A few weeks before the Korean series Squid Game exploded onto our screens and dominated the Netflix top ten, Clickbait was enjoying it’s fifteen minutes of fame. The eight-part limited series, created by Tony Ayres, is a clever suspenseful thriller that is kicked off in quite spectacular fashion after a video appears on the web showing a battered and bruised Nick Brewer, loving husband and father of two, being held hostage in an unknown location.

In the video Nick holds up cards with declarations such as ‘I abuse women’ and ‘I killed a woman’ along with the statement that once the video reaches 5 million views he will die. We all know how quickly content can go viral these days and, in no time at all, the target audience number is reached. The missing persons case is soon handed over to homicide but as the investigation continues a bigger mystery unfolds.

To give you any more would run the risk of spoiling the show so I’ll just leave it there…

Binge-watched in a single day, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this and how cleverly the story unfolded. Each episode focused on a particular character – the Wife, the Detective, the Reporter etc. – offering a little background colour and fleshing out the characters, moving the story forward without detracting from its overall aim in any way.

A host of semi-familiar faces deliver solid performances, including Zoe Kazan (from the comedy melodrama The Big Sick) as Nick’s spunky and impulsive sister, Betty Gabriel plays to the grieving wife Sophie and Phoenix Raei gives us the sympathetic but ambitious detective. Most recognisable is Adrian Grenier, from the hit series Entourage although I know him as the boyfriend in The Devil Wears Prada, as Nick Brewer.

Any fans of crime dramas, mystery thrillers and serial killer documentaries will probably think they’ve predicted the ‘twist’ from a mile off – I know I did – but Ayres’ writing and direction manages to pull the wool over the viewers eyes whilst simultaneously pulling the rug out from under their feet.

It’s smoke-and-mirrors storytelling and snappy pacing manages to portray the subjectivity and objectivity of our online personas without flat out preaching a ‘don’t trust the virtual world’ sermon to it’s viewers. Unlike most clickbait that we are inundated with, Ayres’ manages to effectively draw us in and keep us there, making us thankful that, in this instance, we clicked yes.

Clickbait is available* to view on Netflix.

The Rig is available to watch on Amazon Prime*

*At the time of publishing.