TIP VAN DE DAG: DIRTY JOHN OP NETFLIX

Netflix, you're doing great, that should be said sometimes. I now have a luxury problem. It can also be called choice stress. Because nowadays, I need at least half an hour to decide what to watch on a Netflix night. It takes me that long to finally make a choice about what I will watch that evening. In a way, it's nice that we still have to wait for the second season of YOU and that Riverdale occasionally has inexplicable pauses in their seasons. I have time to discover new movies and series. As I already told you: luxury problem.

But that does mean that I have discovered a really nice series, namely: Dirty John. And if you have also binged season 1 of YOU  there's a good chance that this series will be to your taste as well. One small difference though: Dirty John is based on a true story. So it makes it a bit darker.

The series revolves around Debra who falls for a handsome, charming doctor. You guessed it: John. Debra herself has it all together, she is a successful designer. Her whole environment warns her about John, but Debra doesn't want to hear it. Not even when she finds out that John has been jailed for stalking and has multiple charges against him from other women. Sounds pretty familiar, right, YOU viewers? Something tells me that Dirty John is what happens if Joe continues for another twenty years, since the characters in Dirty John are around 40. And no, that's not something we would want. And then it's true... Brr.

You know the real story is grim when they made the series less intense. And it wasn't even that long ago, the ‘real’ Debra and John met during a dinner in 2014. That meeting was just two days after he was released from prison, where he was held due to a restraining order. Really a good catch. Just two months later, they decide to get married, much to the displeasure of especially Debra's daughters.

What follows are arguments, fights, stolen cars, and more and more women from John's past surfacing with the same stories. It's the kind of series where you want to shake the main character, because how can you fall for such a man? I promised myself after watching YOU and Dirty John: if one of my friends ever hooks up with such a creep, I will take action.

And that's what Debra's daughter did in the fall of 2016. John attacked her with a knife outside her apartment, but her daughter managed to defend herself and take his knife away. He was declared brain dead in the hospital the next day and died some time later. I never thought I would say this, about the dead nothing but good of course, but oh my god, what a creep this guy was.

And creeps do it in series so surprisingly well, because no matter how bad the real John Meehan was, this series is addictively thrilling. For the sensitive souls: maybe don't watch it alone, at night and in the dark. Or make sure you have a tough cuddle buddy to protect you. I definitely needed that.

Written by: Wieke Veenboer