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ABC News Studios Tackles Ashley Madison and More In Summer True-Crime Lineup

The studio's slate of docuseries debuts July 7 on Hulu.
  • Ashley Madison (Image: CBS News)
    Ashley Madison (Image: CBS News)

    In July of last year, ABC News created ABC News Studios in an attempt to keep up with other streamers pushing out documentary content left and right, and this summer it’ll reap the rewards of that effort with four new docuseries that are dropping over the next two months. Past projects have covered a range of topics for Disney’s various platforms, with Hulu’s Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, National Geographic’s Explorers, and ABC’s Superstar among them. But this summer’s slate, which is set to stream on Hulu, is all about true crime.

    First up is The Ashley Madison Affair, which premieres July 7. The series follows the rise and fall of the website that facilitated users in seeking out extramarital relationships — in 2015, a group known as The Impact Team hacked into the site, resulting in one of the most scandalous data breaches ever. The information of high-profile (mostly conservative) men like Josh Duggar, whose nefarious acts were detailed in the recent Prime Video docuseries Shiny Happy People, was released to the public, upending their reputations and inciting discussions about cyber security and morality. According to The Wrap, the series features “exclusive footage and untold first-hand interviews from those involved, the series will explore infidelity, morality, cyber-shaming and blackmail and tell the story of ordinary people with big secrets and a mystery that remains unsolved to this day.”

    Betrayal: The Perfect Husband debuts July 11. The series is based on the true-crime podcast of the same name, and tells the story of Jenifer Faison, a successful reality television producer who discovered that her husband, a beloved high school teacher, was sexually assaulting his teenage students. Her own investigation into how and why he engaged in such behavior unearthed even more stories of similar incidents across the country.

    On July 27, the four-part anthology series Mother Undercover drops. Each episode follows a different mother who took justice into her own hands to protect her kids. Finishing out the summer on August 3 is Demons and Saviors, detailing the case of Christina Boyer, a woman known as “poltergeist girl” because of her supposed telekinetic abilities, who was convicted of murdering her three-year-old daughter in 1992. She maintains her innocence to this day, and amateur sleuths have worked tirelessly to discover the truth since.

    Brianna Wellen is a TV Reporter at Primetimer who became obsessed with television when her parents let her stay up late to watch E.R. 

    TOPICS: ABC News Studios, Hulu, The Ashley Madison Affair, Betrayal: The Perfect Husband, Demons and Saviors, Mother Undercover, True Crime