The Ashley Madison Affair

Hulu should be ashamed for continuing to publish lifeless, banal "original documentaries" created by the novices at ABC studios.

There is nothing compelling about watching hired actors recite anecdotes while playing endless scenes of stock video footage: couches, traffic lights, busses, dogs playing with sprinklers, bugs - yes, in a documentary about hackers breaching data to expose users engaged in extramarital affairs, the producers had the gall to show us a tick climbing a plant. Just call the documentary "We Think Our Viewers are Mindless Sheep".

Someone needs to clean house at ABC Studios, fire the incompetent employees who are creating and approving this uninspired drivel and hire a team who gives a damn about what they do.

The idea of this docuseries is great. Give information about the Ashley Madison scandal, done. The way it's done however, is so incredibly poor. You'll get 10 seconds of talking followed by 30 second of garbage stock footage to pad out the episode. This reals like a way to just stretch 1 episode for 4-5 episodes as a way to pump out more content.

On top of that you get awful actors that are trying so hard to make this their "big break" instead of real people that suffered because of this site.

This should be an example of how NOT to make a docuseries. Slow it down, stick to only the facts and stop jumping to stock footage. We arent 2 year olds that need constant pictures shoved into our faces.

Really enjoyed this series. Really interesting story, and a good telling of that historical time. I remember this period well and seeing the hack on the news- fascinating to see what really went on behind the scenes. Ashley Madison was hacked in 2015, but also they were at the forefront of monetizing the internet in the early 2000s. This laid the groundwork for what we see today.

I also thought the analysis of the data from the hack was really well thought-out, and the graphics and archive were good too.

There was a real range of interviewees, from those having affairs, played by actors, to tech experts and journalists. They gave an overall rounded version of the story. Recommend.

From the 'actors' supposedly retelling the stories, to the 'experts' to the storytelling, itself, this is just horribly done.

The actors, dear God. Absolutely horrible and so desperately trying to be seen. Between all of them there's not a single one that brings script reading ability- it's horribly bad and cringe inducing.

Every few minutes there's lurid AM-type ads, salacious, grotesque footage, the same nonsense over and over, used as filler, but turns an one episode story into three.

The story itself is so impossible to watch/follow; it's scattered, unpalatable and unintelligible. The story makes no sense and then is constantly interrupted with horrible acting, nonsensical ad-like pieces, and ridiculous commentary by someone like Sunny Hostin and the harpies from The View.

We struggled through 20 minutes of the first episode and had to shut it down. We went to the 3rd to see if there was any discussion of the Anonymous hack, and there was none. No discussion of the database that was brought to light that exposed the disgusting behavior by married people using this site to find opportunities to cheat- only one of the AM reps that constantly makes excuses as to why this behavior is totally fine.

Either way, this whole thing is just badly done and a poor excuse for documentary filmmaking. How it's hitting anything above a rating of 2-3 stars is proof that the attempts by this site to get rid of bots is clearly not working.

Good story, well told but dwells on select people cases too much (the vlogger couple in particular) and artistic dramatic slow downs (person looking longingly into the sky to show they are reflecting) etc.

The doco completely skipped over the cyber attack suspects, the police investigation, the legal action outcomes and how the business was still able to operate, the processes they have put in place so that it doesn't happen again etc. This is critical information and should have taken precedence over a handful of case studies.

It is watchable because its an interesting story, just think netflix could have regulated the content focus a bit more.