The other day I came across a live stream of a man sitting at his desk in a fluorescently lit room; open concept, high ceilings, diligently working in his home office next to his living room. His computer screen is mirrored, connected to the live stream. He’s in an anonymous chat room — Omegle, Kik or one of the tens of other websites that now exist to anonymously chat. His language is explicit — sexual, actually. He’s pretending to be a teenage girl, and the creep on the other side is falling for it.
He tells the chat of his live stream that they need to donate to him, and if they do, he’ll continue to engage with this predator; otherwise, he would have to log off. I was disturbed and wondered what the end goal even was. How was he going to actually stop this person from hurting a real victim? What is gained from watching content like this? It felt dystopian, and as I sat, staring at my phone, I couldn’t help but wonder: Is this all Chris Hansen’s fault?
After watching Lance Oppenheim’s new film, Primetime, you might be wondering the same thing.
Primetime is a dramatized dark comedy centring around Chris Hansen, the host of the reality show To Catch a Predator, which ran from 2004 to 2007 and aimed to discover and expose child predators. The film stars Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen as he devolves into a power and success obsessed television personality.
Instead of exploring the content of the show, the film focuses more on how making content about exploitation can easily slip into becoming exploitative content itself.
Hearing this explanation, many people have been outraged at the thought of turning a pedophile hunter into the bad guy. But to understand why the film tackles the subject with nuance, you must first understand how To Catch a Predator changed TV.
The show centres around Chris Hansen and his team as they facilitate sting operations against pedophiles who seek out children online. Using actors who appear younger, referred to as decoys, they give these men a false sense of security and welcome them into a house armed with hidden cameras and law enforcement. Then, when the men have asserted their intention clearly — like having sex and doing drugs — Chris Hansen comes out from behind a doorway and confronts them. Hansen then asks what they’re doing and reads the incriminating messages that the men have exchanged with the team, while thinking they were talking to a child. Outside, the police wait to arrest the predator.
To Catch a Predator sat at an intersection between the sensationalism of reality TV and the realism and fear that came with hard news. That is what made the show wildly successful.
While only running for three years, it averaged over seven million viewers per episode. The show allowed for the public shaming of predators and an exposé of this disgusting behaviour, allowing for catharsis in an era where children had more of an online presence than ever before.
Still, over the years, the sense of justice this show presented has been called into question. Though the thesis — stopping child predators — was inarguably positive, the methods and consequences of the show didn’t exist within a vacuum.
In some cases, predators couldn’t be prosecuted because of the methods used in the show. In the 2025 documentary on the show, Predators, one of the decoys notes the emotional toll that playing a role in these sting operations took on her as a young woman.
The show came to an end because one of the sting operations uncovered an assistant district attorney in Texas, William Conradt Jr., engaging with the team’s teenage decoy. Conradt refused to meet with the decoy, so instead, the crew from To Catch a Predator, and local police came to his house. Conradt committed suicide, and his sister filed a wrongful death lawsuit against NBC.
Despite all of this, the legacy of shaming and catching child predators is still valued more than any of To Catch a Predator’s controversies.
Primetime, however, is not a biopic of Chris Hansen or an exact retelling of the events during the show’s three-year runtime. Instead, it offers a more critical and nuanced perspective. However, people don’t seem to want nuance, especially around this subject matter.
Some reactions from people online have been negative. Comments like “Chris Hansen is an American Hero,” and “this movie could of [sic] been something great but instead you wanted to portray Chris as the villain,” can be found under posts about the movie.
The film assumes that it does not have to teach its audience that pedophilia is bad because we all know this. Instead, it asks the audience why we get to indulge in such a sadistic form of entertainment. If people want heroes and bad guys to be explicit, Oppenheim doesn’t make it that easy.
In an interview with GQ, Oppenheim says the following:
“I do think one of the things that made [Chris Hansen] and the show so successful is that it’s like a new form or version of the pillory or like a whipping post. And specifically in 2006, there was so much rage and anger and there still exists that very thing in society today. And the show proved to be this amazing receptacle for all of that. In a weird way, if you go back thousands of years, the pillory, there was always a someone that was administering the blows to somebody that was at the whipping post. And Chris Hansen is that person.”
Oppenheim says this in reaction to a scene from the movie where a fan sees Hansen on a plane and describes the pain and violence he would inflict on these predators if he were face-to-face with them. In response, Hansen says with a chuckle, “I think maybe what I do is a little worse.”
@shelbyhallow on Instagram calls our fascination with sensationalist content like To Catch a Predator a “bloodlust for voyeuristic entertainment dressed up as justice.” It is this idea of public punishment that the film questions. It holds a mirror to the kind of people who consume this kind of content and the society that makes this content so profitable.
Rather than focusing solely on the predators themselves, the film forces viewers to consider the predatory nature of making entertainment out of their crimes. Hansen and his team aren’t just catching predators; they’re producing a show that must keep audiences watching week after week. So, while condemning these crimes, they’re also capitalizing on the fact they exist.
Primetime leaves viewers to reconcile with their own desire for sensationalism. The film’s most uncomfortable question isn’t whether these men deserve to be caught, because we know the answer to that. Instead, it asks if it should be on TV at all, and if we should be entertained enough to keep watching. The lines are blurred between justice and entertainment, and the inevitable unravelling is impossible to look away from.