This show was right up my street! I was so excited for it to come out because I love hearing about crime stories like this, however the execution was terrible and I stopped watching during episode three because I had a lot of issues that I want to talk about in this review.

Inventing Anna is a nine episode miniseries that follows the story of Anna Delvey, who basically lied her way to becoming a socialite and scammed her friends out of thousands of dollars to live this lavish lifestyle. It’s very much similar to The Tinder Swindler, however this is a dramatisation and that was a documentary.

My first issue with the show was that the episode length for each episode was over an hour long and it really didn’t need to be. When you look at most miniseries’ they are either 45 minutes or an hour long and they are so easy to digest because there’s always something going on and have a cliffhanger to make you want to continue watching, however in this show, because the episodes were so long, there was nothing really that kept you excited. It was a really slow burn of a show and a lot of the things that were included could’ve easily been cut out because they did seem like filler.

But my biggest issue with this show was the way that it was produced. In this, instead of following Anna herself, we follow a journalist who is looking into her story. Throughout the series we follow this journalist speaking to Anna‘s closest friends and acquaintances to get to know more about who she is, while the stories are shown in flashbacks and are not always in the correct order. From this show I wanted the lavish lifestyle, I wanted to follow Anna and see how calculated she was and how she managed to swindle all these people, but because we see it from an outsider’s point of view you don’t get that and you never know how truthful the protagonist is being or how well remembered these memories are.

I don’t care about the journalist’s story. I came into this show wanting to look at Anna because she is the face of the show, she is the reason the show was created, and yet even in episode one she is barely in it and we just follow this journalist having issues with her partner and being pregnant and her job, and these moments I do not care about. I want to know about Anna, I want to know her story, I have tuned in for her and she is just not there.

Unfortunately for how much I love the idea of watching this case unfold and hearing all the details of how she was able to fake this luxury lifestyle that she should’ve never had this is not a show that I can connect with and watch. Nine episodes over an hour each with lots of filler and fluff within each episode is not what I signed up for. Not seeing Anna as the main character was not what I signed up for, and while I should manage my expectations and maybe not be surprised by this, when the marketing was all about her you can’t help but wonder why she was put as this almost side character and not the one that we follow.

Will you be watching Inventing Anna?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding