive to animal abuse should give it a swerve, because it doesn't really let up over the three episodes. There's two stories here: one is the crime story, which is properly cued and delivered, and has real tension and suspense. The other is what one narrator refers to the as "internet hoo-ha" element. TV/film doesn't tend to do great at showing how the internet works on screen, and there is an assload of telling-not-showing going on here. If you were lucky enough not to know what a "sockpuppet" is, this will tell ya. There's many shots of hyperpixellated facebook icons. Animated Likes piles up. It's a subtle as a 4chan meme, but slightly more tasteful (slightly). Without spoiling anything, the intersection of the crime story and the internet story is mostly deftly handled, and I thought it would be allowed to stay in the shades of grey that something as complex and batsh*t as this story warrants. Nope, the filmmakers decide to wag their fingers at the audience in the most on-the-nose way possible.
All that aside - if you can bear the subject manner, and find the intersection of online personas, scammers, criminals, and obsessive community-driven behaviour (plus sheer weirdness) interesting, this is quite the watch. Could do with less of the shrieking violins though.
Now I've actually listened to the episode, I've not seen Dark Tourist but can recommend his documentary Tickled as a considerably less-squeamish Strange Internet Stuff true crime tale, compared to DFWC. And if you want more in the doofy NZers travelling about genre, recent podcast Snowball (which I think EB reviewed?) hits the mark. Yours, a doofy NZer