‘Primetime’ takes us back to the mid-2000s and the phenomenon of NBC’s ‘To Catch a Predator’, a television programme that turned the exposure of suspected sexual predators into a form of mass entertainment. Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, the charismatic presenter whose carefully cultivated image of moral authority conceals a considerably more compromised personality.

The programme’s formula is familiar. Adult decoys pose online as teenagers, arranging meetings with men who believe they’re about to encounter underage children. The men arrive at anonymous suburban houses, often with those familiar Formica-clad kitchens, only for Hansen to emerge and confront them before the television cameras. It’s part investigative journalism, part public humiliation and part reality television.

And that’s where ‘Primetime’ becomes interesting. As the programme acquires a prominent television slot, the pressure grows to deliver increasingly sensational material. Simply exposing another suspected predator is no longer sufficient. The producers need something bigger, more shocking and more commercially irresistible.

I was reminded of Sidney Lumet’s ‘Network’, the brilliantly incisive 1976 satire in which television executives discover that moral outrage and psychological breakdown can be transformed into ratings. Here, the subject matter is different, but the underlying principle is remarkably similar. The more righteous the programme appears, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish public service from exploitation.

Hansen himself is a fascinating contradiction. He’s presented as a crusader against sexual misconduct, yet his own personal life is unravelling. His marriage is threatened by an extramarital affair that attracts the attention of the ‘National Enquirer’. The man who has built a career exposing other people’s shame now faces the possibility of being publicly shamed himself.

Pattinson makes him scheming, charismatic and deeply insincere, a man who has become so accustomed to performing moral authority that he seems increasingly incapable of recognizing his own hypocrisy. There’s also an interesting parallel with Pattinson’s performance in ‘The Batman’. For, Hansen can be seen as a self-appointed Dark Knight, pursuing wrongdoers and presenting himself as the protector of the vulnerable.

But whereas Batman operates outside the law, Hansen operates in the uncomfortable territory between journalism, policing and entertainment. His authority comes not from a badge but from an audience. And perhaps that’s the film’s most provocative idea. Hansen seems to confuse the approval of millions of television viewers with evidence of his own moral virtue. It’s a form of White Knight syndrome, in which the pleasure of being seen to do good gradually becomes indistinguishable from the good itself.

The film also questions the culture of suspicion that programmes like ‘To Catch a Predator’ helped encourage. Although the overwhelming majority of child sexual abuse is committed by people known to victims rather than strangers, Hansen’s television world is dominated by the idea that a dangerous stranger might be lurking behind any ordinary suburban front door. Fear becomes a commodity. Public humiliation becomes a civic responsibility. And the television audience is invited to participate in a ritual of collective moral superiority.

As Hansen and his team pursue a mysterious Texas district attorney suspected of grooming children, the programme’s increasingly aggressive methods begin to expose the moral compromises of those supposedly working on the side of justice. The characters seem divided into binaries – between the corruptors on the one hand and the corrupted on the other, with moral contamination spreading from one person to another.

But this is also where ‘Primetime’ becomes frustrating. It has the ingredients of a genuinely penetrating satire about vigilantism, media ethics and the seductive power of righteous indignation. Yet it doesn’t dig deeply enough into Hansen’s psychology or the wider implications of the programme’s success. The film identifies the hypocrisy but seems less interested in understanding why audiences found this particular form of televised punishment so compelling.

Ultimately, ‘Primetime’ is most effective as a portrait of a culture in which exposing wrongdoing becomes another way of acquiring power. Chris Hansen built his reputation by asking suspected predators to explain themselves. The question ‘Primetime’ never quite answers is whether he was prepared to subject himself to the same scrutiny.