Criminal Minds - A quick run through eleven series of crime, thriller and spy stories that went out on TV and the streaming services.

If there has been one major change to my viewing habits in recent years it has to be the amount of limited episode streaming series I watch . Series TV passed me by back in the day. I’ve never seen an episode of The Simpsons let alone all those other network staples. Somehow or other though I’ve got hooked on more than a few things that only go out on the streaming services and which you can binge watch in huge dollops. The Sopranos  and Breaking Bad  were examples. I only got to them years after they began. Now I hunt them down though I haven’t reached the stage of repeat viewings. One run through of every ep of Spiral  or The Bureau  has been enough. There always more out there and some, like The Man in the High Castle took a while to get through, which doesn’t help the comprehension of the very twisty network narrative plots. But here are eleven shows I watched this year.

Richard Gere, Jeffrey Wright, Michael Fassbender
The Agency

THE AGENCY (Created and written by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth, based on The Bureau/Le Bureau des Légendes by Eric Rochant, Paramount +). The Bureau  is one of the great ones. The Agency  less so. But it has its own charms and a superior cast (Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, Richard Gere and a late appearance by Hugh Bonneville which might develop into a much bigger part in the already announced second series).

Solid plotting but not in the ranks of the best spy stories. It stays fairly close to Eric Rochant’s original, a drawback rather than a plus I suspect. The original, just by the way, was once described to me by a Canberra denizen as the most authentic picture of what modern spies do he had ever seen. 

Brian Tyree Henry, Wagner Moura, Dope Thief

DOPE THIEF  (Created by Peter Craig, based on a novel by Dennis Tafoya, Apple TV, 2025, thanks Rod Bishop for the steer to this one) In the grimy backblocks of Philadelphia a couple of lowlifes (Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura) have a steady sideline in impersonating Drug Enforcement Agency officers, busting small time drug  dealers and making off, only, with any cash on the premises. Needless to say one such goes badly wrong, they hit a much bigger operation that involves heavyweight gangs and undercover DEA officers and all shit rains down on them throughout the eight episodes. It has the grimmest set of characters, few with a solitary redeeming virtue. (Spoiler Alert) Moura’s character is killed off. Amazingly there’s the slightest moment of hope at the very end which suggests a possible series 2 but no news there yet. 

Beth Goddard, Tom Cullen, The Gold

THE GOLD Series 2 (Written by Neil Forsyth, BBC production. Series one went out in 2023 and was based on a remarkable London airport robbery where a bunch of crooks looking for a modest haul happened to come across about  £26 million  worth of gold. Needless to say the police were not amused. Hugh Bonneville played the lead copper and Jack Lowden the leading crook. Series two of The Gold is speculative. I’m quoting The Guardian here:” At the end of the first series of The Gold, it dawned on the officers of the Met’s Flying Squad that for all of their multiple investigations into the infamous Brink’s-Mat robbery of 1983, they had only ever been chasing half of the stolen bullion. Arriving two years after its highly entertaining predecessor, series two sets off with an irresistible premise: what exactly happened to the rest of it?... a note at the beginning explains that the (second) series is based on both real events and theories as to where the loot went.”

No Jack Lowden this time. The chief spiv is Tony Palmer (Tom Cullen), who got away with it in series one but this time the net closes in. The prolific  Scots writer Neil Forsythe also provided the starting point for Reckless, q.v. below.

Katharine Kelly, In Flight

IN FLIGHT (Co-created by Mike Walden and Adam Randall, directed by Chris Baugh) Set in Belfast this once centres on Jo (Katherine Kelly) an air hostess whose son gets caught smuggling drugs in Bulgaria. She becomes entangled  with the gang smuggling the drugs and is forced to become a drug mule herself. Six eps. A Channel 4 UK series (copy supplied by a friend) but apparently headed for SBS  and its SBS On Demand streaming service. Watch it there if you don’t mind the constant distraction of advertisements you cant ignore. Many of the ads are just promos for other titles on the stream. A good program selection but mostly easily avoided because of the way stuff is shown.

