TikTok: Murder Gone Viral review – this documentary’s social media obsession is utterly bizarre

Two of these killers had a perverse mother-daughter dynamic that would make Freud faint. So why is this show so determined to unconvincingly pin the blame on TikTok?

What social media’s rise is doing to our society is a question for future historians. It is as yet unclear whether it has broken our brains, destroyed our social skills and led to a generation of morally bankrupt wannabe influencers, or if that fear is just part of the natural order of things, where every generation gazes suspiciously at the youth, seeing them as too wild and transgressive.

In the case of TikTok: Murder Gone Viral, the oddly punctuated title of ITV’s three-part documentary series, it puts so much emphasis on the role of TikTok for the 2022 murders of Saqib Hussain and Hashim Ijazuddin that it oversimplifies a complex tragedy. The first episode, and the only one provided for review, begins with a recreation of the 999 call that Saqib made, as he and Hashim were being “followed by two vehicles on the A46 – they’re trying to ram me off the road”, and follows the case through to September 2023, when the TikTok influencer Mahek Bukhari and her mother Ansreen, along with two others, were found guilty of their murder (three others were convicted of manslaughter). The show is composed of police footage, recreations of interviews with journalists, investigators and the victim’s families, as well as a plethora of clips from Mahek’s social media, where she went by “May B”. Ansreen was a near-constant presence, shopping and dancing with her daughter in a codependency that feels part Grey Gardens and part Toddlers & Tiaras.

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