Credit: Netflix

An $8 billion fraud case and a crypto empire in pieces and Sam Bankman-Fried serving 25 years in prison… damn Netflix, you picked quite a corporate scandal for The Altruists. FTX went from one of the biggest names in crypto to a federal criminal case, and the more you get into who knew what, the crazier the territory you enter.

Then Caroline Ellison enters the picture, and she ran Alameda Research while she dated Bankman-Fried. This lady later became one of the prosecution’s key witnesses against him, so forget some dry story about spreadsheets; the woman sitting at the centre of the business was also involved with the man running the whole show. Come on, Netflix barely needs to touch the dial.

Julia Garner plays Ellison, Anthony Boyle takes on Bankman-Fried, and The Altruists is putting their relationship in the middle and not just a footnote beneath the fraud case. Love stories mixed with frauds have always received immense appreciation from viewers, and this is a big one. Creator Graham Moore and co-showrunner Jacqueline Hoyt want to get at what happened between them when the cameras were nowhere near.

And yep, Netflix is calling the whole thing a toxic love story inspired by real fraud. Eight episodes release this November, which is just a month away, so it can’t get more exciting.

What is The Altruists about?

Sam and Caroline begin with this belief that money can be used to do good, which sounds noble enough, right? But then FTX explodes into one of the biggest financial scandals of the decade, and that philosophy seems to be just a hoax.

The series follows their rise inside the crypto world while the relationship between them gets more and more complicated with the business. Moore has said he wanted to understand how people who thought they were doing good ended up involved in crimes on this scale.

How much comes from the real FTX scandal?

Loads, but hold your horses: The Altruists is drama, not a documentary. The series draws from New York Magazine reporting, while Moore and Hoyt are using scripted scenes to explore what happened behind the curtain, especially what happened between Sam and Caroline when nobody else was in the room.

The climax is no mystery, either. Bankman-Fried got 25 years, while Ellison received a two-year sentence after cooperating with prosecutors, so the suspense is not about who gets caught… It is about watching things lead to the scam of the decade.

Who else is in The Altruists?

Garner and Boyle are front and centre, but Netflix has put enough work into the supporting cast, with Karan Soni as Nishad Singh and Alex Lawther as Sam Trabucco, while Matt Rife plays Ryan Salame. