Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.

Name: Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.
Genre: Drama, Movie/Mini-Series, Documentary, Food & Cooking
Released: March 16, 2022
Rating: 72

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Generally favorable reviews based on 10 Critic Reviews

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Mixed or average reviews based on 4 Ratings

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Series Details & Credits

Netflix | Release Date: March 16, 2022

Summary: The four-part documentary from Chris Smith looks into how "Vegan Queen" Sarma Melngailis, became known as the "Vegan Fugitive" after meeting a man named Shane Fox in 2011.

Genre(s): Drama, Movie/Mini-Series, Documentary, Food & Cooking

Recent Episodes

tbd
S1:E4. Everything Will Be Fine
Air Date: March 16, 2022
tbd
S1:E3. No Angels in Hell
Air Date: March 16, 2022
tbd
S1:E2. Happily Ever After
Air Date: March 16, 2022

See all Seasons and Episodes

Metascore

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Critic Reviews

Aaron Barnhart

Mar 15, 2022

Season 1 Review: Well-paced and efficient, Bad Vegan sucks you into Melngailis's personal drama and keeps you there. Read full review

The Daily Beast Nick Schager

Mar 14, 2022

Season 1 Review: Compelling endeavor. ... What emerges, then, is a concept of Melngailis as a woman who wasn’t just painfully gullible, and therefore susceptible to Strangis’ cult guru-like charms, but a self-interested huckster and dreamer who was constantly angling to keep herself afloat by any means necessary. Read full review

John Anderson

Mar 15, 2022

Season 1 Review: An engrossing docuseries. ... Mr. Smith’s objective is the creation of mood, which he does quite successfully, punctuating an ethereal portrait of the confused Melngailis’s thought process with the recollections of her employees. Read full review

IndieWire Steve Greene

Mar 14, 2022

Season 1 Review: There’s a healthy dose of skepticism in “Bad Vegan” that helps it avoid framing this saga as a love story gone wrong, and maybe its most insightful decision is to emphasize how numbing that ratcheting strain becomes on Sarma herself. Read full review

Joel Keller

Mar 16, 2022

Season 1 Review: We really wish Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. was less one-sided, but at least the side we see makes for an entertaining story. Read full review

Daniel D'Addario

Mar 16, 2022

Season 1 Review: The elusiveness of answers about “why” — and the inability, then, to make “Bad Vegan” about bigger questions about truth or even about the specifics of Melngailis’ world — make the docuseries grow, eventually, frustrating; four hours is a long time to spend running through a specific set of facts with a hard limit as to how far we can explore. Read full review

The Guardian Lucy Mangan

Mar 16, 2022

Season 1 Review: This is very much Melngailis’s show and she is allowed to skate too easily away from whether, when and how she could have – should have – realised what he was doing, and escaped his clutches. Read full review

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User Reviews

UncleWillard

Mar 16, 2022

So far I'm just seeing overly privileged people with first world problems getting hooked up with criminals and committing crimes. They took money from investors and their own workers and here we are, they're the stars of their own show. Who gives a **** Only elitist white people care aboutSo far I'm just seeing overly privileged people with first world problems getting hooked up with criminals and committing crimes. They took money from investors and their own workers and here we are, they're the stars of their own show. Who gives a **** Only elitist white people care about these idiots. I'm going to soldier on with the hopes of seeing these **** go to jail and cry a lot.

God dammit! Take my money Netflix. It was actually very interesting. And though I loathe everything about Sarma, I'd be a big, fat (but not Anthony fat) liar if I didn't admit Sarma's charisma and sex appeal.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

Mystichydra

Jun 27, 2023

An ex investment banker makes a pretentious vegan restaurant, then marries and gets scammed by AJ from the Sopranos while Johnny Fairplay is her lawyer. It's REALY hard to care about what's happening to this absurdly gullible woman. She seemed like a decent person when she befriended thatAn ex investment banker makes a pretentious vegan restaurant, then marries and gets scammed by AJ from the Sopranos while Johnny Fairplay is her lawyer. It's REALY hard to care about what's happening to this absurdly gullible woman. She seemed like a decent person when she befriended that homeless guy or whatever, but honestly - she's probably more culpable than the doc suggests since she's the main one telling the story. But the douchiness and obviousness of her scammer husband goes beyond mere gullibity. I get she's a new age vegan. But come on, believing that your dark-triad abusive husband works for the CIA and will make your dog immortal... I get that he's a predator and she's inherently attracted to dysfunctional and abusive individuals. But the fantastical, ever evolving claims go so beyond the pale of anything. He might as well have told her he's the tooth fairy, but he needs a million dollars top pay back all the toothless kids first, then they'll be wealthy gods. Her total malleability comes across as honestly not sympathetic at all. And that definitely affects the story. I felt badly for her unpaid workers way more than I did for her.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Realbegeiztert

Mar 24, 2022

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. It is just like "tinder swindler" but way overstretched. Could be told in one single episode in less then 30 minutes. I have no idea why they thought that this needs a whole series. It is about a woman whith a bad work-life balance that wasted all her fortune to an obvious conartist. Not even close to the weirdness of tigerking. Sry but just lame entertainment… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Seasons & Episodes

72

Series Overview
Season 1

72
- Season 1 Overview
  Air Date: March 16, 2022
- tbd
  S1:E4. Everything Will Be Fine
  Air Date: March 16, 2022
- tbd
  S1:E3. No Angels in Hell
  Air Date: March 16, 2022
- tbd
  S1:E2. Happily Ever After
  Air Date: March 16, 2022
- tbd
  S1:E1. Mr. & Mrs. Fox
  Air Date: March 16, 2022