‘Nicholas Rossi poses a danger to anyone with whom he interacts…’
I used to love true crime documentaries as much as the next man, but the market has become saturated in recent years, not just in television but also in the world of podcasting. The powers that be can smell easy money a mile away and the cheap production costs involved with the true crime subgenre ensure that it is rife for exploitation. In these troubled times, one needs to choose their true crime documentaries carefully. Channel 4’s latest Imposter: The Man Who Came Back from the Dead demonstrates there is still life in this subgenre yet…
The imposter in question is a man called variously Nicholas Rossi and Arthur Knight. One purports to be an American abuse survivor who eventually disappears while the other is a British wheelchairbound nerd who is happily married to a seemingly devoted wife. The truth, as ever, is something even more twisted than it first appears.
The thing that Imposter has going for it is that the story is genuinely incredible and also that the main players involved in it are fascinating. In many ways, it recalls Tiger King in the way that each fresh revelation seems like it must be the most bombastic only for some new piece of insane information to come along and blow everything out of the water.
Despite being an episode too long, Imposter is well put together and sympathetic when it needs to be and utterly compelling. One of the few recent examples within the true crime genre of a show that is worth making time for.