Limited Series
2 episodes Feb 21, 2024 7.1
Overview
Three women's lives are changed forever when a prolific stalker infiltrates their social media accounts. And they're only a fraction of his many victims.
Seasons
1 listed- Status
- Ended
- Seasons
- 1 season
- Episodes
- 2 episodes
- First aired
- Feb 21, 2024
- Last aired
- Feb 21, 2024
- Episode length
- 51m
- Network
- Netflix
Latest episode: S1 E2 Part 2 (Feb 21, 2024)
Cast
Reviews
5 min readThe Stalker in the Machine
I kept waiting for the moment when Can I Tell You a Secret? would stop trying so hard to scare me and just let the story do the work. It never came. The series, a two-part Netflix documentary about a prolific cyberstalker named Matthew Hardy, is a case study in how to take a genuinely chilling true crime narrative and bury it under layers of unnecessary stylistic flourish.
The victims’ testimonies are harrowing—women whose lives were upended by an anonymous tormentor who infiltrated their social media, their friend groups, even their families. But the documentary’s relentless visual and auditory gimmicks don’t amplify the horror; they distract from it, like a child jumping up and down in front of a funeral procession, screaming, “Look at me!”
The first episode opens with a shot of power lines stretching into the distance, accompanied by a distorted voiceover reading Hardy’s messages in a tone that’s equal parts creepy and cartoonish. “Hiyaaaaa, babesssss,” it drawls, as if the stalker were a villain in a low-budget horror flick. The effect is unintentionally comedic, and it sets the tone for the rest of the series: a documentary that wants to be both a gripping true crime thriller and a moody art piece, but ends up feeling like neither.
The voiceover, in particular, is a misfire. It’s meant to personify the stalker’s menace, but the exaggerated delivery turns him into a caricature, undercutting the very real fear his victims describe. By the third or fourth time we hear it, the novelty has worn off, and what’s left is the grating sensation of a production team trying too hard to manufacture tension.
The victims—Savannah, Lia, and Zara—are the heart of the story, and their accounts of living under Hardy’s digital siege are the most compelling parts of the series. Savannah, in particular, delivers a raw, unfiltered testimony that lays bare the psychological toll of being stalked. She describes the paranoia, the sleepless nights, the way Hardy’s harassment seeped into every corner of her life.
Audience Opinions
Audience 5.3/10
"A chilling cyberstalking story weighed down by flashy, repetitive and often grating production choices."
The real-life case and victims’ testimonies are gripping and unsettling, and the series works well as a warning about how invasive online harassment can become. latestnetflix.com's view is that over-produced visuals, intrusive voice work, and padding across two episodes turn what could have been a tight, powerful documentary into something that feels shallow, repetitive, and frustratingly unfocused.
What viewers praise
- Powerful real case The stalking story itself is disturbing and eye-opening, making the dangers of online harassment feel very tangible.
- Impactful victim perspectives Personal accounts from the women affected are moving and convey the emotional toll and fear they lived with.
- Raises online safety awareness Highlights how easily social media and messaging can be exploited, prompting reflection on privacy and digital boundaries.
Common complaints
- Overdone style and editing Frequent cutaways, gimmicky visuals and busy editing are criticized as horrible, shallow, and distracting from the story.
- Grating voice-over The distorted stalker voice and ominous narration are widely described as unbearable and unnecessarily melodramatic.
- Repetitive imagery Endless shots of power lines and text messages traveling along wires become a running joke and pull focus from the victims.
- Bloated and repetitive structure The story is seen as stretched over two parts with a lot of repetition, something many felt could have been handled in a single, shorter episode.
- Unclear narrative focus Shifts toward the stalker’s background and police process are viewed as muddling the focus on the victims and offering little new insight.
Recommended for
True crime docu-series watchers Cyberstalking and online safety topics British true crime followers
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsHe opened every hunt with the same four words
Netflix named the two-parter after Matthew Hardy's opening DM. A woman would get a message. It would say, "Can I tell you a secret?" Deadline printed the line on January 24, 2024, when the streamer locked a global date of February 21. Hardy, unemployed, from Northwich in Cheshire, built fake social accounts first, then used that bait to seed lies to partners, colleagues, and family. In January 2022 a court jailed him for nine years. Deadline called it the longest UK sentence for online stalking. Mindhouse, the producer, still sells that record on its own page. latestnetflix.com's read is that pEOPLE later noted the term was cut to eight years on appeal.
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Louis Theroux's company got its first Netflix order, then shipped in four weeks.
Deadline's exclusive billed Can I Tell You a Secret? as Mindhouse's first Netflix commission. Theroux founded the company with Nancy Strang and Arron Fellows. The Guardian is the partner. Liza Williams directed, with Tash Gaunt also credited as director. Lindsay Poulton exec produced for the paper. Sirin Kale's reporting and her 2022 Guardian podcast of the same name are the source text. Aloke Devichand, formerly Netflix's Asia docs head, exec produced with Strang. Strang said Hardy's campaign "has had a lasting and profound impact on the women he targeted," and that she hoped the testimonies would "change the conversation about what constitutes harm in a digital age." She thanked Netflix "for trusting us with this as our first commission." ,
Williams had already made Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare for the same streamer. Tudum, the day after launch, named the three women on camera: Zoe Jade Hallam, Abby Furness, and Lia Marie Hambly. Each started with a relatively harmless follower message, then watched the pile grow across apps, to colleagues and loved ones, with private details and images attached. Police Constable Kevin Anderson is the officer Tudum credits as the champion who worked with them. Hardy had already been arrested 10 times on impersonation and stalking charges before those 2018 and 2019 cases. Between 2011 and 2022, Tudum said, he stalked more than 62 women. ,
The Guardian feature from March 2022 is still the number quoted on the circuit. Cheshire Constabulary, one force, was contacted about Hardy more than 100 times by 62 victims over 11 years. He was arrested 10 times while the Crown Prosecution Service struggled to stop him. Hallam, a model and mechanical operative from Lincolnshire, told the paper, "Every time his name comes up, I hear other names." Williams told The Independent she was "really struck by the power of the women's stories and their bravery," and that they "had huge amounts of agency in how the perpetrator was caught, and had to take the matter into their own hands, to a degree." PEOPLE printed a family line from the podcast. Hardy told his mother Donna he was "just being silly." Netflix lists two parts, 50 minutes and 51 minutes, TV-MA. Mindhouse calls the cut "2 x 50." The pickup line is the title. The gossip is how long the system took to treat it as a crime. , , , , ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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