Primetime (2026) Review: When Justice Becomes Entertainment
Primetime dramatises the rise and fall of To Catch a Predator, the hugely popular segment on Dateline NBC that ran between 2004 and 2007. Hosted by the suave but enigmatic Chris Hansen, the show walked a fine line between investigative journalism and pious vigilantism as it exposed men pursuing encounters with minors across the United States. Primetime is inspired by this time, and steps back from the lens to examine what happens when the pursuit of justice becomes entertainment.
Robert Pattinson is suitably unnerving as the practised Chris Hansen, a man incapable of switching off his television persona. Whether running lines before confronting a suspect, charming a colleague into believing their work is meaningful, or waking his young children to watch his segment, Hansen is always switched on and convinced he is on a righteous mission. For his producer, however, To Catch a Predator is just a job.
Merritt Wever is a standout as producer Andie Bender, whose callous pragmatism is the cold yin to Hansen’s pious yang. Her matter-of-fact approach is chilling, bringing its own set of problems to the table. Morality takes a back seat when Bender has a job to do, and that’s perhaps the most unsettling thing Primetime exposes: how easily the reality of the people involved becomes less important than production schedules and viewing figures.
Primetime marks director Lance Oppenheim’s fiction feature debut, following a number of documentaries, including You Can See Everything (2026). His documentary background is evident in the film’s observational viewpoint and its choreography of the mechanics behind the camera. Visually Primetime is immaculate; the grainy 4:3 aspect ratio evokes the video era in which the show operated, while saturated colours and bleached reds, blues and yellows give the film a dreamlike, almost nightmarish quality.
Reality and performance bleed into one another, creating an atmosphere in which even those supposedly on the right side of the law feel morally suspect. The cameras are always watching, and the sense that everyone is performing for them never quite disappears. Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo), an aspiring actor drawn into the operation, embodies this duality. For him, To Catch a Predator is an acting job, as he plays the role of an underage boy. The uncomfortable truth, however, is that his fiction is someone else’s fact.
Yet for all its discomfort, striking visual choices and compelling performances, Primetime struggles to turn its ideas into a fully satisfying narrative, particularly as it approaches its disastrous conclusion.
The audience never truly feels Bender and Hansen’s urgency to cling to their primetime slot. We are given little context for how well or poorly the show is performing, or what the consequences might be if it fails to deliver. The film builds towards a high-stakes operation, with Hansen’s manic desire to land a bigger target, whose appeal lies in their status as a high-ranking official rather than their crime, driving the story forward. Instead of a steady development, this narrative feels rushed, with the story diluted by Hansen’s unravelling over an infidelity scandal and Bender’s consideration of a new job.
It’s a shame, because there are some excellent moments. One predator refuses to follow Hansen’s script or ‘take a seat’, instead boldly asking, ‘Who gives you the right?’ The confrontation cuts through the performance of moral authority and exposes the question at the heart of the film: who gets to decide what justice looks like when the cameras are rolling? It’s an uncomfortable challenge that resonates well beyond the world of early-2000s television.
Today, crime podcasts, online vigilantes and social media commentators have inherited some of the same appetite for public exposure and moral condemnation. Someone is accused, an audience gathers, and humiliation becomes entertainment dressed up as justice. It is easy to condemn the people who orchestrate the spectacle, but the cameras would have little power without an audience willing to watch, and now, comment. That is the bleak, lingering legacy of To Catch a Predator: the cameras roll, the audience watch, and the consequences remain elusive.
Rating: 3/5
Did you watch To Catch a Predator during its original airing? What did you think of Primetime?