Primetime: The Paedophile-Hunting Show Behind Robert Pattinson's New Film
Lance Oppenheim's Primetime, starring Robert Pattinson, traces how To Catch A Predator turned stings into TV spectacle. UK release follows on 30 October.
Programme
- Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim and starring Robert Pattinson, was released in the US this week; UK release follows on 30 October.
- The film examines To Catch A Predator, the Dateline NBC sting series that became the most controversial show on 2000s TV.
- The film raises ethical questions about justice, voyeurism and society's willingness to dehumanise certain offenders for profit and entertainment.
A man from Long Beach, California, arrives to have sex with someone he believes is a 13-year-old girl. The journalist Chris Hansen walks in. The man's stomach drops. He is caught, and it is the end of his life as he knew it. Hansen asks what his fate should be. "The electric chair?" the man asks. No, replies Hansen. "Dateline NBC."
That exchange opens Primetime, a film directed by Lance Oppenheim and released in the US this week, with a UK release following on 30 October. The film stars Robert Pattinson and premiered at the Venice film festival.
Primetime examines how a network news show turned sting operations into must-see television. The programme at its centre, To Catch A Predator, ran on Dateline NBC and became one of the most controversial shows on 2000s TV. Experts and insiders explain in the film how the series operated and why it provoked such sustained backlash.
The documentary raises a host of ethical questions, according to the Guardian's coverage: questions about justice, about voyeurism, and about society's willingness to dehumanise certain offenders for profit and entertainment. As the film's own framing has it: "In our deepest hearts we are voyeurs."
Hansen, the correspondent whose on-camera confrontations defined the series, remains the figure at the centre of the story. His exchanges with the men caught in the stings — conducted in houses wired by the production with hidden cameras and a decoy posing as a minor — turned arrest into spectacle. The show drew massive ratings and, eventually, lawsuits, scandal and cancellation.
Oppenheim's film arrives at a moment when the format's legacy is contested. Predator-hunting operations now proliferate online, run by amateur groups livestreaming confrontations on YouTube and other platforms, largely without the oversight — however contested — that a network news division once claimed.
The film's US release this week positions it as an awards-season documentary contender, and the 30 October UK release will bring the debate over the show's methods to British audiences next.
Original: youtube.com
