From "Fyre Fraud" to "The Tinder Swindler," con artists and their schemes have provided an endless font of material for television docuseries. No need to labor over fictional narratives about brazen frauds when reality has given us Elizabeth Holmes and Bernie Madoff. But in the spirit of fixing something that's not broken, scripted dramas, based on docuseries, books or magazine articles, which were in turn retellings of true stories, are now vying for space in the true-ish crime world.
Before "The Dropout" (Theranos) and "WeCrashed" (WeWork) arrive next month, Shonda Rhimes' drama "Inventing Anna" premiered Friday on Netflix. The series, about a self-proclaimed German heiress who conned millions from Manhattan's rich and powerful, is based on a true story, though all 10 hourlong episodes begin with a disclaimer that the show is true "except for all the parts that are totally made up." What's clear is that the narrative is adapted from "Maybe She Had So Much Money She Just Lost Track of It," Jessica Pressler's 2018 New York magazine article about Anna Delvey, aka Anna Sorokin, a bright young thing who befriended "New York's party people," as the story had it, and used them to prop up her life of lies and excess.
Delvey's story is riveting. The series, sadly, is not. It's five hours too long and far too formulaic to keep up with its brazen protagonist, played here by "Ozark's" Julia Garner. But for all its problems, it's hard to stop watching "Inventing Anna" as it chronicles Delvey's brilliant grift, from credit card scams to multimillion-dollar banking swindles, Paris Fashion Week to Rikers Island.
