This is partly because it gives almost equal weight to his reporter. Shonda Rhimes was able to capture lightning in a bottle with “Bridgerton,” however, her latest creation is less likely that she will get tongues wagging.
Rhimes has filled the show with familiar faces from her ABC/Scandal days. But the main parts go to Julia Garner (“Ozark”) who sports an accent reminiscent of Balki in “Perfect Strangers” and Anna Chlumsky (“Veep”) Even if Anna Delvey’s character was actually this way, it was distracting at best and a headache at worst.
Although the story is a bit sloppy, it has some great bones. Delvey, a fake heiress, beguiled the Manhattan elite as well as banks. She wormed her way up to high society, before the walls fell and brought her to a courtroom.
Delvey led a happy life. Many people were fooled by her image and resisted discussing their relationships with them. This included running up expenses such as a $62,000 trip in Morocco with a friend (played well by Katie Lowes from “Scandal”) paying the bill.
Anna’s story was difficult to unravel due to the reticence and deceit of her fools. Enter Chlumsy’s Vivian. She relentlessly pursues Anna, her friends and tries to uncover not only what happened, but also who Anna is and where the peculiar accent may have come from. The show is based upon a New York magazine article written by Jessica Pressler.
It’s not difficult to watch the series strictly as a viewing proposition. However, most episodes last more than an hour. This causes a lot of flabbiness in the storytelling. This is also true for the structure, which shifts the focus from Anna’s marks to another one in each chapter. It jumps back and forth between time periods before she reaches the trial and finally decides her fate.
Vivian and Anna are interviewed in prison several times along the way. However, we expect to accept that Anna has formed a bond with her, or at least that she finds her oddly endearing for reasons that frankly seem mysterious, even though she struggles to meet her deadline and keep her life together.
It may sound a lot. However, the tone is often lighthearted. Flashbacks work better than Vivian’s story. This serves as a reminder that dramatizing journalism can be difficult, with many missteps for each “All the President’s Men.”
These criticisms aren’t meant to belittle the story’s meatiness or the schadenfreude at how all these privileged masters/mistresses were so easily deceived. It does make “Inventing Anne” a bit tedious, a series that tries to be a little too innovative for its own good.
