G ripped by theta leo fa £15m fraudster? No, I feel cheated
Vanishing Act Monday to Wednesday, I TV 1 Vigil Sunday to Tuesday, BBC 1
Melissa Caddick was the prolific fraudster who conned millions, not only from wealthy people, but also her close family and friends – her own parents, for heaven’s sake; her best friend since childhood, for heaven’s sake; the dog, if it had had any savings. And then, in November 2020, with the authorities onto her, she walked out of her luxury Sydney home and disappeared.
Gone, vanished, nothing. Until, that is, three months later when her trainer washed up on a beach 250 miles away. There wasn’t anything especially notable about this trainer (Asics) apart from one small thing: it had her foot in it.
Australia was gripped by the case, e, which knocked the pandemic off the front nt pages, and theories abounded. Had she jumped mped off a cliff and killed herself? Had she been en eaten by a shark who regurgitated the foot? oot? Had she been murdered? Gripping, all of it. But the three-part drama Vanishing Act? ? Not so much. Or if it is gripping, it’s only because it’s so spectacularly misisjudged and bonkers.
I’m here for the real-scam culture as s a rule. Inventing Anna, The Dropout, , Tinder Swindler, Love Fraud… I’m here for all that. Unethical people doing terrible things are always transfixing. How do they live with themselves? Yet you won’t find any insight on this outing. This has been n written by Michael Miller and Matt tt Ford who, instead of trying to get under er the skin of their subject, or her victims, ms, presumably looked at each other and said: ‘Shall we fill in all the gaps with h wild speculation, chainsaws and gangsters?’ ters?’ I don’t know what they did next. High-fived gh-fived before breaking for lunch?
It’s one bonkers decision after another. her. This even has Caddick (played by Kate Atkinson) narrating her own story via an omnipresent voiceover. She opens proceedings with: ‘If you believe that story [referring to all the suicide theories circulating] you will believe anything. Then again, I found most people will believe anything. That’s how I got rich in the first place.’
Caddick, at the outset, is in her prime, you could say. She lives in the luxury Sydney pad along with her teenage son from her first marriage and her ‘toyboy’ lover. He had been her hairdresser and she treats him like an errand boy. I did feel a twinge of jealousy here. I want a toyboy lover who can also run errands and do hair!
Elsewhere there are sports cars and ski-ing holidays in Aspen and private Dior fittings and designer handbags and the £350,000 necklaces she commissioned. How is she making her money? A Ponzi scheme which, according the show, took in around £15 million over the course of a decade.
She scammed the wealthy folk she targe geted in Aspen. She scammed a group of sur surgeons. But she also betrayed her mot mother, her father, her brother, aunts and uncl uncles, and that best friend from childhood, a nu nurse and single parent. These people wer weren’t greedy. They had trusted her and wer were ruined, yet the tone remains jaunty as if it were merely a hoot.
Sh She is entirely unsympathetic and there’s no explanation as to why she might be like this, aside from having been the victim of a romance scam as a teenager, but wouldn’t that have turned her off such behaviour? Rather than turned her on to it? Did that even happen? Hard to say, as this pays little heed to facts and has gone full-on rogue by episode three.
Gangsters, chainsaws, money laundering, a second home by the sea… none of these existed, but after high-fiving and breaking for lunch, the next terrible idea must have been: ‘Why don’t we play out the most outlandish explanations that contain not a grain of truth?’ It does feel like a missed opportunity. In one scene she attends her best friend’s birthday party and then complains: ‘Do you know how sad it is when your friends don’t know how much your dress is worth?’
This could have been a portal into a different kind of drama, offering a portrait of someone desperately unhappy and obsessed with status, but it chose the soapy melodrama route instead. If I were one of her victims I’d be devastated.
Series two of Vigil finished this week. Over the six episodes we’ve seen our old pal, DCI Silva (Suranne Jones) beaten, imprisoned, chased, kicked, gagged, tied up and shot at with barely a moment to call her beloved, DI Longacre (Rose Leslie), and whisper ‘I love you’ for the umpteenth time.
Plotwise, I think it all came down to the selling of weapons and making the case for Britain to join Wudyan in its war against dissidents. Maybe. It all happened so fast and was so twisty it was hard to keep track. I kept having to ask myself: ‘Ross Sutherland, who is he again and who wants him dead?’ I should have been more like Jenny from Gogglebox, who kept a crib sheet throughout Line Of Duty. I could then have referred back. Who is Wes Harper again?
Is there going to be a third series? I hope not, as I reckon we’re done and, also, DCI Silva is proving annoying now. Wouldn’t she make the worst house guest? When she’s told she has to leave Wudyan she just can’t call it a day. ‘I am not leaving.’ We have a Hercules going in an hour and you have to be on it. ‘I’m not leaving.’ That’s not a suggestion, it’s an order. ‘Just give me a few hours.’ If she were coming for Christmas you’d never get her out. (Look, it’s been lovely having you since a week last Monday but... ‘I’m not leaving!’)