‘Bad Host’: Sky, Fifth Season & Lightbox Teaming on Premium Doc Series About Couchsurfing Predator

Max Goldbart
·2 min read

Sky, Fifth Season and Lightbox are combining on a premium documentary series telling the extraordinary story of a group of young women from across the globe who join forces to bring down a predatory Italian policeman.

Based on the hit podcast, Verified, Bad Host: Hunting the Couchsurfing Predator is being produced in association with Scripps. Produced by Simon and Jonathan Chinn’s Lightbox, the project will be one of Fifth Season’s flagship projects at Mipcom Cannes.

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Bad Host tells the Tinder Swindler-esque story of how a group of remarkable young women, unbeknownst to each other, were all victims of a predator who lured them to stay with him using Couchsurfing, a website where travellers can find trustworthy hosts to put them up in their homes for free. Tracing each other through the internet, the young women united and battled for six years, often in the face of indifference in their home countries, to bring him to justice.

“Lightbox are renowned for crafting compelling, noisy documentaries, with real purpose at their heart,” said Sky Director of Documentaries Poppy Dixon. “Working hand in hand with the incredible women and journalists at the centre of this story, they have created a series which absolutely delivers on a victim-led true crime investigation, which will have audiences gripped throughout.”

Bad Host: Hunting the Couchsurfing Predator is produced by Lightbox in association with Scripps for Sky Documentaries. It is directed by Lottie Gammon, the series producers are Joe John and Lydia Delmonte, the line producer is Samantha Tilyard, the production executive is Polly Allen and Suzanne Lavery, Simon Chinn and Jonathan Chinn are executive producers for Lightbox.  The executive producers for Sky are Poppy Dixon and Hayley Reynolds and the executive producers for Scripps are Ellen Weiss, Susanne Reber and Peter Clowney.

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