Obsession: Dark Desires

I am an avid watcher of the Investigation Discovery Channel, so when I heard about this series I thought it would be interesting. I saw the series premiere last night and it was much better that I expected; a show I'll be watching every week. Instead of using a professional narrator or journalist, the victim narrates their own story. Some narrators on these shows overdramatize the story or have annoying voices, which is a dealbreaker for me. With a different person narrating each time, that issue is eliminated, and it will make the show less predictable week after week. I hope they don't change this format. Secondly, this program is about stalking rather than the more frequent murder shows on ID, and it's great seeing the victims triumph over their stalkers and receive justice without tragedy befalling them.

Wow... This was to me the best one yet. I could feel Kathleens pain. I was stalked briefly by my ex- husband but nothing to the degree that she went through. I am sorry to say but I wanted her stalker to take his life or be taken by the police. At least it would be over forever. I feel so badly for her that she gave up so much in her life because of him. How he found her after her unsuccessful attempt to hide her whereabouts, her job, her person amazes me to what length these wackos go to. What an enormous amount of time that was lost because of him. He took so much from her! Great show. I too like the fact that the stalkee is the narrator and not some over emphasizing person retelling the story. Thats how I feel about Nightmare Next Door. I cannot abide to the narrator's voice and refuse to watch the show. I am glad Kathleen is an advocate for stalking laws. I commend her. I wish her well for her future.

Look, I think the show is great, and it's amazing to hear these survivors tell their own stories. That takes guts. Seriously, though - where are they interviewing these poor people? In a run-down, moldy, broken down building that looks worse than a third world prison? Please, host these survivors in a nicer location!

Generally speaking, the reenacters should be the ones who are, y'know, acting, but here, some of the actual victims relaying their stories also feel scripted, like they're being coached on what to say the entire time for dramatic effect. During a few episodes, the dramatic timing reached a point where I found myself researching, to triple-check that the cases were real.

That's not a slight on the victims, of course, and there were a couple of stories from the first season that ripped my guts out. But, most of the time, I couldn't shake the feeling that someone was putting words in their mouths, which outright contradicts the show's mission statement.

Add to that the (albeut predictably) unrealistic reenactments and a palpable lack of even anecdotal forensics... It's simply hard to feel the truth in Discovery's latest awkward attempt at true crime.

I really enjoyed the storytelling of this show. But, it was VERY distracting how they were pretending to be American but very clearly seemed to have Irish or UK accents in the re-enactments. The scenery was very clearly not American (electrical prongs had wrong # of holes, wrong style for Americans, very clearly UK style). The whole time I was distracted by their bad American accents that were very clearly actors pretending to be American. I wish the producers would make this in the U.S. Other than that, the real victim testimony was great and storytelling was great. Just need believable accents to not be constantly distracted by how this must be some bizarre UK actor guild producing this. Their accents are not good and took me out of the experience.