‘Inventing Anna’: Netflix Review
Inventing Anna is Netflix's new soap-ish true-crime drama about Anna Delvey (real name, Anna Sorokin), a Russian-born con artist that scammed her way into a lot of money by building a profile as a German heiress.
The nine-part series details a direct story of a scam that became a huge story circa 2017, in a rather complicated series of interconnected stories from different perspectives.
The show delivers on its promise to tell the story of Anna Delvey. It tells the story all right, but it tells a lot of other things too and that just makes it very long and not exactly straight to the point. So, instead of a short miniseries on Anna Delvey, you've got a 10-hour plus series that tells the story of not only Anna but also quite some other people, who as a matter of fact could be ignored completely.
They kept telling us the whole story is totally true except the parts that are totally made up, and that just feels corny because who knows how much of it is real.
Inventing Anna will probably feel better to watch to people who are unfamiliar with the original story, or people who weren't into the details, anyway.
The show was created by Shonda Rhimes (Grey's Anatomy), so it can't be all that bad, yeah? Well, it isn't. It may come across as disappointing to people who had expectations. But you'll find Inventing Anna absolutely interesting and thrilling to watch if you just want something to binge on Netflix for a good time and you're not trying to learn history or anything.
They probably could have been done better though by going straight to the point, hitting the nail on the head, making a shorter show, and more importantly, one of the best TV series of the year. But I don't think they did any of that all.
Inventing Anna was probably saved by its cast of characters which includes Julia Garner (Ruth Langmore from Ozark) in the main role of Anna Delvey. She was stunningly beautiful in the role and a whole lot more could have gone wrong if she didn't play it well. But she did.