Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Fake Sheikh’ on Prime Video, A Docuseries Examining The Ruthless Investigative Methods Of A Disgraced UK Journalist

Prime Video gets into the true crime game with The Fake Sheikh, a three-part docuseries from producer/director Alexandra Lacey and series director Ceri Isfryn. Beginning in the 1990s as an investigative journalist for News of the World, Mazer Mahmood regularly scored scoops full of the scandal, sex, and salacious details that fueled the British tabloid press. His ego was big and his methods were many. But Mahmood’s highest-profile headlines were often derived from sting operations he set up under his fabricated identity as a wealthy Arab sheikh. Mahmood’s former colleagues are interviewed here, as well as people who knew him in his personal life, and The Fake Sheikh also features commentary and context from some who bought the act and became fodder for page one bombshells.    

THE FAKE SHEIKH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: A telephone is set on an end table beside an answering machine, its message light blinking. “Everybody has a secret,” a woman says in voiceover as the image shifts to reel-to-reel tape recorders and tiny hidden microphones. “It was our job to discover that secret.”

The Gist: That’s the voice of former News of the World journalist Aylia Fox, and a reenactment of the phone call no one in the public eye ever wishes to receive. Would you care to comment on what we’re running in tomorrow’s paper, which is a drug scandal with you as its centerpiece? “Anyone was fair game,” Fox says in an interview. “We’d sting you, catch you in the act.” And that’s exactly what former glamour model and Page 3 girl Emma Morgan found out in 1996, when she was ensnared in a cocaine-fueled sting operation orchestrated by Mahmood in his guise as a sheikh. “Busted! Jetsetter by day, dealer by night!” screamed the eventual NOTW headline, thousands of newspapers were sold, and Morgan promptly found herself professionally and personally canceled.

“Mazer Mahmood had this idea, ‘the fake sheikh,’” says Neil Wallis, his executive editor at the tabloid. “A piece of genius.” A gambit of “theatrical journalism” that acted on British society’s assumptions and prejudices regarding Arab culture, it allowed Mahmood access to the wealthy, celebrities, and the powerful in ways he couldn’t have through traditional journalistic means. By donning a red-checkered keffiyeh and traditional thawb robe, and playing the part of an international elite, Mahmood sold a safe situation to his targets, who would then be caught incriminating themselves on his secret tapes and cameras. The Fake Sheikh includes a lot of that footage gathered by the photographers and surveillance pros who worked in the “Maz Gang,” and interviews with that group combine with reenactments to illustrate how the stings went off.

Sure, these stories sold lots and lots of papers. And Mahmood won the British Press Award for Reporter of the Year in 1999. But were his methods even legal? Well…as a note from the producers informs viewers, neither Mahmood nor News UK, the corporate parent of NOTW and other British tabs, agreed to be interviewed for this docuseries. But in a piece of archival tape, the journalist defends his methods, basically saying that people who get stung deserve it because they’re doing something bent. As The Fake Sheikh’s episodes unfold, and Mahmood’s professional ambitions drive him to dig for ever bigger bits of dirt, calls of entrapment and evidence tampering get louder, until Mahmood himself is put on trial in a splashy court case surrounding popular UK singer and X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos.   

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Tinder Swindler was a 2022 doc that revealed how a British con man who bamboozled women via dating apps was eventually brought down. And the tone of Fake Sheikh feels similar to Bad Vegan, the entertaining and very meta true crime docuseries from Chris Smith, who also exec produced Tiger King. 

Our Take: There’s no question that scoop has always outweighed every other aspect of Mazer Mahmood’s life. As The Fake Sheikh details, this is a guy whose entry into the journalism profession was an exclusive incriminating his extended family in a home video piracy ring. “He loved getting these stories, he loved exposing people,” a former romantic partner says in a later episode. And while it doesn’t have access to Mahmood himself, Fake Sheikh is adept at reconstructing the media environment that allowed the investigative journalist to run wild in pursuit of ever huger headlines. When his “fake sheikh” concept first emerged in the mid-1990s, there was no internet, no social media, no mobile devices. Tabloid newspapers had centralized power to mold public opinion, and the access Mahmood’s methods provided regularly put the biggest names in his sights. When Mahmood receives a scoop of a kidnapping plot surrounding Victoria Beckham, the resulting furor is as much over his ruthless style of reporting as it is the incandescent level of celebrity Posh Spice and footballer husband David represented in British culture at that time.

Mahmood’s methods eventually landed him in hot water, and the title sequence for Fake Sheikh features him perp walking each day into Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court. But the series is not exclusively true crime in that it’s often more concerned with the gray area between legality and journalism. That was the area where Mahmood and his sheikh getup lived, where his support team made their living. What this docuseries really wants is to probe what it means to push right to the edge of what’s allowed, what drives someone to do that, and whether the people “The King of Sting” caught are victims or just the subjects of a truly dogged reporter.   

Sex and Skin: Topless shots of Page 3 Girls in the British tabloids are seen; a sequence that recounts Mahmood’s infamous gotcha of some Newcastle FC execs includes a few tawdry shots reenacting a Spanish strip club.

Parting Shot: “I most definitely admired Mazer Mahmood,” journalist Aylia Fox says. “He had what other people wanted. If he clicked his fingers, he basically got the money for a story.” But while the first installment of The Fake Sheikh concludes with Mahmood on top, his rise hasn’t sated a ruthless drive for the next big story. And that’s the kind of relentless drive that can get people in trouble.

Sleeper Star: Stories told by the “Maz Gang” of their exploits on these sting operations occasionally veer into heist movie territory, with photogs dressing as women or impersonating bodyguards, and lively discussions about ideal placements for hotel suite hidden cameras. 

Most Pilot-y Line: Mazer Mahmood and Paul McMullan were both investigative journalists for News of the World. “But we were completely different,” McMullan says. “I was there to sell newspapers, to entertain, to titillate. He was there as an avenging angel. To send people to jail.” 

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Fake Sheikh weaves an intriguing web around its central subject. It might not feature any interviews with Mazer Mahmood. But the docuseries delves into the structure and mechanics of his sting operations, tries to get at what drove his ruthless nature as a journalist, and allows space for the people who populated his scandal-dripping headlines to tell their side of the story. 

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges