- Network: SHOWTIME
- Series Premiere Date: Aug 30, 2020
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Critic Reviews
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It is a perfectly constructed piece of documentary filmmaking, one that doesn’t just point a camera at a subject or chronologically recount an event, but literally puts the viewer in the backseat of a car that’s hunting a monster. Even though this bizarre story is inherently fascinating in terms of what unfolds, it’s the access and filmmaking acumen of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady that elevate it into something truly special.
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Showtime’s “Love Fraud” is the year’s most engrossing true crime docu-series. ... There’s barely any flab in these four hours as the story takes progressively weirder, more surprising turns.
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While full of increasingly outrageous reveals, it doles them out in a riveting slow burn.
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“Love Fraud” is a fantastic series built for anyone who has survived the last three years on social media. Where public and private persona start to meld further, the fallout is filled with lies, deception, and questions of whether we’ve really come that far in holding people accountable for their actions. Outside of that, it’s a deliciously fraught story — and you won’t want to miss a minute.
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An astonishing four-part true-crime docuseries. [31 Aug - 13 Sep 2020, p.7]
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Love Fraud is a canny blend of expressionistic cinematic storytelling and first-person activism, discarding any notion that those behind the camera must stay detached from that which they’re filming. Ewing and Grady’s formal approach is sharp and evocative.
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Uplifting—for female viewers in particular—is indeed the way to describe Love Fraud, a tight, energetic four-episode Showtime docuseries.
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Grady and Ewing jump along for the “let’s go get him” ride and keep going until the final jaw-dropping moments of this series unfold. You may question the decisions of many people, most especially Smith, while watching Love Fraud. But good luck trying to hop out of this vehicle in hot pursuit once you’ve buckled into its passenger seat.
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"Love Fraud" doesn't come across as expressly an advocacy project or as even all that justice driven. At best it's an odd confluence of true crime, documentary tropes, and visual artistry. The familiarity of this situation that makes "Love Fraud" watchable if not indispensable; it's basically an event series version of a "Dateline" mystery that crashes in to a "Cheaters" episode around hour three.
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Love Fraud gets off to an interesting start, and only promises to get weirder and more interesting from there.
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It starts off in a lot of places that seem familiar, but every time you become too complacent in your expectations, Love Fraud detours and the resulting series is sad, distressing and filled with enough Midwestern weirdness for a Coen Brothers movie.
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If it’s going to pick at the scars of traumas so bluntly, it needs to be for a damn good reason. Love Fraud has some damn good reasons, and some damn bad ones, too. It’s the most watchable series I’ve ever watched that I’m not sure I can recommend watching.
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Love Fraud plays like the real-life equivalent of a Lifetime movie turned, for better and worse, into a salacious Showtime docuseries. Although there are plenty of juicy bits in this tale of a guy who wooed and fleeced women he met online, the filmmakers focus on the micro of the story at the expense of the bigger picture -- in a way that's entertaining, but shallow.
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[The filmmakers] have little effective storytelling footage at their disposal other than the many interviews they did with the many Mrs. Smiths. The work of collage artist Martin O’Neill and the animation by Andrew Griffin help to create an atmosphere of surrealistic fantasy around the hard facts of the case. For their part, Ms. Ewing and Ms. Grady create what is often a studied-bordering-on-languid pace and a running visual commentary on the down-market Midwest.
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