Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About How The Dating Site Got Hacked And Exposed Lots Of Cheaters

Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal is a three-part docuseries that details how Ashley Madison, the dating website that was geared towards people who wanted to discreetly cheat on their significant others, garnered tens of millions of users, and how a 2015 hack of the site exposed the information of millions of cheaters. If this sounds familiar, then you probably watched a very similar docuseries that came out in 2023.

ASHLEY MADISON: SEX, LIES & SCANDAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man wearing a pink shirt with palm trees on it points at his coffee table and asks if the cameraman is getting it in his shot. It’s covered in eyeglasses; the man tries to figure out which of his bold pairs to wear for his interview.

The Gist: A few former Ashley Madison employees are interviewed, including the bespectacled Evan Back, who was the vice president of sales and a longtime friend of then-CEO Noel Biderman. They talk about the founding of the site in 2001, and then how the site took off when the shameless Biderman came aboard; he’d go on news shows and defend the site as something that “saves” marriages by giving “bored” people an outlet for their sexual desires. Their most famous advertising slogan was pretty straightforward: “Life is short. Have an affair.”

The series’ director, Toby Paton, also speaks to three people who used the site, two of whom used it as part of an open marriage, and one who… well, his marriage certainly wasn’t open, that’s for sure. In fact, he calls signing up for the site “the worst decision of my life,” which he probably realized after his information was leaked by the hackers in 2015. That man’s (we hope) ex-wife is also interviewed, as she talks about how hopeful she was about their relationship, how her ex projected himself as a family man and a good Christian, and how they were in a good place right before the leak happened.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal is pretty much the same as the 2023 docuseries The Ashley Madison Affair.

Our Take: Seriously, if you want a more detailed recap of what Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal is about, go back and read our review of The Ashley Madison Affair. The two docuseries are only marginally different from each other with regards to how they tell the story of Ashley Madison’s rise, the hacking scandal, and the fall of Biederman. This series doesn’t use reenactments or actors reading testimonials from anonymous users, so it’s got that going for them, which is nice. But this is certainly a case where two docuseries about the same topic cover pretty much the same ground.

That being said, if you haven’t watched The Ashley Madison Affair — and, let’s face it, most of the people watching Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal haven’t — you’ll definitely get the same skeevy feeling we had as people talked about signing up for the site to have affairs, as well as the footage of Biederman defending the site in interviews. The former employees who are interviewed have the right amount shrugging acceptance that they were working for a morally ambiguous website, but don’t disguise how much fun it was to grow the site by the seat-of-the-pants marketing methods they were forced to use because of what they were trying to promote.

We don’t think Paton is trying to position the “victims” of the hack as people that viewers should feel sad for, given the fact that they were cheating on their spouses and the leak exposed that to the very people they were cheating on. But when Sam, one of the exposed cheaters, says things like “no one ever taught me about love,” and cites the romantic scene in Big Fish as his inspiration for finding Nia, who eventually became his wife, it feels like that’s the angle that Paton is taking.

He does a bit of a head fake with the other couple, which annoyed us a bit. But it also speaks to how tough it likely was to find couples that were torn apart by the information leak. Who wants to admit on camera that their spouses cheated on them? It’s likely the reason why the other Ashley Madison docuseries did the reenactments of anonymous testimonials. Still, as we explain below, half of that couple was very entertaining to listen to.

Sex and Skin: Well, there’s nothing overtly on screen but the show is about a dating site that helps people cheat, so…

Parting Shot: We close the way we open, with Evan Back talking about the day the site was hacked in 2015.

Sleeper Star: Stephanie, whom we mentioned briefly above, is so forthright about her being married and horny it was almost refreshing, albeit still left us skeeved out. It was a way to show that women used Ashley Madison, as well. Just keep in mind that the ratio of men, who paid to contact women on the site, to women, who used the site for free, was like 7-to-1.

Most Pilot-y Line: Watching Biederman’s wife Amanda say on The View that “Ashley Madison is not creating cheaters” made us queasy, even if she’s technically correct.

Our Call: STREAM IT. There is no need to watch Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal if you already watched The Ashley Madison Affair. But if you haven’t, it’s an entertaining — if cringe-inducing — docuseries about the dating site and how its users got exposed when its weak security was breached.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.