Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Ashley Madison Affair’ On Hulu, A Docuseries About The Hack Of The Dating Site That Facilitated Affairs

One of the things we learned about Ashley Madison via the new docuseries The Ashley Madison Affair is that the dating site for adulterers got its name by putting together the two most popular female baby names from the early ’00s, when the site was created. Uh, ew? That’s one aspect of the series that puts the site in its correct context. Sure, it was a success, but at what price?

THE ASHLEY MADISON AFFAIR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of a bucolic suburban backyard as Stefany Phillips describes her life and marriage.

The Gist: Phillips is just one of the many people who found out that their spouses were having an affair, facilitated by the dating site Ashley Madison. The Ashley Madison Affair is a 3-part ABC News Studios docuseries about the controversial dating site, its equally controversial CEO Noel Biderman, and the 2015 data breach that exposed the names of its users to the public.

The docuseries, produced by Wall to Wall Media and directed by Johanna Hamilton, first takes a look at the creation of Ashley Madison, which was created in Canada way back in 2001, when the site’s founders discovered that a large percentage of people signing up for online dating sites were married and looking for affairs. They decided to take advantage of that and create a site exclusively for those married people, who want to stay married but find other married people who want to fool around on the side.

Yes, it’s morally ambiguous, but it became a huge success, especially after the shameless Biderman came aboard as CEO. A believer in the principle that any publicity is good publicity, he went on talk shows telling hosts who questioned the site’s existence that “we didn’t invent adultery,” and argued that the site saved marriages instead of tore them apart. The ads and billboards for the service were irreverent and generated outrage. They publicly courted celebrities like Tiger Woods that were outed as cheaters.

Via actor readings of testimonials from real Ashley Madison users, and interviews with journalists, including The View co-host Sunny Hostin, as well as sex and dating experts, the story of the site’s ascendance is also buttressed by a few former employees who talk about site’s fatal flaws. For one, it made its money by charging men credits; women joined for free. So they marketed on porn sites, and pushed hard to expand their membership. But because there was a 7-to-1 ratio of men to women, they started creating fake women’s accounts to keep men responding and buying credits. Their security was also lax, though they touted its security and anonymity to users.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Ashley Madison Affair is similar to other ABC News docuseries on Hulu, like Web Of Death or The Age Of Influence, where they can partner with production companies that can be a bit more creative and risqué with the subject matter than the standard 20/20 story might be.

Our Take: On the one hand, we’re fascinated by how Ashley Madison was so brazenly out there in the dating world, telling people exactly why they existed, and leaned into the bad publicity that came with it. That was the most interesting aspect of the first episode of The Ashley Madison Affair.

The filmmakers adroitly set up how the company, along with both Noel Biderman and his wife Amanda, faced those headwinds, without being too praiseworthy in the process. All of the experts that the director spoke to were generally disgusted by what Biderman and the site was promoting, but tended to give begrudging acknowledgement that its marketing was effective, albeit in a skeevy way.

The hack is likely more going to be examined in Episode 2, then what was exposed about the site, and Biderman, in the subsequent months, which led to his departure from the company. It’s all done in a manner that does communicate how truly lascivious the site’s goals are, with the actor-read testimonials that seemed to be ambivalent about the site’s existence but excited about the affairs it generated, to intercut scenes of people dressed for sex touching each other on shoulders and arms and ankles, all in a bit of clothed foreplay appropriate for television.

What we want to see more of are people whose spouses cheated via the site. Phillips is a good representative of these people in the first episode, talking about her husband’s infidelity so blithely it hides just how devastating the discovery was to her. Perhaps once the story of the hack is broached, we’ll hear from more people who found out via the publication of the site’s users — Phillips found out by being contacted by one of her husband’s mistresses.

But what we also want to know is just how the site managed to not only survive the Biderman-fueled wave of bad publicity but also the breach itself. It still exists — the current chief strategy officer, Paul Keable, is interviewed for the series — and it hasn’t changed it’s mission one bit. In fact, it brought back its retired tagline of “Life is Short. Have an Affair” back a few years ago. So how has it been able to keep going and keep hooking up cheaters with each other?

Sex and Skin: No actual skin or sex, but it’s a show about a website that connected people who wanted to cheat.

Parting Shot: Phillips lets out a hearty laugh and says, “If I saw the guy in charge of Ashley Madison, I’d say ‘Fuck you! How do you sleep at night? Your site’s disgusting and gross, and it hurts a lot of innocent people. I don’t care what you say. I think you’re a horrible human being.”

Sleeper Star: Oh, Stefany Phillips is absolutely the star of part one, for all the reasons stated above.

Most Pilot-y Line: The actors reading the testimonials from users seems to be a bit much, but at least they don’t overact their parts.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Ashley Madison Affair is a well-paced docuseries that takes enough of a jaundiced eye at Ashley Madison to show its rise and fall in the correct context.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.