Next on Netflix : The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist

If you are craving a salacious look into a messy relationship, a college line-backers ruined career and a classic case of catfishing with predictably devastating results, look no further than Netflix’s new docuseries Untold : The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist.

Manti Te’o was hardly ever out of the news in the 2011-2012 college football season. Not only was he challenging the longest consecutive game streak record and making history, but his personal life was also full of heart-breaking tragedy.  

Born in Laie, Hawaii, to a traditional religious family of Samoan ancestry, Te’o was involved in charity from a young age, excelling at teamwork and showed great leadership skills early in his sports career. His exceptional talent took him to prestigious University of Notre Dame.

In September 2012, media reported Te’o’s beloved grandma passed away, followed less than 24 hours later by his girlfriend. Lennay Kekuna, a Stamford student, succumbed to leukaemia, detected after a car accident. Te’o was devastated but lined out, dedicating his season to both.

Lennay Kekuna left behind no obituary when she died, strange for a popular young college student dating one of the best line-backers in history, just a vague shadowy online persona. Soon doubts began to swirl as to her very existence.   

Advancing the personal narrative, Tim Burke and Jack Dickey of sports blog Deadspin describe breaking the story following an anonymous tip off, and their incredulity that the behemoths of mainstream media like NYT and ESPN carried out zero background checks!

Through heartfelt testimony and justification from victim AND perpetrator, The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist uncovers the web of lies that threatened to ruin Te’o’s professional career and landed him on a Most Hated Sport Star list, after disgraced Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong.

The term Catfish didn’t make it to the dictionary until 2014, in part due to Manti Te’o’s very public debacle. The devout Mormon reminds viewers he grew up in a trusting, caring environment, in a community that valued the 3 pillars of family, faith and football above all else.

In cases of catfishing its often the victim who shoulders the blame, Manti Te’o’s honest revelations as he details the dignity and the dollars he lost as a result of the hoax which saw Kekuna very sick, sadly dead, and then mysteriously reborn again.

Untold : The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist will have you shaking your head in complex confusion.

Watching Te’o work through his despair side by side with sincere admissions of guilt by the catfish-er makes for an honest, thought-provoking story that lingers long after it ends.