Surviving Jeffrey Epstein focuses on the billionaire financier's victims, avoiding the romanticization of his backstory

The A.V. Club

"Jeffrey Epstein was a monster, a smirking sociopath who believed he was superior to everyone around him," says Stephen Robinson. "It’s no wonder he appealed to so many powerful people, including princes and presidents. Film and TV have an unfortunate tendency to romanticize monsters, especially if their lives boast a veneer of glamour. Epstein, who grew up in working-class Brooklyn, has been compared to Jay Gatsby and Tom Ripley (the charming murderer from the Patricia Highsmith novels). Like Gatsby and Ripley, Epstein achieved great wealth (arguably through just as questionable means), but as the saying goes, behind every fortune, there’s a crime. In Epstein’s case, his fortune was both the weapon used to carry out his crimes and his personal shield against any accountability. Surviving Jeffrey Epstein, a two-part Lifetime documentary that airs this Sunday and Monday, doesn’t romanticize Epstein’s backstory or attempt to whitewash any of his deeds. It centers on his victims, whose lives he maliciously upended with precision and cold-blooded calculation. If you’ve followed the Epstein case, as well as the recent arrest of his alleged accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, you are aware of what survivor Virginia Giuffre describes as Epstein’s 'pyramid scheme,' where his victims were used to recruit fresh victims, who would go on to do the same. Unlike Epstein and Maxwell, these women have consciences, so their pained faces reveal the remorse they still feel for their involvement." ALSO: Surviving Jeffrey Epstein's interviews highlight the extent to which Epstein's high-profile associations validated him in the eyes of those he preyed upon.