Tasma Walton, Hunter Page-Lochard, Reckless

RECKLESS (Lead writer /creator Kodie Bedford, NITV production for SBS and the BBC. Bedford is an Indigenous woman, slowly assembling a high quality series of credits writing for episode TV. The director is Beck Cole another Indigenous woman with a seriously good debut feature, Here I Am, and some exceptional TV drama and documentary work on her C.V. Reckless adapts the Scottish TV drama Guilt  to a Fremantle and Perth locale and plays fast and loose with the relationships. Brother and lesbian sister are in entanglement after entanglement. The plot twists are funny as well as clever. Tasma Walton and Hunter Page-Lochard as the blackfella brother and sister, she being of the view that her brothers and sisters get far too much doled out to them by government, he finally having it dawn on him his business is a cog in a criminal enterprise, are great character creations. There was a second series of Guilt in the UK. Let’s hope for more here. 

Mark Coles-Smith, Tuuli Narkle, Mystery Road Origin

MYSTERY ROAD ORIGIN Series 2  (Written by Stephen McGregor, Jada Alberts, Erica Glynn, Samuel Paynter, Gary Hamaguchi, Directed by Wayne Blair, Jub Clerc, ABC-TV and ABC I-View, BBC) Ivan Sen’s redoubtable, phlegmatic, take no bullshit detective Jay Swan is now up to its sixth iteration. After two movies and three prior series, two with Aaron Pedersen and now two with Mark Coles-Smith devoted to the early detective story of the young Jay. In this one, set in WA forest country, he has a heavily pregnant wife (Tuuli Narkle) and his cop colleague (Robyn Malcolm) is a lazy female sergeant who calls him, until he snaps, “Boney”. You have to go a long way back to know the meaning of that one. Clarence Ryan who plays Jay’s brother Sputty is a great character actor. He‘s also brilliant as Roddy in Reckless. The two series made by Indigenous film-makers this year are as good as it gets for Australian TV.

Sascha Alexander Gersak, Petra Schmidt–Schaller
The Marnow Murders

THE MARNOW MURDERS Series 1 (Written by Holger Karsten Schmidt, Directed by Andreas Herzog). Marnow is a town in what used to be the DDR. This element provides lashings of plot and skullduggery and dirty dealing because the background is the old DDR’s willingness to conduct medical experiments on whomever can be pressed into service. Detective Elling (played with much sweaty, unkempt and unshaven relish by Sascha Alexander Gersak) gets a case to investigate a fairly gruesome murder. Elling has problems with a wife he suspects is having an affair with her boss. He has two offsiders both of them with some eccentricities.  Lonas Mendt (Petra Schmidt–Schaller) lives in a motor home and Soren Jasper (Anton Rubstov) has a fiancée but is still quickly in the romantic thrall of Lona. Sub-plots abound, chief of which is Elling  tempted by an offer of a bribe. There is quite a bit of monkey business with that brown paper bag. Crime stories which delve into digging up the past are staples of the genre but the extra dimension of yielding up the secrets of the East German regime adds some extra oomph. It’s another one streaming via the advertisement filled SBS On Demand and if you can handle that element it’s worth a look. Series two awaits. 

Gary Oldman, Slow Horses

SLOW HORSES Series 5  (Showrunner Will Smith, Written by Will Smith, Morwenna Banks, Jonny Stockwood, Mark Denton. Edward Docx, Sean Gray,  Directed by James Hawes, Jeremy Lovering, Saul Metzstein, Adam Randall). Meticulously working through Mick Herron’s novels, one book per series, some say it turns them into cartoon versions of the books, others, moi included, think they are knockouts. Australian company Seesaw seems to be the lead producer but some credit for the rigor of them might also go to one of the credited producers Graham Yost, whose talent for smart episode TV has previously been on show with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Justified and is also on show in Sneaky Pete. Screens on Apple TV.

