Netflix does love a good online cautionary tale. From Don’t F**k With Cats to The Tinder Swindler and, more recently, The Man With 1000 Kids.
All of them are stories about the dangers the internet poses in an age where we do much of our socialising online. And now, we have Sweet Bobby.
Based on the hit Tortoise podcast of the same name, Sweet Bobby is the story of Kirat Assi, a Londoner who became embroiled in a decades-long catfishing scam.
Kirat herself was in her mid-30s by the time she met Bobby online. As she and her family members tell us repeatedly, she was desperate to find a husband.
And Bobby appears to be everything she wants. Supportive, loving, ready to commit, even if it’s online to start with. But things take a turn for the dramatic when he’s apparently shot in Kenya and airlifted to the US. From there, he goes into witness protection. Bad health means he can’t appear on video calls, and a fragile mental state means he can’t stand being questioned… the excuses pile up, but Kirat remains loyal.
They continue their relationship online, and what we end up with is a spiralling tale of deceit and deep psychological harm. Kirat appears here – as do her family members – to give us a blow-by-blow retelling of the entire thing.
It’s fascinating to see the whole thing being explained, but honestly, the podcast covered this ground before, and better. They did it in six 40-minute episodes, which also featured extensive interviews with Kirat. Netflix are trying to cram this whole story into an hour and 20 minutes, which means much of the tale is lost in favour of brevity and slick, reality TV-show editing.
The less said about the depressingly manipulative soundtrack – sweet and hopeful when things suddenly seem to be going well between Bobby and Kirat; dark and ominous when things aren’t – the better. And the hackneyed formula of having people explain things as though they’re happening in real time, which has been done in literally every other Netflix documentary before this one, feels tired.
The documentary really comes alive when Bobby pops up towards the end, along with his wife Sanj, to explain things from his perspective – notably the fear of having a furious Kirat turn up on his doorstep and accuse him of cheating on her. Understandably, they are terrified, and hearing things from their perspective is fascinating.
There is a gaping hole in the story, of course: the catfisher. Why they did what they did still remains a mystery, much to the anger and confusion of Kirat and her family. Kirat herself comes across as deeply fragile, clearly still traumatised by the abuse. And it’s clear that her family members are equally perplexed about what has happened to her.
"I'd never even heard of catfishing before,” her father says towards the end, looking very out of his depth. “Catfishing should be made a crime, you know. Why it happened, how it happened, beyond my knowledge.”
“I was targeted, just for somebody's entertainment, I think,” Kirat herself adds. “When somebody who knows you does this to you, you haven't got a hope in hell.” Her ambition to raise awareness of what she’s gone through is admirable. It’s just a shame the documentary itself offers nothing new to say.
