HBO's Telemarketers is a 'bonkers' take on true crime

8:58HBO's Telemarketers is an unconventional take on true crime

HBO's new docuseries, Telemarketers, is an exposé of a $1,000,000,000 scam directed by two former telemarketers.

The three episode series is getting a lot of attention not only for its incredible behind-the-scenes footage, but also because it takes a very unconventional approach to the true crime genre.

Vulture culture critic Kathryn VanArendonk joins guest host Talia Schlanger to talk about how Telemarketers does true crime differently — and what makes the series so "bonkers."

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Talia: Before we talk more about Telemarketers, I just wanna know your take: why do you think that we are so obsessed with true crime right now?

Kathryn: There are a lot of answers to this. I think one of them is that actually we like to think of ourselves as being obsessed with true crime right now, but we have been obsessed with true crime for centuries. As soon as there was media, people were writing up British broadsheets of the most famous murderers; you used to be able to buy a calendar in Victorian England of the most famous murderers. This is nothing new.

But I think right now, true crime has had such a moment in part because we are both living in this time when we are extremely alarmed about life, and there is ironically something that feels kind of safe and comfortable about being able to say, "Here is a horrendous thing, and I get to feel the emotion that that brings up in me while at the same time holding it from a safe distance."... I think the other thing is because media has become so democratized — everyone records everything with their phones — we have a different relationship with evidence than we used to. We have a different relationship with the idea of objective narrators than we used to. So the genre has also changed a lot in the last decade. 

WATCH | Official trailer for Telemarketers:

Talia: Back to the series Telemarketers, what is this series doing so differently than other crime shows?

Kathryn: Because it comes from the framing of this man who really only came to fully understand what this project was later in life, it feels so different. You're watching this footage that's been shot by somebody who is led only by his own interest as a teenager, and not this kind of pseudo-objective documentarian perspective. He narrates it, and so you're also getting this really rich text of him looking back on his younger self. You get both the emotion that he felt then and the emotion he feels.

Now, the other thing is that a lot of the series is about this friendship he has with a man who he met there, Patrick J. Pespas, who also becomes very interested in being a journalist. But neither of them have that professional veneer of what these things are "supposed" to look like. And so, you are led by their enthusiasm, their disgust, their fascination with this, and you sort of realize a true crime documentary could look like a completely different thing. It's so great.

Talia: I should say some of what we see is shaky, kind of badly, but somehow artistically framed footage of this office where a guy has a baby turtle in a cup and somebody else is doing drugs in the bathroom. There's casual nudity, and it just looks like a total trainwreck of an office environment — plus, giant corruption.

Kathryn: And then as the series goes on, you get footage that is shot closer to our current contemporary moment. So as they get older, they understand how to use a camera differently and you sort of watch that happen. But they're still very much them, which is so great to watch.

Talia: It's amazing. True crime often revolves around a whodunit. There's a bad guy who needs to get caught. Without giving too much away, how does Telemarketers handle that aspect? 

Kathryn: It's really, really fascinating to watch what feels like this major scandal happen, and then in the first episode you realize there was already sort of a legal approach to this. Things shift quite dramatically in the next two episodes. By the end, because it is very much about not just the telemarketers but the charities, including The Fraternal Order of Police, who they are raising money for — it is very satisfying to watch their understanding of who the villain is in this story start to shift.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Kathryn VanArendonk produced by Jean Kim.