It's not even close to as good as the American version. The pacing is god awful in many interview episodes and some female hosts want the center of attention instead of letting the story be the center element. It's so forced that it often feels fake likely because in half the episodes they stretch out very short stories to fill out the runtime. Stories that really should only have gotten the American 13 min.
Watch the abduction of Cleo Smith episodes to see just how terrible some episodes are even when the story is incredible. Not all, at all. Many episodes are great especially when they talk about past history and have many interview subjects. These Cleo episodes just interview the mother and she has nothing much to say. And the music and style overplays the drama. We get just a few hints about what the police did and the rest is this god awful interview stretched out. It would fit into a regular podcast episode not a news show.
Similarly just like the American version with cold fusion and Bush letters this version at times jumps the shark of reality like in the Satanic Panic episode in UK. They interview a teen girl who claims she saw several men and babies getting murdered by a group of men and her grandma over many years in satanic rituals. The host fully believes her and while they refuse to mention who the men are they show recordings of the grandma. Did they really run a giant murder cult for decades? If they did the cops never found a single clue because there is no such criminal case and the girl seemingly just did a few shows then hid away. So the grandma was accused on TV of letting men abuse her pre-teen daughter for many years and letting her get pregnant 7 times. At least the American cold fusion stuff is less harmful. I get that the American version often lied to attack Republicans with Bush letters and such but at least they were forced to apologize publicly and fire the people in charge. The Australian version has invented fake stories too and been sued for it. But I don't know how much they fixed after that.
Overall I would say the quality can go from a giant waste of time to quite engaging. There are too many terrible episodes just made to fill out the runtime. But there are some amazing stories too here. Like the episode about a man being falsely accused by his fiance that is found for free on YouTube.
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