Last modified on Thu 4 Mar 2021 05.05 EST
“HBO Doc About Woody Allen & Mia Farrow Ignores Mia’s 3 Dead Kids, Her Child Molester Brother, Other Family Tragedies” was the headline on one US showbiz site, above its review of the four-part documentary, Allen v Farrow, about the continuing battle between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, now entering its fourth decade. But this review was very much an outlier. In the vast main, reaction to the strongly anti-Allen series has been overwhelmingly positive, with Buzzfeed describing it as a “nuanced reckoning” and Entertainment Weekly comparing it to the recent documentaries about Michael Jackson and Jeffrey Epstein. This reaction is more of a reflection of the public’s feelings towards Allen – particularly in the US – than of the documentary, which sets itself up as an investigation but much more resembles PR, as biased and partial as a political candidate’s advert vilifying an opponent in election season.