Jack Gleeson, Safe Harbour

SAFE HARBOUR  (Created and written by Mark Williams, Directed by Mark Williams, Arne Toonen, Inti Calfat, Dick Verheve. For some reason the creators don’t bother to explain, the drug trade in Rotterdam is being fought over by, on one side, the son (Jack Gleeson) and daughter (Charlie Murphy) of an Irish drug dealer (Colm Meaney) who mostly prefers to stay at home and fuss over his prize horse stud until it comes to the crunch round about the  second last ep. On the other side is an equally young gang leader of indeterminate Middle Eastern origin. The Irish siblings are a complicated pair. The sister is running the show. The brother is a murderous, conscienceless thug.   She’s gorgeous.  He’s not even remotely good looking, a visage made worse by affecting a wispy moustache. The Irish pair first enlist and then enforce the help of a pair of young computer hackers (Alfie Allen and Martin Lakemeier) who work out how to bust into the security system of the Rotterdam port. It sounds, and is, wildly farfetched but it has a certain edgy, twisty, unpredictable quality and a level of violence to rival Gangs of London. Streaming on SBS On Demand.

Giovanni Ribisi, Sneaky Pete

SNEAKY PETE Series 1 – (Created by David Shore and Bryan Cranston, showrunner for series Graham Yost, separate director for each ep including Bryan Cranston (ep 8)) The pilot was made in 2015 and the series in 2017. It was followed by two subsequent  series that I await with some anticipation. Con man Marius Josipovic (Giovanni Ribisi) assumes the identity of his prison cellmate, Pete. He heads for Pete’s domicile and fools his relatives. He’s taking refuge from a casino operator/gangster played by Cranston who wants both money and revenge and is not averse to chopping off the brother’s fingers to get Marius’s attention. As with much else described here when you want to run your story through ten eps (as here) and approximately 500 minutes then you have to have lots of dizzying twists, turns, misdirects, cliffhangers. Enough to satisfy Louis Feuillade in fact. 

Martha Plympton, Mark Rufalo, Task

TASK – (Created by Brad Inglesby. Written by Brad Inglesby with additional writers for some eps, Directed by Jeremiah Zagar and Salli Richardson Whitfield. Made for HBO. Streaming where HBO streams including Prime.) In the backblocks of Pennsylvania Tom Brandis, once a Catholic priest is seeing out his days as an FBI agent by running booths at careers exhibitions. But the FBI is shorthanded and a major operation is mounted when some maverick crooks start robbing a series of drug houses run by a bikie gang, The gang are not happy at all and they suspect they have a mole of some kind who is tipping off the robbers, a couple of garbagemen named Robbie and Cliff. Are we seeing a riff on Dope Thief ( q.v.)  or vice versa.Tom has the job of quickly assembling a team. Needless to say the team bring a bundle of personal neuroses to the story. Mark Rufalo, all shaggy and downtrodden with a family backstory that interrupts the action, is terrific as always. Series 2 is promised.

For 2026 a new Mick Herron adaptation, Down Cemetery Road already beckons. As does a big catch up on Sneaky Pete  and follow up series of Task, Marnow Murders, The Agency  and Slow Horses. Perhaps we can also hope for another series of Justified just to top things off.

Streaming on Prime Video - Rod Bishop checks out Ancient Rome in THOSE ABOUT TO DIE (Robert Rodat, Roland Emmerich, Marco Kreuzpaintner, USA/Germany/Italy 2024)

 

Anthony Hopkins top of the pile

Some budgets of high-end television series released this year (in US dollars): 

Shōgun, ($250 million, 10 eps); Masters of the Air, ($250 million, 8 eps); The Acolyte($180 million, 8 eps); 3 Body Problem ($160 million, 8 eps) and Fallout, ($153 million, 8 eps) - this series viewed by 65 million during its first 16 days on streaming platforms. 

The Marvel/Disney studio has been releasing its superhero television series for the last few years with similar budgets to its superhero films.

All-time top position, however, is The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022) coming in at $465 million for 8 episodes.

Makes the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones in 2019 ($90 million, 6 eps) seem almost cheap.

Those About to Die (US150 million, 10 eps), released last month, fits neatly into this pattern, perhaps another reflection of the post-Covid streaming audiences sitting in front of their giant 4K UHD home cinemas.

