In the three-part docuseries Hey Beautiful: Anatomy Of A Romance Scam, directed by Andy Robertson, three women who were contacted by scammers that used the pictures of the same good-looking man as bait and ended up giving the scammers thousands of dollars come forward to tell their stories.
Opening Shot: Shots of three women who explain why they were all lonely and felt the need for companionship; they all fell for scammers who used pictures of the same good-looking man as bait.
The Gist: The women who are interviewed in Hey Beautiful: Anatomy Of A Romance Scam are from diverse locations — Roxy is in Connecticut, Annette is in Ontario, Canada, and Gaby is in Frankfurt, Germany — but they were all in emotionally vulnerable phases of life.
Two of them, Roxy and Gaby, were in longtime marriages but were feeling alone, and Annette had just gotten out of a longtime marriage, was alienated from her stepchildren and lost her dog. The scammer(s) got in touch with them via different platforms then moved the conversations to WhatsApp. Small talk turned to compliments, punctuated by a greeting of “Hey beautiful.” The stories were similar but not the same, but in all of them, the scammer(s) talked about travel and constantly sent pictures of themselves in various places.
Then the requests for money started coming in. using stories that ranged from needing parts for the oil rig they worked on to needing critical heart surgery. All three women gave the scammer(s) money, but the amount varied widely (the amount Gaby gave the con artist will make your eyes water). But when they all eventually found out they’d been scammed — Annette’s friend pointed out that a photo the scammer sent was obviously Photoshopped, for instance — they decided to go on the offensive and find out just who it is that stole their money.
But the women who gave the scammers money wasn’t the only victim. There’s also Brian Haugen, an actor and makeup artist from Los Angeles whose social media photos were used by the scammers to perform their cons on the vulnerable women they targeted.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Hey Beautiful: Anatomy Of A Romance Scam has a similar feel to other ABC News Studios series, like Scamanda.
Our Take: We appreciated that the first episode of Hey Beautiful: Anatomy Of A Romance not only gets right down to business but tells the story of Roxy, Gaby and Annette without judgement. On the surface, you might start wondering how these women were so gullible, but as they tease out their stories, you realize how well-prepared the scammer or scammers that targeted them were.
There are moments during the first episode, though, when we did wonder why some of the women didn’t catch on when their “boyfriends”, whom they had never met in person, started asking for money. How did the scammers build so much trust with their victims to the point where they didn’t question giving them money, sight unseen? We would have wanted to go a little more in-depth with that, especially when it comes to Gaby; when she gave the total amount of money she gave to the scammer who targeted her, our head started spinning.
When the first episode ends with Brian Haugen sitting down for an interview, we were shocked to the point that we did exactly what the director wanted us to do, which was click “Next episode.” But Robertson doesn’t tease that out for very long, positioning Haugen as yet another victim because his visage seen by all these women who were scammed. Robertson takes a moment to give viewers a full picture of who Haugen is — and we mean a full picture — to show just how different he was than the persona the scammers were building around his picture.
Sex and Skin: None, other than some interesting biographical information about Haugen.
Parting Shot: As we mention above, Haugen sits down for an interview. He jokes “There are no stakes involved,” then chuckles.
Sleeper Star: We give all three of the women credit for coming forward with their story, so they’re the sleeper stars.
Most Pilot-y Line: None that we could find.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Hey Beautiful: Anatomy Of A Romance Scam gets to the point quickly and has enough twists and turns to keep viewers interested during its relatively-brief runtime.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.