This story was originally posted on June 27, 2014.
I’ve taken part in more than a few television shows as an interview subject. In recent years, I was approached by two of the major studios, as they wanted me to help create and star in a reality-based television show about private investigators. I have ended up turning down many interviews and all of the reality shows – because I insisted upon keeping the reality aspect intact.
A “reality-based” PI TV show is whole other beast entirely. It’s a fantastic idea.
Here’s how these things typically go:
When it comes to interviews, the producers often play a shell-game. They wait until the last minute to pull the rug out from under you, goading you to say things that you don’t believe in the first place, and trying to get you to talk about the things that you specifically said that you wouldn’t talk about. They want you to name names. When it comes to our celebrity clients (which we’ve had more than our fair share of), confidentiality is paramount. I’ve never gone on an interview and ratted on the identity or personal business of a paid client. It’s just unprofessional, and it’s akin to shooting a hole in the boat of future business.
A “reality-based” PI TV show is whole other beast entirely. It’s a fantastic idea.
A few years ago, we were in fairly late-stage negotiations to do such a show. The producers insisted that I “hire” (read: cast) an attractive female model to be a part of the show. I certainly have no problem hiring women, I have many talented female investigators working for me now. What’s key to me is hiring only experienced private investigators or former Federal agents. These producers wanted me to hire someone based solely on looks.
These producers wanted me to hire someone based solely on looks… I told them the deal was off.
I understood what they wanted and why they wanted it, but I run a private investigative agency, not a modeling agency. I told them the deal was off.
Over the years, I’ve remained optimistic that a great, realistic show about private investigators is possible, and just waiting to be made. I encourage any parties out there that are serious about doing it right to give me a call.
I mention all of this to demonstrate that I know how all of this works. I’ve been there. That’s why when I heard about Investigation Discovery’s “Cry Wolfe“, I had high hopes, but realistic expectations.
“Cry Wolfe” follows a real-life private investigator named Brian Wolfe, and his sidekick “McCarthy”. The show is set in Los Angeles, California (the same place I have been conducting investigations as a Federal agent and private investigator since 1969).
The case featured in the premiere episode is fairly typical of what the public believes is the vast majority of our business – cheating spouse investigations. The surveillance goes as expected. The client’s wife confronts her husband having wine and dinner with her best friend. The ending is a stunner – the husband tells his wife he was planning a vacation for them and lingerie that he had bought was really for her, but the wife confesses a two-month affair with a co-worker, because she was certain her husband was cheating.
My first reaction was wow, this is pretty good TV.
My first reaction to this was wow, this is pretty good TV and what a great case to start the series. Having done thousands of marital surveillances, I can’t remember an ending quite like this, let alone on camera – but stranger things have happened. Knowing Hollywood’s tendency to embellish, I simply took it with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Episode 2 involves a fairly routine case where the investigator is trying determine who was stealing products from a small four person office.
The initial investigative procedures are customary; A camera is positioned on the suspect employee who is later observed to remove a valuable box of paper from the office. Wolfe then decides to get additional evidence, which is always a good thing. His surveillance reveals the employee to take another box and place it in the owner’s car. This made no sense. Why would she do that? Wolfe then follows his own client and determines he is stockpiling boxes of papers in his residential garage.
Later, a camera is illegally placed to watch the interactions of the owner and employee. The owner is caught trying to massage the neck of the employee, but being met with great resistance. The scenario then plays out that this was a ruse to get the employee fired for not having sex, and thus avoid a wrongful termination suit.
The illegal camera placement was my tip-off in realizing that not only is this show embellished – it’s fictional.
I replayed the first show, and realized that there is a cleverly-minimal (and nearly-hidden) disclaimer at the beginning and end. Most people will not notice it, much less read it.
The show is designed to give one the impression that all these cases are real, but all the participants other than Wolfe and McCarthy are actors. They have taken fairly mundane cases and tacked on macabre, unrealistic, or fairy-tale endings.
The trend of making reality-based fake entertainment was popularized by the success of a film called The Blair Witch Project, a horror film show with a minimal budget that went on to become one of the most successful independent films of all time. Since then, we’ve seen other approaches to the hand-held shaky footage “reality” approach: On the big screen Cloverfield and Chronicle come to mind. All of these films have one thing in common – they’re clearly fake. You can sit back and enjoy them for being so.
Of course since Blair Witch you’ve had a million “reality” TV shows where mundane things like going to the supermarket are somehow embellished to an hour’s worth of drama.
When it comes to the fully-scripted “reality” TV shows (even the ones that don’t involve a mythical creature on a traditionally science- and education-based media group like the Discovery Networks), it’s almost like actively trying to pull the wool over peoples’ eyes. It’s a slippery slope.
“Cry Wolfe” is not a bad show. I enjoyed it. It’s just not real.
Many of us have worked very hard over the years to educate the public that private investigators are not trench-coat-wearing, pipe-smoking, spyglass-carrying goofballs peering around corners. (I’ve written about the Hollywood private investigator myths here, and here.) If you retain a world-class investigator (and there are many out there), they can assist you greatly with life-changing decisions.
Take every reality show you see on TV with a grain of salt. “Cry Wolfe” is not a bad show. I enjoyed it. It’s just not real.