Being a sucker for great models and reconstructions of ancient cities - and leaving historical accuracy to one side - I found the simulated ‘drone’ shots of Rome in 79 AD in Those About to Die the most enthralling element in the series. Also the production design work in apartments, palaces, plebeian streets, bath houses, rowdy bars, betting shops, restaurants, and in the detail of the interiors and exteriors of Circus Maximus and the new Flavian Amphitheatre (the Colosseum).

Don’t be fooled by the series promotions, though. It’s not giving too much away to say Anthony Hopkins carks it a couple of episodes in. He has similar family problems to Richard Harris’s Caesar Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator. Hopkins does reappear - even better - in later flashbacks.

His screentime, however, is a long way behind the North Africans from Numidia: Kwame (Moe Hasim), his sisters Aura (Kyshan Wilson) and Jula (Alicia Ann Edogamhe), and their mother Cara (Sara Martins). There’s a bookmaker Tenax (Iwan Rheon), a trio of Spanish brothers trading horses, a ‘rock star’ charioteer Scorpus (Dimitri Leonidas) and Caesar’s sons Dolmitian (Jojo Macari in a mesmerizing, pouting performance that steals the show) and Titus (Tom Hughes, wooden and uncharismatic throughout). That puts Hopkins’ screentime behind at least eleven other actors.

Those About to Die can’t avoid the usual intrigues of Ancient Rome – the Senate plotting to overthrow Caesar, a son plotting to overthrow Caesar, the power of the elite patricians, the gladiators and the chariot races. It does take sex - of most varieties - to new levels and it heightens the pervading racism behind the slave trade. Some animals were apparently much larger in ancient times and while the horses look like our horses, the alligators and one particular white tiger are so huge, it's laugh-out-loud ridiculous.

Roman religion gets only cursory attention. Some assorted gods are named, the most prominent being the goddess of luck, Fortuna, cited many times in the betting saloons of the chariot races. The Vestal Virgins make a few odd appearances and they remain as mysterious as ever. For some reason, they are required to sit stoney faced below Caesar’s box throughout the gladiator death fights in the Colosseum.

Unsurprisingly, like Ancient Rome, the series is often overbearingly macho, particularly with Roland Emmerich directing half of it. Despite some valiant attempts, it fails to generate the nobility that so often graced Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. 

When your interest wanes during the long 10 hours, there’s always the great ancient Roman production design to look at – if you like that sort of thing.

Streaming on SBS On Demand - HIDDEN ASSETS (Two Series, Showrunner Peter McKenna, Ireland/Belgium, 2021- ) & KIN ( Two Series, Created and written by Peter McKenna, Ireland, 2021-)

Charlie Cox, Ciaran Hinds, Kin

Aha Peter McKenna. ... A name to conjure with. Full Forward for Collingwood for 13 years and 838 goals before  playing a final season with Carlton and 36 goals. Never played in a premiership side, though he did win the Coleman Medal twice, though not in 1969 and 1971 when he kicked 143 and 134 goals respectively. Hudson beat him both years.

Peter McKenna

Collingwood of course was once the domain of John Wren who made his money running an illegal tote  down in its very dirty backblocks of the day. Wren loved the football club and Wikipedia informs us that he was well known for supporting exemplary Collingwood players in the VFL's  pre-professionalised era. While players were paid a per-game salary, the amount was meagre until the late 20th century when the sport became professionalised. To compensate for this, Wren was known to send monetary gifts to players who performed well, often paying ten to twenty times the normal game salary to certain Collingwood players. Among the beneficiaries included Collingwood legend Gordon Coventry after he scored a then-record 16 goals in a game in 1929; however, in his case, League Laws prevented him from doing this, so he exploited a loophole by gifting 50 quid to Coventry's wife (A$1,995 in 2018 terms) to buy a suite of furniture. In the thirties when, as now though not so easily, money could help buy a premiership, Collingwood won a lot including four in a row from 1927 to 1930, the only time it has ever been done in VFL/AFL history. 

