Grey, gloomy, and utterly joyless: Ripley reviewed

If you’ve spent any time gawping at Netflix over the past half-decade or so, you’ll already know that human culture has reached its final, perfect form. We made a good effort with cave paintings, epic poetry, theatre, literature and the rest of them, but the apex of culture is the bingeable, episodic rabbit-hole Netflix documentary about a sociopathic liar.

There have been so many of these now that it’s difficult to tell them apart. There was the one about the man who matched with women on dating websites by pretending to be the playboy scion to an Israeli diamond fortune – but who was really just spending the money he’d conned out of his previous girlfriend. There was the one about the man who pilfered millions with the line that he was some kind of special operative who spent his life fighting evil forces; in fact he was a gambler, and the black cars that came to pick him up had been sent by the casinos. Then there were the fake German heiress, the fake music festival and something involving a tiger. All featured bright colours and ominous music. There were contrived little cliffhangers at the end of every episode. And they all featured the magic combo of money, desire, and deceit.

People love these stories. We want to hear about some warming, charming, gregarious creature with a heart like an icicle, predating on other human beings, manipulating their feelings, getting rich. We like it when they succeed, when they get to lead the high life: the fast cars and models and celebrity friends. It’s wish fulfilment. You too could inhabit this wonderful world of laughter and leisure. You too could turn your fantasies into fact by sheer force of will, if you just believed in it enough.