The miniseries is based on the 2015 news article “An Unbelievable Story of Rape”, written by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong, and their 2018 book A False Report based on the same research.
A dramatization of the 2008–2011 Washington and Colorado serial rape cases, Unbelievable follows “Marie, a teenager who was charged with lying about having been raped, and the two detectives who followed a twisting path to arrive at the truth”.
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 98% based on 83 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. The website’s critical consensus reads, “Heartbreaking and powerful, Unbelievable transcends familiar true-crime beats by shifting its gaze to survivors of abuse, telling their stories with grace and gravity.” On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating “universal acclaim”.
I’ve watched this in its’ entirety, 8 episodes over 2 nights. It would be fair to say that I found it absorbing.
For all its’ faults (and I won’t elaborate yet), it has at least as many merits, so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
My rating is 9/10.
