Clickbait, the twisty, bingeable eight- part series currently airing on Netflix by creators Tony Ayres and Christian White, raises big questions about identity and misinformation in the digital age. How well do you know, truly know, someone? Even your husband, your brother, your father? When anyone can invent on online persona, how do you know who, if anyone, you can trust? Those are some of the moral quandaries the characters find themselves grappling with as Clickbait unfolds.
After a tense family dinner to honor their mother’s birthday, Pia gets in an ugly argument with her brother Nick, played by Adrian Granier, and leaves to hit the club. The next day she sees a video of Nick, bloody and bound, holding a sign that says, “I abuse Women.” The next sign says “At 5 million views I die.” Pia contacts Nick’s wife Sophie, who hasn’t seen him, and they go to the Oakland police, where Missing Persons detective Roshan Amiri assures them his department will do all they can. A second video is then released which shows him holding another sign. “I killed a woman,” it says. From there, the story explodes into a frenetic search for Nick and whoever made the videos. As each new lead is discovered, the viewer is confronted with contradictory images of the formerly beloved Nick. Was he the kind, devoted family man his relatives believed him to be? Or was he a sexual predator who found and tormented his victims on internet dating sites?
Each episode focuses on a specific character, with titles like “The Sister,” The Reporter,” and “The Mistress,” but the story unfolds organically and swiftly, with each episode ending on a yet another surprising cliffhanger. Along the way, there are some excellent performances by the actors, with Australian Daniel Henshall as the grieving brother in the sixth episode a particular standout. Betty Gabriel, as the at first preternaturally serene Sophie, whose reserve disintegrates along the way, and Zoe Kazan as the caring, damaged Pia are also very good.
Besides confronting the dangers of digital duplicity, Clickbait touches on racial and familial issues. While Pia clearly loves her biracial nephews, she is clueless as to the danger she put teenage Ethan in by taking a young black male to an Oakland police station to discuss her brother’s case. Detective Amiri, who is hardworking, insightful and ambitious, believes his lack of promotion due to prejudice against him as one of the few Muslim officers in the police force, but his supervisor makes the case that it’s because the handsome detective suffers from that tried- and- true TV cop affliction, not being a team player. Heartbroken siblings mourn their fractured relationships with their lost loved ones, and current family tensions are laid bare and briefly dissected. But the show works best as a suspenseful thriller, with a propulsive plot that bombards the viewer with a non-stop broadside of mind-bending twists and turns. As new suspects and witnesses, each with their own secrets and traumas to hide, are revealed, the truths about Nick and what really happened to him become more and more convoluted. The resolution, when it finally arrives, is unexpected and somehow both sadder and creepier for all that.
-Maureen McCabe
