Warning: this documentary has themes of suicide and domestic violence.
In 2020, British TV presenter Caroline Flack took her own life two months after being prosecuted for the alleged assault of her boyfriend. If you were in the UK at that time, it felt as though there was a news article about it every single day – but we weren’t necessarily being told the truth.
Five years later, Disney+ and Hulu have teamed up with Caroline’s mother, Christine Flack, to make the new docuseries Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth about what actually happened. Channel 4 initially told the story of her life and death back in 2021, but four years later, Christine has dedicated her time to compiling her own independent research.
In a nutshell, this sheds a new light on the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the police, daily newspapers and social media users, and how each failed to do the best by Caroline. The actions of one faction made another worse, and the cycle continued on.
Frankly, I’m astonished by how little I really knew about something I was seeing play out every single day. But what’s even more revealing is that Caroline began planning this documentary only a few days before she died – something Christine decided to honor.
Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth sheds new light on the national allegations we think we know
For those unfamiliar with Caroline, it’s safe to say she was TV’s golden girl. Host of Love Island UK, The X Factor and a formidable contestant of Strictly Come Dancing, her well-known roles only scratch the surface of the work she put in for decades.
All of this was lost after a fight with her boyfriend prompted the police to ask CPS to overturn their initial ruling of a caution. Instead, Caroline was charged with assault, despite boyfriend Lewis Burton repeatedly calling for any prosecution to be dropped.
After the Magistrates hearing, the case never made it to court – Caroline took her own life before it started. In Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth, Christine takes us through the many causes that led up to that moment, and I guarantee that your perceptions of what we’ve been told will be completely changed.
Disney was kind enough to invite me to an advance event for the documentary, but sitting in an all-media screening – an industry that had treated Caroline so badly just to make money – was incredibly uncomfortable. I found I asked myself some difficult questions, sitting in silent shock a few hours after I’d watched the new two-parter.
I checked through my X/Twitter history. Had I contributed absentmindedly to a Caroline pile-on without thinking? Had I made a reference to ‘lampgate’ (media wrongly reported that Caroline had hit Lewis with a lamp)?
I never had, and I knew that deep down. But the fact I second-guessed myself shows the power of social and traditional media combined.
That sudden level of self-doubt I felt was perfectly summed up by Caroline’s older sister Lizzie. Having no access to Caroline during the media storm after the Magistrates hearing, Lizzie began believing the media narrative about her sister, turning her into someone she no longer recognized.
If an altered CPS verdict that came from a changeover in police reporting, which led to factually incorrect reporting in the media, could change the mind of Caroline’s own sister, did anybody else stand a chance?
Not only do I want Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth to make viewers question their own relationship with social media and sharing parasocial opinions, but I want the new documentary to make Caroline’s truth widely known.
It’s been five years, but inaccuracies about her case, ones that we’ve come to believe are bonafide facts, are still being reported. If the two-parter doesn’t hammer home a duty of care we all have to Caroline, Christine and anybody else who will find themselves under such intense public scrutiny in the future, I don’t know what will.
Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth is streaming on Disney+ (UK, Australia) and Hulu (US) now.
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