At times, this true-crime drama feels like a meta satire of an industry that milks private pain for entertainment. It is, however, no such thing You know the feeling: you’re watching a shocking docudrama about a toxic waste scandal, or the baseless prosecution of 555 sub-postmasters, or the fraudulent founder of a blood-testing biotech company, and you start thinking – did this all really happen? So you do some digging online. Usually, it turns out there has been a mild massaging of the truth in the name of narrative efficiency: a couple of characters conflated, a timeline slightly rejigged. Only very occasionally (once?) will a case of dramatic licence result in a hysterical media storm, a global debate about the ethics of dramatisation and Netflix being hit with a $170m lawsuit. And yet it is almost unheard of to settle down to watch a series based on real events – or, in the case of Paramount+’s Happy Face (from Thursday 20 March), “inspired by a true life story” – and be confron...
"Happy Face," a Paramount+ drama "inspired by" the true story of Melissa Moore, daughter of serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson, blends fact and fiction. The series is based on Moore's memoir and podcast but includes invented scenarios. Despite depicting Jesperson's crimes, the show has a light-hearted tone, making it difficult to fully invest in its narrative. The reviewer questions if the show offers meaningful commentary on the true-crime genre.
