Declan Harvis

I've been super interested in Anna's story for a while. I read about it and listened to podcasts about it so when it was turned into a Netflix series I was very excited to see the events surrounding Anna's life and case play out on TV... I didn't know it was possible for Netflix to make me extremely bored and kill almost all interest in this story. The overacting journalist was very scary and it was a bit inappropriate that the character's personality didn't reflect the real life Vivian Kent at all. I really liked Val... It's a shame he doesn't even exist. I don't see what the point is in adding fictional characters and events into a real life story. This series would have been so much more enjoyable if it was accurate to the true events considering this was meant to be based on a true story... "apart from the parts that are totally made up". What's the point in that? The way they treated Rachel Williams was beyond disgusting. Extremely sickening. She was a victim of this criminal but she was portrayed as someone who "betrayed" her "friend" by turning her into the police. A cruel cold and callous person who had absolutely no regards for Rachel at all. She wasn't only a victim but a survivor of this woman and her ability to turn a nightmare into a possibly better situation is something that should be celebrated not looked down on. I'm getting sick and tired of Netflix's glamorisation and celebration of criminals and complete disregard for victims. It was very boring and difficult to follow. Half of the series is just boring rich people acting boring and rich. It doesn't help that Anna's personality was 1 dimensional throughout. Highly unrelatable, the show doesn't really pick up until the final few episodes. We don't actually get to know much about Anna at all. The show was mostly focused around the angry aggressive feminist icon journalist who abandoned her baby and neglected her pregnancy to chase the Anna story. There was a lot of cringe-worthy random and unnecessary references to politics littered throughout. I don't know how the "evil and terrible Trump" has anything to do with this story at all? It's forced virtue signalling against non issues and it's an insult to the viewer's intelligence. The music was a bit jarring. I love hip-hop and rap music but it didn't suit many of the scenes and was quite distracting in quite a few of them. I don't know why we need to keep being reminded that a con artist is a "bad bch" from the lyrics of the music. This whole show as a failed attempt to appeal to my demographic; POC AFAB zoomers. It came off as a frustrating and sometimes aggravating try hard. It was a let down to people who were drawn to this show because they were already invested in Anna's story. It didn't teach anything substantial to anyone who wasn't already previously aware of Sorokin and perhaps it even spread a bit of misinformation. It was an unnecessary glamorisation of a criminal and sometimes unsympathetic to the real victims in this.