Sweet Bobby
5.0/5
Critic Rating
How much do you know about the person you love? Sweet Bobby is the #1 chart-topping, award-winning investigative series in search of the world's most sophisticated catfisher. Listen to the full six-part series, and bonus episodes today. For the premium Tortoise listening experience, curated by our journalists, download the free Tortoise audio app. For early and ad-free access to all our investigative series and daily and weekly shows, subscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts.If you’d like to further support slow journalism and help us build a different kind of newsroom, do consider donating to Tortoise at tortoisemedia.com/support-us. Your con...
Critic Reviews
Score: 5
Titi Talabi • TitiTalabi.com • Mar 17, 2023
"A gripping cautionary tale for the internet age. I found this series compelling despite Kirat’s sometimes mind-boggling naivety, because I felt a great deal of sympathy for her and believed she was wronged by someone who appeared to have gotten away with it."
Score: 5
Mara Davis • Paste Magazine • Dec 19, 2022
"The reveal is absolutely unexpected and wild. Most importantly, Sweet Bobby looks into why there are few consequences for people who commit this kind of online psychological warfare."
Score: 5
Chanel Dubofsky • Mashable • Nov 12, 2022
"While the fact that Assi's catfisher was a family member is shocking, knowing that going in doesn't take away from the experience of listening. Sweet Bobby isn't only a story about being scammed, it's a story of communities and their norms, victim blaming, and the question of whether or not justice is ever really achievable."
Score: 5
Ammar Kalia • The Guardian • Sep 8, 2022
"Sweet Bobby’s mix of investigative revelations and online dating scenarios many of us can relate to makes it a deeply engaging listen."
Score: 4.8
Kat Rooney • PodcastReview.org • Feb 23, 2022
"The story is long and labyrinthine, requiring lots of background and explanation, which Mostrous painstakingly provides. The dynamic that develops between Kirat and Mostrous is one of the most compelling elements of Sweet Bobby. Mostrous’s gentle but persistent desire to get to know Kirat and to understand her experience, even when he struggles to, makes for a sympathetic and relatable vantage point from which to process the psychological complexity of the story. We still end up pretty much where we started: knowing that Kirat was severely wronged, and eventually finding out by whom, but without the satisfaction of any meaningful accountability...in the process of searching for those answers, Mostrous makes his listeners almost as eager as he is for the truth."
Score: 5
Brendan F. Newnam • Audioli • Feb 18, 2022
"Kirat is an exceptional subject. She is poised and compelling—even if her actions sometimes make you want to bang your head against a lamp post. Mostrous and his team have the knack for knowing which illuminating details to keep in and which confusing ones to cut. The result is a crisply written pod that clocks in and satisfies at a lean six episodes."
Score: 5
Louise Blain • Games Radar • Feb 11, 2022
"Sweet Bobby is officially one of the strangest and most disturbing of scams because of its lack of a desire for money but control instead. And it comes with some of the most jaw-dropping true crime moments since The Jinx. "
Score: 5
Lizzy Steiner • Crime Reads • Feb 4, 2022
"Every so often, a true-crime podcast comes along that absolutely boggles my mind, causing me to rethink everything I think I know about, well, everything. For me, Sweet Bobby, Tortoise Media’s twisted tale of a years-long catfishing scam, was that podcast. This is not—and I repeat not—your typical catfishing expedition. It’s waaay crazier than any episode of Catfish: The TV Show I’ve ever seen..."
Score: 5
Francesca Specter • Glamour • Jan 18, 2022
"For fans of Serial, this podcast is a must. Produced by British slow news platform Tortoise Media, Sweet Bobby is a true crime meets catfish expose podcast that's gripping a million-plus listeners globally. The show's eye-catching artwork, with a patchwork-style image of different faces, is a testament to all the different characters “Bobby” made up."
Score: 4.5
Anna Leszkiewicz • New Statesman • Jan 12, 2022
"This tale of catfishing promises to be the latest in a long line of salacious, whiplash-inducing true crime podcasts – and it delivers...to provide the podcast with all the requisite twists and turns, key details are held back, some until the final moments of the series. At the end, some questions remain unanswered. And, like many true crime sagas that largely rest on the compelling testimony of a single witness, there are nagging ethical questions that are, for the most part, left unaddressed. …"
Score: 5
Maybelle Morgan • Refinery29 • Jan 5, 2022
"...it’s your turn to be riveted by the twisted catfishing saga. It’s seriously warped and there are twists at every turn."
Score: 5
Julie Bindel • The Guardian • Jan 2, 2022
"...breathtaking extent of the con was exposed as a result of Assi’s angry determination. She remains the very opposite of the stereotype of a naive victim – she is razor sharp, witty and has an easy charm."
Score: 5
Thomas Adam Curry • Another Mag • Dec 24, 2021
"...it’s binge-it-in-one-sitting gripping...it’s a slow burn romance at first, then things take a bizarre and mind-boggling turn. Completely unpausable."
Score: 5
Hannah Verdier • The Guardian • Dec 24, 2021
"This initially shocking, consistently riveting series chronicles one such outrageous deception...disturbing and distinctly modern criminal activity."
Score: 5
Deborah Linton • Vogue • Dec 12, 2021
"...a remarkable and cautionary modern-day fable, is packaged into the utterly compelling podcast...frank and thorough way in which it investigates, exposes and confronts the horrifying realities of catfishing, a term that exists in the pop culture lexicon as a dating app prank or a fig leaf for those too embarrassed to reveal themselves..."
Score: 5
Hannah Tomes • The Spectator • Dec 11, 2021
"In a storytelling masterclass Alexi Mostrous walks the listener through an extraordinary case of catfishing. Mostrous is a gifted and empathetic storyteller: he knows how, when, and the amount of information to give the listener at any one time. Kirat’s voice cracking as she recounts the moment she realised she’d lost the past decade of her life to a fantasy is almost unbearable to hear. I feel no shame in saying it brought me to tears."
Score: 5
Rory Cashin • Joe (Ireland) • Nov 15, 2021
"Previously, we've had the likes of Serial, In the Dark, Up and Vanished, My Favourite Murder, Dirty John and more besides, and now Sweet Bobby can comfortably rank alongside those. As each episode arrives, the popularity of the show has increased, with the twists and turns throughout the story so far having listeners (including this one) literally gasping throughout."
Score: 5
Fiona Sturges • Financial Times • Nov 7, 2021
"Sweet Bobby isn’t your regular true crime podcast. For starters, there’s no corpse, which is both a rarity and a relief. This is an extraordinary story that is made even more powerful by Mostrous’s empathetic and wide-ranging reporting."
Score: 5
Miranda Sawyer • The Guardian • Oct 13, 2021
"...gripping tale of complex online catfishery. It is mad, this show, and I found myself shouting at the air on occasion, frustrated that Kirat didn’t just cut all ties with this online idiot. But then I’m an impatient, suspicious person. Despite my frustration, Sweet Bobby is a show I will definitely follow until the end. Fake Bobby has pulled me in too…"
