Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare review – flawed Netflix documentary still shocks

When Kirat Assi received a Facebook friend request from a man named Bobby Jandu, in 2009, she had no reason to view it suspiciously. It was 2009 – everyone was expanding their Facebook networks. Bobby’s family was well-known in the Kenyan Punjabi Sikh community and the two shared many mutual friends online. Bobby’s younger brother, JJ, was dating Kirat’s younger cousin Simran. They were both in long-term relationships, and both posted frequently about their lives. Though the two had never met in person – Bobby, a cardiology assistant, bounced between the UK and Kenya, and Kirat, a marketing professional, lived in London – they struck up a friendship online.

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Over nearly a decade, that friendship deepened into a virtual romance, an engagement and eventually an all-consuming web of unfulfilled promises that ate up the bulk of Kirat’s 30s – all part of an elaborate catfishing scheme relived and re-enacted in the Netflix documentary Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare. The film, co-produced with Tortoise Media and based on its hit podcast of the same name, is a mostly chronological, first-person account by Kirat of her experience. She’s a cogent and remarkably grounded narrator of her story, detailing in present tense how she grew closer and closer to “Bobby”, as well as to his friends and family, via Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, phone calls and Skype, as Bobby “recovered” from a shooting and stroke in New York.

The story is, frankly, so crazy, the scheme so intricate and complex – I don’t want to spoil it for those who, like me, hadn’t heard the hit podcast it was based on, but suffice to say I remain astounded – that hearing Kirat tell it plain would be riveting enough. The shock withstands the requisite too-bright Netflix lighting and cheesy re-enactments. In better moments, director Lyttanya Shannon (Subnormal: A British Scandal) accentuates Kirat’s narration with what essentially amounts to repetitive screengrabs of their respective Facebook profiles and messages, or recreations of Skype calls and digital interfaces. (A disclaimer notes that some online identities have been replaced with actors to protect the privacy of people involved.) Interviews with a handful of Kirat’s relatives and friends also provide useful context, both on the familial pressures Kirat faced – single in her mid-30s and desperate to start a family, starting over without Bobby seemed like a shameful option – and how red flags, such as Bobby’s claim that he was in witness protection, were ignored.

In the interest of suspense, concision and/or privacy, some crucial context seems skipped over – the dynamics of the UK/Kenyan Punjabi Sikh community, for one, or how well Kirat knew the people who knew Bobby’s family (the word “knew” is used loosely – it’s sometimes not clear whether an interaction or relationship is IRL, digital or both). Shannon, with the help of reams of data, conversations and photos stored by Kirat as evidence, effectively evokes the reality distortion field Kirat found herself in after years of intimately chatting with Bobby, who eventually insisted she keep the Skype call open while they slept but refused to see her. Still, the feeling of missing information – whether from the natural skepticism of hearing a scammer story or the result of missing context – nags as the plot thickens.

Related: Kirat Assi: ‘Bobby tried to destroy my hopes, my dreams, every part of my life’

Though thankfully not stretched into multiple episodes, Sweet Bobby, at 82 minutes, is the rare case of a true-crime documentary that could be longer. The big reveal (no spoiler on the perpetrator) is swift, and the resolution barely teased out. (The film ends with a note that a civil case Kirat brought against the catfisher was settled out of court in 2022.) Sweet Bobby easily accomplishes shock – I screamed at my laptop – though that largely owes to the truly unhinged raw material. Shannon’s real-time approach to telling it augments more than it detracts – until the scammer’s number is inevitably up. Whether for legal reasons, a desire to keep some things private or a true lack of answers, the absence of any conjecture on why this scam, why this victim, and how this scheme kept going is glaring.

Instead, the film concludes with what feels like a half-hearted call for legal reform to account for catfishing and digital deception, along with the usual platitudes about rebuilding one’s life after truly unfathomable psychological manipulation and devastation. Ultimately, Sweet Bobby leaves more questions than answers, though as is the unfortunate case with many catfishing scams, sometimes there are none.

• Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare is now available on Netflix