'The Ashley Madison Affair' Docuseries Looks As Tempting As It Does Trashy

The trailer for Hulu’s three-part docuseries The Ashley Madison Affair looks decidedly low-rent — lots of B-roll, stock photos, and camera filters — but the drama here is all in the talking heads. They will be discussing Ashley Madison, the website designed to enable folks to cheat on their spouses. “Life is short. Have an affair,” reads the site’s tagline.

It was all fun and games until somebody hacked into it and demanded the site shut down or they would release the names of all of its users. The data leak had painful consequences for Ashley Madison’s users — public embarrassment, divorces, and worse. John Gibson, an executive at Ashley Madison, took his own life after his name appeared on the list of users. Josh Duggar’s name was also in it, although that would prove to be the least of his problems.

The docuseries, which premieres on July 7th, looks trashy and irresistibly tempting. Also, the Ashley Madison website not only still exists but crossed 60 million users in 2019 and boasts that it enables over 1 million affairs a month.