Underbelly: Vanishing Act

Sadly this superficial retelling of the Melissa Caddick story cashes in on the underbelly name with little of the quality that most previous underbelly series have given.

No new information about the situation was given although some aspects of the dramatization did add some emotion to the story.

In truth, the 60 minutes story with the real life characters was somewhat more entertaining and informative.

Feels like these 2 episodes were rushed out while the Melissa Caddick story is still topical.

Terrible acting. Script not much better.

No suspense or feeling of drama that must have surrounded such a terrible fraud.

Some odd attempts at humour just added to the amateurish feeling of the whole production.

Some legendary and iconic Australian actors in this and doing the best they can with a terrible long, boring, corny and forced script. (Apart from the struggling card board stiff female actor playing the ASIC investigator). A doco or show cut down to less than half the time would have helped. Then would have only wasted only half our time watching it. Shame really, as generally speaking, such a such a waste of talented actors.

Melissa Caddick seems to be a highly successful financial advisor, living a lavish lifestyle, buy supercars and haute couture, but underneath it, she's defrauding her clients, and running a Ponzi scheme, a scam.

I am a little surprised by some of the negative reviews of this series, nobody can claim it's brilliant, but it's certainly watchable enough, it's such a fascinating story.

The authorities must take some degree of blame for this, they appeared to be utterly incompetent, and allowed her to get away with blue murder.

I'm just stunned at how or why none of the investors spotted any of the flaws, such as the six digit account numbers.

I think it's fairly well paced, and I liked the wah the story is told, in the first part we learn what she did, in the following two episodes, we get to learn why.

I really liked Kate Atkinson's performance as Mel, I thought she did a really fine job. Melissa is portrayed as a horrid human being, she lies and cheats freely, someone who's used to getting what she wants.

The Devil wears Dior.

7/10.

The same story could have been told in half the time with no loss of coherence and probably making a lot more interesting programme.

As it stands, far too much time spent looking at things, looking out of windows and watching people walk, none of which adds anything to the story or informs us about the characters.

Thinking about it, it's really boring. I thought because it was part of the 'Underbelly' stories it would be tight and gripping showing Australian society from a certain perspective. What I got was a waste of time.