Depp v Heard review: Inconsiderate new Netflix series flogs a dead horse, treats Johnny Depp and Amber Heard like zoo animals

In 2018, actor Amber Heard wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, in which she claimed to have experienced professional and personal consequences for having spoken out publicly about the alleged abuse that she had suffered in a past relationship. While she didn’t take her ex-husband Johnny Depp’s name in her article, he felt that there were grounds for a defamation suit. After having lost a similar trial in the UK, where Depp had sued a journalist and a newspaper publisher for describing him as a ‘wife-beater’ in an article — it was ruled in this trial that he had indeed been violent towards Heard during their marriage — he slapped her with a lawsuit and claimed $50 million in damages. Heard countersued, claiming $100 million.

The trial was conducted in Virginia, not because either Depp or Heard had homes there, but because the Washington Post has servers in the state. This is one of the few intriguing insights that the show provides; Heard wanted the trial to take place in California, which was home base for both her and Depp, but he insisted on Virginia because it has tighter libel laws. More arm-twisting such as this must’ve surely unfolded in backrooms, but the series is mainly concerned with the circus that the trial eventually became — people camped outside the courthouse like they were Directioners desperate to catch a glimpse of Harry Styles — because Depp insisted that cameras be allowed to record the proceedings.

One of the most striking things about the series — not in a positive way — is that it features neither Depp or Heard. Instead, each of the three episodes has been stitched together from the hundreds of hours of trial footage that was live-streamed to hungry audiences across the world. The narrative is peppered with commentary from legal experts, basement-dwelling incels, and various other opportunists who made big money by offering opinions about the proceedings on social media.

One of these people is Andy Signore, an internet personality who seemingly went from complaining about the CGI superhero movies to launching a full-blown campaign in support of Depp during the trial. Between his career pivot, Signore himself was accused of inappropriate behaviour during the #MeToo movement. He gets to meet Depp after the trial, which seems like the highlight of his life. While the series is too timid to take a strong stance either in defence of or against Depp or Heard, at least it has the decency to treat these online commentators with an appropriate level of disdain. But they’re easy targets, aren’t they?

Unfortunately, the show itself is like one of those TikToks that attracted billions of views during this entire farce; videos that made fun of Heard’s testimony, and expressed solidarity towards Depp. The men and women behind these social media posts appreciated Depp’s candour when he confessed his struggles with addiction. They applauded him for having stuck to his word and not looked Heard in the eye during the proceedings. But the show doesn’t bother to investigate the circumstances that could lead two people to develop such vindictiveness towards each other. This wasn’t an obscure case; the show should ideally have offered more to the viewer than what they already know.

Briefly, right at the end, Depp v Heard suggests that the trial might have been coloured by the rather unpleasant treatment that Heard was subjected to online, and more worryingly, that the discourse might have been fuelled by bots. But this is mentioned almost as an afterthought, whereas a more astute documentarian would’ve recognised that this, in fact, is the real story. Depp v Heard is so beholden to the Netflix true-crime template that it’s almost as if the filmmakers themselves are terrified of being hauled to court if they deviate from it. Cooper previously took a similarly deplorable stance in her documentary The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, which approached its tragic subject like a paparazzo to a drunk celebrity. One could imagine executives salivating at the very thought of putting Depp v Heard out as soon as possible, without realising, of course, that they are no different from the vultures that picked on the carcass of this story as it emitted a death rattle before the entire world.

Depp v Heard
Director – Emma Cooper
Rating – 2/5