Hunting Alice Bell

Over the past few years, there’s been a proliferation in the public’s thirst – bloodlust, even – for a witch hunt. Hunting Alice Bell traverses this thorny terrain with impeccable insight. Created by David Baddiel and longtime Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw, the engrossing series is part thriller, part satirical whodunit, with a phenomenal women-led cast.

In 2012, nurse Alice Bell is released from prison, having been convicted of concealing evidence for her serial killer ex-boyfriend, Jason (Simon Pegg). She’s given a new identity, leading to years of online chatter over her whereabouts. In the present day, leisure centre worker Fran (a wonderful Alexandra Roach) goes viral following a video apology for a work snafu, which may or may not have exposed the public to Legionnaires’ disease (though, more likely, a verruca or two). Fran’s husband, Nick (Rudi Dharmalingam), and stepchildren tease her about this little faux pas over breakfast. But when popular online truthseeker “True Crime Buster”, a masked Anonymous-type figure, claims that Fran is a visual match for Alice, she experiences a distinctly social media-age cancellation.

The series expertly looks at the rise of true crime obsessives, who perhaps care more about the satisfaction of finding someone to whom they can assign guilt rather than the crimes themselves. Viewers see TikTokers analysing the case and Reddit detectives weighing in (reminiscent of the infamous time Redditors “caught” the Boston Marathon bomber). True Crime Buster propagates manosphere-fuelled misinformation, inciting his followers to hunt down “Alice”.

Fran finds “I’m Spartacus”-esque camaraderie in a group of women who have also been targeted for supposedly being Alice, each one richly multifaceted and fleshed out by the superb actors (Amanda Abbington, Emily Barber, Christina Bennington and Toni O’Rourke). When Jason pits the women against each other by alleging that one of them is in fact Alice, the show cleverly plays into the very sleuthing dynamic it’s lampooning.

Online detectives immediately jump on Jason’s claims, and the witch hunt mutates (even Rory and Alastair from The Rest Is Politics can’t resist engaging in the speculation). As the intrigue amplifies with each episode, the series sometimes leans soapy, which belies its novel approach to storytelling. But for some, this may enhance its addictiveness.

Unyieldingly entertaining and biting in its satire, Hunting Alice Bell is a timely portrait of online vigilantism and the misogyny therein. This is by no means a straightforward whodunit, and all the better for it.

Antonia Georgiou

Hunting Alice Bell is released on Channel 4 on 11^th November 2026.

Watch the trailer for Hunting Alice Bell here: