"Did she really do that?" and "How could they not know?" collide on M-Net this month with two stories based on seemingly-impossible truths: Happy Face (from Monday 14 July at 22:00) and Anatomy of Lies (from Thursday 17 July at 22:00) on M-Net Channel 101.
Happy Face began life as a 2009 autobiographical book entitled Shattered Silence by Melissa Moore, in which she recounted her experience as the daughter of the serial murderer Keith Hunter Jesperson – known as the "Happy Face Killer", because of the smiley faces he would draw on letters he’d send to media outlets detailing his devious deeds. Jesperson is serving a life sentence in Oregon State Penitentiary for murdering at least eight women. The book morphed into a podcast in 2018 and now comes to the screen in eight parts, starring Annaleigh Ashford, James Wolk, and Dennis Quaid as the titular killer.
The show is created by Jennifer Cacicio and executive produced by the Robert and Michelle King (The Good Wife, The Good Fight, Evil, Elsbeth). The Independent called Quaid’s performance "brilliantly creepy". He told the newspaper that he was initially “hesitant” about the part, explaining he didn’t want to “glorify” Jesperson, but the review says he “uncorks oodles of A-lister charm as a monster who projects dad-next-door vibes on the surface but whose wholesome smile is offset by the dead gravity pits of his eyes”. It concludes: “[Happy Face] stands on its own two feet as a drama and tells a grisly story without exploiting the victims or making the viewer feel cheapened or complicit merely by the act of watching.”
Anatomy of Lies portrays how former Grey's Anatomy writer Elisabeth Finch fabricated a life story apparently filled with trauma and exploited the empathy of those around her for fame and financial gain. The series is based on journalist Evgenia Peretz’s 2022 Vanity Fair exposé on Finch, which made headlines for detailing her rise and fall and tracing her many lies about battling cancer, exploring how Finch's lies were discovered and whom they affected.
TIME magazine details how Finch studied screenwriting at the University of Southern California, then worked on the HBO series True Blood and The Vampire Diaries – but always dreamed of writing for Grey’s Anatomy. She landed that dream job in the show’s writer’s room in 2014 after writing a viral story for Elle magazine about being diagnosed with chondrosarcoma in 2012 and became the go-to person for writing on any plotlines which dealt with cancer. Before her fall, she wrote 13 episodes of the show and produced 172.
She also claimed she suffered from PTSD as a result of having to clean up her friend’s remains after the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue massacre and said she had been sexually assaulted in a separate event, losing a kidney and being forced to undergo knee-replacement surgery, amongst many other untruths.
Anatomy of Lies is directed and executive produced by Vanity Fair’s Peretz and David Schisgall.
Watch Happy Face on M-Net (DStv Channel 101) from Monday 14 July at 22:00 and Anatomy of Lies from Thursday 17 July at 22:00.
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