The fraudster profile: narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism
Their lack of empathy, manipulativeness and insincere allure seem to possess some kind of odd charm over TV audiences.
Stories of ruthless, manipulative conmen and women seem to be all over TV at the moment. Their lack of empathy, emotional destructiveness, manipulativeness and insincere allure seem to possess some kind of odd charm. At a great remove, it must be said.
Maybe it’s because we want to believe that we could never be the ones to be duped, though most of us have trusted a person who turned out later to be untrustworthy. Or believed an offer that sounded too good to be true, but we went ahead anyway against our better judgment. From The Tinder Swindler to The Woman Who Wasn’t There to Inventing Anna to The Inventor, true-life TV stories about con-artists are a source of endless fascination.
According to science writer Maria Konnikova, whose book The Confidence Game, which investigated the deceptive behaviour of these fraudsters, most have a distinct psychological profile, including the so-called “dark triad” traits of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism.
And they are all on display in the brilliant new BBC drama from production company Sister, responsible for Emmy-winning Chernobyl, focused on the heartbreaking scope of the nuclear plant disaster in 1986, and the intense thriller Giri/Haji, about a Japanese cop lost in London searching for his lost brother on behalf of both the Japanese police and the Yakuza simultaneously.
The new series, with the somewhat-unwieldy title The Following Events Are Based on a Pack of Lies, examines the rise of a very tricky charlatan, a true sociopath and the two women who take him on at his own game.
Created by sisters Penelope and Ginny Skinner, the five-part series looks at the coercive control exhibited by most conmen and the crossover with domestic abuse cases, and does it wittily and, as directed by Robert McKillop, with a great deal of cinematic style.
The title, and the show’s motto of “joyful rage”, certainly sets the tone for an unconventional look, at times almost surreal in its flights of filmic fancy, at some tragic, harrowing events, the Skinner’s approach beguiling and at times even triumphant.
“The shape of a con is very specific,” Ginny Skinner told Drama Quarterly. “When we were researching it, we realised it has certain stages, and we wanted to shape the story around that to enable people to feel like they’re being drawn in, in the same way you get drawn into a con. So it has a structure very similar to that. But we focus the story around the victim, not the con artist. It’s that structure, but the heroic role is not the con artist.”
She adds that while researching conmen and their behaviours they discovered their approach in scamming is the same as that used in cases of domestic violence and violence. “We wanted to create a story where we see that pattern being used in both ways, and the emotional effects that has on people and how hard it is to fight against them to escape.”
Her sister explains that they created the series in an unconventional way for a drama, wanting it to have an “aspirational, even fun” feel. But were determined it “also contain within it the capacity for the damage and the darkness that really is at the heart of the con-artist and their destructive nature and behaviour.” They understood, she says, that if the story was too bleak it simply would not be “a world that people want to spend time in and stay with”.
Their director is especially skilled at this kind of tone, responsible for the brilliant Scottish series Guilt. This centred on the skirmish to hide culpability on behalf of a couple of accidental killers, and the way they attempt to somehow overcome the pangs of conscience, of responsibility. Written by Neil Forsyth with Hitchcockian twists and some lovely, mordant one-liners, McKillop skilfully wrapped it all up in a witty noirish package.
Pack of Lies begins with an abrupt montage of news documentary-style cutaways of various people describing experiences of being exploited. A man sits in an old camp chair, saying: “I should have known; I was dubious at first, then Mum showed me the website.” A furious woman says “false promise, scare tactics, coercion”. And another says: “I never heard from him again.”
Then, against a bright-red background, a man we later learn is con-man Robert Chance, speaks directly to the camera. “I always fought for what I believed in and whether I did right or wrong, I meant well,” he says just a little aggressively. “I’ve made mistakes but what matters is what’s inside a man’s heart, and those who know me know my heart. And to the doubters and the haters, and yeah, you know who you are, I believe in a little thing called karma – and yours is coming.”
There is something both sinister and fantastical about the scene, almost as if a master magician is at work, but with a nefarious intent, no rabbit to emerge from his hat, only hurt and suffering. It’s a sequence of pathological hubris, self-delusion taken to an extreme.
Our conman is played brilliantly by Alistair Petrie (The Night Manager), cold-blooded but always plausible, chillingly clean-cut and patriarchal, but, like a good actor capable of fake sympathy at the drop of a hat, gaining the sympathy of his victims through emotion. His life is one big lie, but as his monologue at the start suggests, he believes in everything he does.
The Skinners then set up two parallel narratives, beginning with that of Alice Newman, played with adorable relish by Rebekah Staton, a zany, unconfident personal assistant to a designer (Romola Garai), who lives in a bungalow with her young son, father and magician partner.
On an errand for her boss she, by chance, spots her former husband, Rob, a self-made property developer, years after he asked her for a tenner before popping out for chow mein and never returning. He also took all her money, after supposedly investing in holiday homes in Florida. Ever since Alice has blamed herself, believing it was all her own fault and that she brought it on herself.
She sees him in Oxford handing out flyers for a lecture he’s about to give on his expeditions to the North Pole. He’s now a “disruption exploration” pioneer, dedicating his life to investigating the polar ice melt. And somehow, he has the backing of Derek Jacobi’s distinguished Ralph Unwin, a famous natural historian, in organising a climate event at Gideon University, an elaborate ruse to entrap another woman.
Alice starts to investigate further, after finding the police no help, her former husband’s desertion difficult to prove – was he really a crook or simply a bad businessman? And where is the evidence to prove he took with him her family’s money, practically bankrupting them?
She goes to the internet and starts to search.
As she does, we’re introduced to the woman who has become his latest mark, Cheryl Harker, played with subtlety and insouciance by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, a best-selling fantasy author whose husband has recently died of dementia.
She’s hugely successful and about to launch her latest book with no idea she is being stalked by the irrepressible Mr Chance, a genius at saying all the things she is so ready to hear. His technique is practised and expert, and he quickly hooks Cheryl, gaining her trust and capturing her emotions, having evidently cased her closely enough to identify she wants to be loved.
The show is wonderfully irregular, veering between a disturbing account of a serial con-man and the cat-and-mouse game of a gaslit woman looking for revenge and with it her sense of autonomy. The comic tone is entirely enjoyable and the performances completely in sync with each other and the tone of the sisters’ writing.
Why the title, you ask?
The Skinners say it was the working phrase on their pitch to production company Sisters printed on their treatment. When no-one could come up with a better title after many options were considered, they used that phrase, its out-thereness more and more appealing as the production took off.
The Following Events Are Based on a Pack of Lies streaming on Foxtel.
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