A morbidly fascinating inquiry into performative justice, moral superiority and public shaming as crude fuel for reality television, Primetime is a superficially fictionalized account of Dateline NBC’s controversial To Catch a Predator, or as Jimmy Kimmel once called it, “Punk’d for pedophiles.” Robert Pattinson is equal parts cracked and chilling as host Chris Hansen, portraying him as a ruthless ratings hunter with a grandiosity complex and a chip on his shoulder because he’s not Stone Phillips.
The targets Hansen went after were legitmate sex offenders, soliciting what they believed were children in online chatrooms. And while many have protested that every human being deserves empathy, no one’s going to feel sorry for a bunch of creeps preying on girls and boys as young as 13 for sex. But the methods used in the show’s sting operations, as depicted here, uncomfortably skirt the dubious boundaries of entrapment.
Primetime
The Bottom Line
A peak Sleaze TV rerun, for whoever wants it.
