Underbelly: Vanishing Act

Sadly this superficial retelling of the Melissa Caddick story cashes in on the underbelly name with little of the quality that most previous underbelly series have given.

No new information about the situation was given although some aspects of the dramatization did add some emotion to the story.

In truth, the 60 minutes story with the real life characters was somewhat more entertaining and informative.

Large parts of this (the entire George sub-plot) are simply made up to drag the story out and try to add a twist - badly acted and badly made. Listen to the Liar, Liar podcast instead -accurate and much, much better.

Melissa Caddick seems to be a highly successful financial advisor, living a lavish lifestyle, buy supercars and haute couture, but underneath it, she's defrauding her clients, and running a Ponzi scheme, a scam.

I am a little surprised by some of the negative reviews of this series, nobody can claim it's brilliant, but it's certainly watchable enough, it's such a fascinating story.

The authorities must take some degree of blame for this, they appeared to be utterly incompetent, and allowed her to get away with blue murder.

I'm just stunned at how or why none of the investors spotted any of the flaws, such as the six digit account numbers.

I think it's fairly well paced, and I liked the wah the story is told, in the first part we learn what she did, in the following two episodes, we get to learn why.

I really liked Kate Atkinson's performance as Mel, I thought she did a really fine job. Melissa is portrayed as a horrid human being, she lies and cheats freely, someone who's used to getting what she wants.

The Devil wears Dior.

7/10.

Bewildered why they would sell this as Underbelly, the story is/was worthy of making the a movie.

I enjoyed the show in fact hard for me not too with Colin Friels, one of my all time favourite Aussie actors. Also Kate Atkinson, loved her since Sea Change days. Both these two do a good job as usual, unfortunately the casting of them for their respective characters was a poor choice and reflects poorly for them both.

The story and script could have been dramatised to be far more entertaining and the whole thing is messy especially the ending.

Overall worthy of a watch but by no means a gritty underworld story.

6½ rounded up.

Feels like these 2 episodes were rushed out while the Melissa Caddick story is still topical.

Terrible acting. Script not much better.

No suspense or feeling of drama that must have surrounded such a terrible fraud.

Some odd attempts at humour just added to the amateurish feeling of the whole production.