The dream of every TV producer and presenter is to have a hit show and hit series in primetime but in an age of increasingly disparate viewing habits appointment TV shows are few and far between. But in the US, ‘To Catch a Predator’ was such a show. Controversy was writ large in a show that ran from 2004 to 2008 and saw the show’s team posing as children lure online paedophiles in chatrooms to visit ‘sting houses’ where young actors played the role of children enticing them into the house. Once inside and once the predator had made his intentions clear journalist Chris Hansen would make a theatrical entrance clutching a transcript of the chatroom conversation shortly before the man was arrested and whisked off to court. Quite how the issue of entrapment was addressed is not covered here and its one of the many things that would have greatly enhanced director Lance Oppenheim’s film.
Pattinson is Primetime
Hansen is portrayed here by Robert Pattinson who is pitch perfect in the role and further proof that he is one of the most interesting actors around in his choice of roles. He’s matched by Skyler Gisondo as Dan Plumb, a needy actor looking to get his Screen Actors Guild having only appeared in a TV commercial previously and goes into method acting mode when preparing for his first ‘sting’. But the team have no time for his prep and frequently rush him headlong into the real life scenario that understandably is an unsettling scenario as he speaks to real life paedos. But Hansen soon coerces him back into the job using flattery and drinks that’s akin to the grooming that he’s uncovering. And orchestrating all of this is the producer Andie Bender ( Merritt Wever) a composite of the actual show’s producers.
But like Saturday night 1990’s TV hit ‘Noel’s House Party’ and its NTV segment where the programme put covert cameras inside a viewer’s home the novelty soon wore off and for the makers of PrimeTime show they need to up the ante to keep the show’s rating up. So the promise of a ‘whale’ having been lured – a high ranking government official – that leads the film to a cataclysmic showdown.
It’s not the only drama going on with the show’s producer being lured by another TV company HoD with a big money offer and Hansen’s affair having been captured by a tabloid and on the cusp of being revealed.
The appeal of the show…
It’s easy to see why the show was so compelling even if its subject matter was so repellent but the film is never really clear about its position on either the media or the morality of how it’s doing it. A suggested conspiracy peters out, Hansen’s affair and its reveal to the Press goes the same way and the whole legality of the entrapment is ignored. Director Oppenheim comes from a documentary background and Primetime has stylistic and expressionist flourishes that are often lurid with several awkward comic moments – the transcripts are queasily stomach churning but as read out by Hansen and also an over eager sheriff become awkwardly amusing.
But both Pattinson and Giusondo are the core of this and are both excellent in a film that channels the satirically prescient film ‘Network (1976). That Pattinson’s Hansen behaves like a man on a God sent mission to punish the paedo’s and Gisondo’s Dan Plum’s innate decency and wanting to please soons disappear in his bid to become a SAG member. Primetime, like the real life show, will prompt discussions about what the morality and methods of what the show was doing.
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Here’s the trailer….
