Lance Oppenheim’s new film doesn’t paint Chris Hansen as a hero. The To Catch a Predator host’s real-world copycats are even more reckless.
Child predators are arguably the most reviled demographic in society.
So when someone like Chris Hansen, the former NBC Dateline journalist and host of the To Catch a Predator series, decides to take up the mantle of exposing them to the public, he is naturally praised as a hero.
But, as is revealed in Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime—a dramatized snapshot of Hansen’s life at the show’s peak—it’s not as simple as that. Exposing allegedly bad people for public entertainment brings up a lot of ethical concerns and unintended consequences. And while many of the vigilantes carrying out these sting operations claim they are doing a public service, their motivations become a lot more suspect when fame and money are involved.
To Catch a Predator launched in 2004. In the show, Hansen’s team would pair up with civilian watchdog group Perverted Justice, using adult “decoys” to pose as minors online and exchange messages with men in chatrooms and private DMs. After the conversations became sexual, the crew would set up a sting, inviting these men to a home to meet the decoy, only to have Hansen confront them, uttering his catchphrase, “Have a seat.” The men were technically free to leave instead of sitting for an on-camera interview, but often police were waiting outside to arrest them.
The show developed an intense fandom that remains active to this day in subreddits like r/tcap, which has 52,000 weekly visitors, despite the fact that NBC stopped airing the original series in 2007.
In A24’s Primetime, a darkly told character study in theaters September 25, Hansen (Robert Pattinson) clearly enjoys the praise and seems desperate for more accolades. He brags to …