Wikipedia tells us the tote eventually earned Wren £20,000 per year (A$2,646,000 in 2021 terms). Wren's wealth also caused other family dysfunction problems and once again Wikipedia lays it out simply "Others of his children had troubled lives. His son Anthony committed suicide after being disinherited following an argument with Wren, while his daughter-in-law Nora and grandchildren only received a meagre allowance. When another of Wren's grandchildren, Susan Wardlaw, died, her two brothers had her buried without notifying her husband Greg, who was then given 24 hours to leave the family home, while another of Wren's daughters, Angela, purportedly died of malnutrition when she was 39, leaving an estate worth £97,000.

My goodness. You could write a book or make a TV series out of it though I'm not sure that Peter McKenna despite his post-footy media career would have been up for it.

But Peter McKenna (no relation, above) is these days the author of two terrific crime series made in Ireland and now streaming on SBS. McKenna however might be channelling something from Collingwood and Wren's past with his tales of dysfunction, betrayal and sheer brutality among a couple of Irish crime families. Kin is the more ferocious of the two. You get the impression it might be written from close hand observation or knowledge. In each series there is one crime lord who stops at nothing to have his way. The body count piles up throughout. In series one that lord is played by the wonderful Ciaran Hinds as Eamonn Cunningham, a rival of and supplier to the Kinsella family and in series two, having been set up at the end of series one he's played by Francis Magee as Bren Kinsella,  fresh out of prison and more violently psychotic than anybody else on screen. (Spolier alert). Things dont turn out well for either.

In the meantime, it's the women of the family who have the most intriguing parts  as wives, sisters, mothers, children and lovers. In most circumstances they are just smarter and more subtle than the blokes, with the possible exception of Michael Kinsella (Charlie Cox), also fresh out of prison and shortly thereafter committing another murder. Must see stuff.

Wouter Hendrickx, Angeline Ball, Hidden Assets

With Hidden Assets you get the impression that McKenna probably had a research team to help with the intricacies of money laundering, technical police investigation involving a lot of banging away at computers followed by 'gotcha' moments, and the various bits of business chicanery that take place in Ireland and Belgium. There's also the background of a false flag terrorist operation and the involvement of a populist/racist but corrupt politician. But again it's family betrayal, dysfunction and retribution that keep you on edge. However, the cops are much more prominent in this one, especially the Belgian detective Christian De Jonge (Wouter Hendrickx). Strangely the Irish female cop in series one is only referred to as having 'got a promotion to Madrid' to explain her absence in series two. Maybe the character,  the rather abrasive Detective Sergeant Emer Berry (Angeline Ball) didn't play well with the focus groups. Similarly terrific. 

Our Peter McKenna has long left the footy and media scene. Their Peter McKenna seems likely to develop a following. Perhaps next a series about Irish crims in Melbourne. You could start with a roman a clef about John Wren.

Streaming on HBO channels and on DVD - THE GILDED AGE (Julian Fellowes, USA, 2022)

 

Agnes Von Rhijn (Christine Baranski), Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon)

You have to give credit to Julian Fellowes. After six series and two movies devoted to the British aristocracy he has moved on. Some said the the series Jumped the Shark way back in about the third season but, as the feature length spinoffs showed, punters couldn't get enough.

Fellowes next stop is New York in the 1890s and the tension between the rich, represented most notably by Agnes Von Rhijn, and the nouveau riche represented by Bertha Russell. Agnes is a widow, supporting her impecunious spinster sister Ada Brook and hoping for good marriages for her son Oscar (a closet gay) and her niece Marian Brook. 

 

Both  the Van Rhijn and the Russell households have an array of servants, many of them with secrets that are going to take years (seasons) to uncover. It’s very familiar territory and it’s done with a panache that seems to accompany anything that Fellowes has done from Gosford Park onwards.

 

So while waiting for series two to emerge I pondered equivalences.

 

As mentioned there is an acerbic witty quality to Agnes Von Rhijn (Christine Baranski) that clearly matches up with Maggie Smith’s grandmother Violet Crawley. Each is adept at tossing off vicious bon mots and asserting class superiority. "My dear I may be many things but I am never wrong." has probably been uttered by both.

