It starts as an online date, an exchange of mobile phone selfies between two middle-aged professionals, she a businesswoman, he — purportedly — a doctor. It ends in a fight for life and a body in the driveway.
But what happens in between is what has kept audiences around the world hooked on true-crime podcast thriller Dirty John.
Downloaded more than 10 million times in its first six weeks, the ever-shifting reality of serial conman John Meehan has disturbed and fascinated in equal measures.
There’s a successful, attractive woman who meets a very charming man on the internet, who sweeps her off her feet. And then she discovers the darkness within him
Now Eric Bana is set to appear on the small screen as Meehan in the Netflix series, a huge coup for the gifted Aussie actor.
“It’s not him individually that’s fascinating,” says Bana about Meehan. “It’s his behaviour.
“I think that’s why people find the podcast so interesting. Studying how sociopaths behave and think was as important to me as it was to just focus on specific events that occurred in his life and kind of put them in some sort of memory bank.
“It’s important to come up with a character for the show that’s a little bit further developed than what the facts are that are available. The forensic files’ log-line, you know.
“There’s a successful, attractive woman who meets a very charming man on the internet, who sweeps her off her feet. And then she discovers the darkness within him and it almost takes down her entire family.”
Bana, now 50, was working Melbourne’s stand-up comedy circuit when he got his start in television in 1993 on Tonight Live With Steve Vizard and grew a popular following, first on skit show Full Frontal, then in his film acting debut in the Australian classic The Castle in 1997.
The early promise he showed in Chopper (2000), for which he won a slew of best actor awards, and Black Hawk Down (2001) led to several big-budget but lacklustre outings including The Hulk (2003) and Troy (2004).
But despite being in steady demand (25 films in two decades) a big hit has continued to elude Bana, and returning to TV for the coveted part of Meehan was just too good to pass up.
“US TV’s something that hasn’t really been a viable option for me simply because I live in Australia,” says the dad of two from Melbourne.
“But this was one of the first occasions where something came along that was doable and that was extremely attractive.
“I’ve looked at a lot of TV stuff over the past 10 years, and this was the one that got me. So it was a combination of a lot of factors.”
The huge success globally of the serial podcast and of true crime series such as The People v. OJ Simpson has revitalised a genre that has always been a TV staple, but which now crisscrosses various formats and media.
Netflix, which has bought the international rights to Dirty John, is pinning its hopes on it being the natural successor to its huge true- crime hit Making A Murderer.
Such is the interest around the TV serialisation that US cable TV channel Bravo committed to the first two series, before it went into production, for the US rights.
The seven-part podcast by LA Times journalist Chris Goffard details the web of deceit Meehan spins in his courtship of Debra Newell, and how it descends into hell for her and her daughters. It initially began as a multi-part series for the newspaper before American podcast group Wondery got involved.
Bana and the rest of the cast, including Connie Britton as Newell, began filming in Los Angeles last month, and it is thought the first series will air towards the end of next year.
And while many see Meehan as a man intent on swindling and ripping off the people in his life, Bana is approaching the role with a more forgiving attitude.
“I think part of the mystery of John is these types of characters may not even know themselves whether it’s real, and I think that’s really interesting,” he says.
“I do believe that from everything I’ve heard that the attraction in the early parts of their relationship is 100 per cent real. And I don’t feel like it’s someone who’s arriving on a potential crime scene to do a swindle.
“I think John genuinely fell for Debra. And I think the early stage of the relationship was genuinely passionate and real, and so that makes that easier for us to play in terms of choices.
“But at what point did the acting begin and at what stage did the more dangerous elements of his character take over and poison that part of the relationship? There’s a lot of scope to explore that sociopath behaviour.
“Sometimes it can be a bit like quicksand. While there’s a lot of factual information about John, there’s a lot of stuff about him that I don’t want to know.”