Primetime (2026)

A morally complex story about the strange world of reality television.

NBC’s To Catch a Predator was one of the most absurd television shows of the noughties, an experiment that toyed with both entertainment and entrapment, exposing paedophiles by luring them to a house full of hidden cameras. Host Chris Hansen would then appear, reading out transcripts of the messages these men had sent to who they thought were young teens, before turning them over to the police. It was a bold concept, to say the least, and yet Americans tuned in in droves.

The ethics of such a premise, hidden behind the idea of ‘journalism’, poses all sorts of questions, and these issues are only heightened by the crux of Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, the director’s feature debut. Robert Pattinson is absolutely brilliant as Hansen, slowly losing his grip on reality and blurring the line between his truth and the persona he presents on camera. The real Chris Hansen has distanced himself from Primetime, claiming the film distorts the reality of his work. But this in itself is interesting; whatever the truth of the situation, it feels like Pattinson is playing an idea of Hansen, rather than actually portraying the man himself.

Primetime follows Hansen and his crew as they travel across the U.S., a group that consists of producer Andie (a sublime Merritt Wever) and their new naïve decoy actor Dan (Skyler Gisondo), who’s used as the bait to entice these rotters into the traps. Gisondo is a world away from his wretched turn as the older brother in the truly atrocious remake of Vacation (2015), desperate not only to appear on T.V, but more importantly, be good at the job. Within his first few minutes on set, he turns to find a predator having exposed himself, a can of whipped cream in hand.

When the trailer for Primetime dropped, the visual aesthetic brought to mind 2014’s Nightcrawler, or indeed the work of the Safdie brothers, not least because they directed Pattinson in 2017’s excellent Good Time. And while there are similarities to draw from both those comparisons, Primetime never quite matches the vigour of either, sometimes scrabbling to find the ultimate point it's trying to make. Despite the subject matter being troublesome yet deeply important, this is a film about Hansen, whether he likes it or not. It nods to Network (1976) and Broadcast News (1987), and on occasion draws a laugh just like the latter. That’s not Oppenheim’s intention, though, and this perhaps speaks to some of the film's flaws.

But Pattinson drives the film, ably supported by the superb Wever, who’s as cold as ice as his producer, not caring about anything beyond the job at hand. When Hansen finally cracks towards the end of the film as they chase the “whale” (a supposedly high profile public figure in Texas), she has no sympathy for him whatsoever. And it’s a shame we don’t get a more rounded character in Gisondo’s Dan; clearly Oppenheim wants us to buy into his character, but a bit more depth and background would have been welcome. Still, it’s a sub-narrative that works rather well.

In the end, perhaps these flaws end up working in Primetime’s favour. Oppenheim wants us involved and completely wrapped up in this crew and their job, because that’s exactly what happens to Hansen. He leaves his wife (Anna Farris) and his two children for long stretches while he’s away filming, and although he promises to be a better husband and father, we believe the intent but not the reality. And in the end, we don’t really get the closure we want from Hansen’s story.

Oppenheim is hugely talented, of that there is no doubt, and Primetime is a very well-crafted piece of work, with some excellent performances at its centre. It’s arguably not even going to be the biggest talking point of Oppenheim’s year either, with the release of You Can See Everything- which Oppenheim co-directed with Nathan Fielder- fast approaching. For all its flaws, Primetime is very much worth your time, with its morally complex yet fascinating story all wound around a character brilliantly played by an actor at the height of his powers. ★★★½  7.4/10