 

George Russell (Morgan Spector)

While Google tells me that the Russells are based on the Vanderbilts, I think George Russell (Morgan Spector) surely has more than a touch John D Rockefeller. “Grandfather was never charged with a crime” said one of Rockefeller’s grandsons in a TV series devoted to the development of American capitalism. Maybe so but reining in what Rockefeller did  to so-called compete with other business, formed the basis of today’s US competition and anti-trust law. George Russell has no qualms in destroying his business enemies – everyone from a fellow railroad operator who refuses to sell out to him, to his stenographer who betrays him for money. He’s a tougher egg than Robert Crawley the lord of Downton Abbey and a business naif mostly concerned with preserving his estates in the face of declining revenues. “There’s this fellow called Ponzi in America. Maybe I should invest with him” said Robert at one stage.

 

There are three butlers to consider. Carson is the unflappable adviser to the Crawley family and a stickler for protocol. He would never do what Bannister, Mrs Von Rhijn’s butler, does when he secretly accepts $100 from the despised Russells to advise and supervise a dinner which will be one of their stepping stones into the New York 400. In so doing he manages to get up the nose of Bruce, the Russell’s butler who doesn’t know the etiquette associated with English table layouts. “ The English never eat their salad separately and thus do not require a separate knife and fork”. Bannister is worldly and far more tolerant than Carson a man who knew his place and lauded old-fashioned virtues such as total obeisance to the ruling class. 

Ada Brook (Louise Jacobson), Peggy Scott (Denée Benton)

 

Bannister and Carson are both however stout defenders of other staff when unfairly attacked. Bannister is most keen to let the staff know whenever any racial slight occurs towards Miss Scott, the young black woman who lucks into a job as Mrs von Rhijn’s secretary. Miss Scott is the equivalent of Tom Branson the interloper Irishman who sweeps one of the Crawley daughters off her feet.

 

The closet gay characters are in different classes. The valet Barrow in Downton runs parallel to that of Oscar, who is on the hunt for a pliant rich wife and has his eye on Gladys Russell who will inherit fabulous wealth. I fear a sticky ending…

Berttha Russell (Carrie Coon), Donna Murphy (Caroline Astor)

 

Finally one big difference that leads to the best joke of the season. The Russells have a French chef who talks like an American actor doing an Inspector Clouseau accent. There was no equivalent in Downton, just Mrs Patmore the no-nonsense cook. But to succeed in New York society in The Gilded Age  a French chef is a requirement and Bertha Russell has found one. He  feigns incredulity when asked to cook an English style meal for the visit of Ward McAllister the gatekeeper to the New York’s most esteemed member of society Mrs Astor, but trouble is afoot. I can say no more…

Streaming on Paramount Plus - Rod Bishop recommends THE OFFER (Leslie Greif, Michael Tolkin, USA, 2022)

More than twenty years ago I found myself involved in a group project with a former Hollywood studio executive. It was an excruciating experience. 

Let’s call him “Brad”. “Brad” lost a lot of money when he ran a famous Hollywood studio…Lots.

“Brad” is very reminiscent of the Paramount studio head Robert Evans in The Offer. Gross, belligerent, inexperienced, a kind of used-car lot salesman who only knows how to speak in “spin”. How do such people get to run Hollywood studios?

Evans died in 2019 so The Godfather producer Albert S. Ruddy, (whose credits here read “Executive Producer” and “Based on Albert S. Ruddy’s experience of making The Godfather”), presumably had a much freer hand to show Evans as a serious dingbat, putting up major roadblocks - seemingly at every turn – before reluctantly agreeing to greenlight the project.

Evans didn’t want Mario Puzo co-writing the screenplay. He didn’t want Brando. At best, he was only lukewarm about Coppola. And he really didn’t want Al Pacino.

Ruddy’s “experiences” show him rather publicly overcoming these obstacles with head office, but almost quietly, behind the scenes, dealing with the Mafia and Frank Sinatra’s attempts to stop the production of the film.

