There needs to be, I have decided, a subdivision of categories within the proliferation of offerings under the genre of true crime documentary. Foremost among them needs to be one called What Happens When Only Women Are in Danger. This, admittedly, would cover a large proportion of the genre, but then I would like some action on the issue of the sociocultural, legal and police dismissal of – and contempt for – women’s vulnerabilities, experiences and harms, up to and including murder. Maybe the repeated use of such a descriptor would be no bad thing.
Into this category would fall Can I Tell You a Secret?, the latest true crime offering from the leader of the pack, Netflix – and the first it has made with Louis Theroux’s Mindhouse production company and in association with the Guardian. It is the story of the cyberstalker Matthew Hardy, who terrorised multiple women over many years. The case was first covered in depth in G2 by Sirin Kale – then via a six-part Guardian podcast series – in 2022, the year Hardy received the longest sentence handed down in the UK for online stalking: nine years.