Ruddy and his assistant Bettye are shot up in the car one night. A dead rat is left on a copy of The Godfather novel on Evans’s bed. Mafia boss Joe Colombo starts up the Italian-American Civil Rights League and holds rallies denouncing the production of the film. Congressman Mario Biaggi tells Ruddy he’ll never get a permit to shoot in New York.

Sinatra’s role is reduced to only two scenes and the Mafia are pleased when Ruddy guarantees the word “Mafia” will be removed from the script. Coppola doesn’t care, it was only used once anyway. Peter Falk is offered a role in the film but writes back to say he’d read it and then employed a private detective to find his role in the script, but he couldn’t find it either. 

And that's just the first four episodes of this ten-part series

“Someone, I forget who, said every film is a miracle”.

Certainly, Ruddy would agree. So would his assistant Bettye McCartt. And Coppola. And Mario Puzo. And anyone else hanging by the coat-tails as The Godfather production lurches from crisis to crisis.

But probably not Robert Evans or “Brad”? They think financing a film is a God-given right for people like them.

Streaming on Netflix - Rod Bishop uncovers INVENTING ANNA (Shonda Rhimes, USA, 2022) and THE TINDER SWINDLER (Felicity Morris, United Kingdom, 2022)

Somewhere in the more than ten hours that make up the nine episodes of Inventing Anna,a millennial talks about scamming banks, art galleries, investors and close friends as “the new normal”. Bit like that other millennial new normal - sexually explicit selfies posted to others as “it’s what we do, so get over it”.

Tinder Swindler Simon Leviev enjoyed a luxury lifestyle
paid for by his victims – and they want it back.

In The Tinder Swindler, the professional Israeli millennial scammer Simon Leviev (aka Shimon Hayut) would certainly agree as he jets from country to country in a private plane, running multiple parallel love affairs with gullible millennial women he meets on Tinder, while pretending the dangers of his diamond-trading business have such ‘security’ issues he cannot temporarily access his own money, so could you lend me some? $10 million all up.

Both the Russian Anna Delvey/aka the Russian-German Anna Sorokin and Simon Leviev hide their scamming in plain sight. Leviev’s whole shtick depends on Tinder and after sleeping with his women and having occasional meals in restaurants, the rest are all texts, emails, voice mails, mobile phone videos, Facetime, Instagram and, of course, money transfers.

Delvey is just as adept at face-to-face exchanges with her New York targets - investment lawyers and real estate entrepreneurs - as she is with social media. Her face-to-face exchanges with her friends are less convincing the longer they go on, particularly when she embezzles $62,000 on one friend’s AMEX card. Delvey pleads she is too busy to deal with such trivia. Her friends think she is a liar, but they are slow to act. The intervention they eventually plan collapses in shouted recriminations and Delvey runs from the restaurant into a waiting NYC taxi.

Julia Garner, Inventing Anna

Although Inventing Anna is open to the usual criticism a dramatic version of Delvey’s life can attract,The Tinder Swindler is a documentary strengthened by Leviev’s indulgence at being photographed, filmed and voice recorded along with his copious texts and emails. At times, it’s hard to believe the footage we see, mostly recorded on mobile phones, is real. Or perhaps just another scam.

The big difference between Delvey and Leviev is the use of romantic love as the basis of the scam. Leviev uses it entirely for bait, while Delvey - who seems completely uninterested in romance - plays hard with the gender card to her corporate targets and soft on the “trust” and “support” she expects of her friends. Both are equally effective.

But perhaps the biggest difference is charisma. Anna Delvey has it in spades. Although Simon Leviev’s female victims may think otherwise, the Israeli scammer comes out of The Tinder Swindler not only lacking any charisma, but any scamming creativity. His text messages, for instance, are cut-and-pasted from one victim for use on the next. Cut-and-paste seems to be his entire modus operandi actually. And who needs charisma anyway when there’s a private jet, continuous flights all over Europe, chauffeured limousines, luxury hotels, expensive meals and compliant women ready to fork up $10 million for it all?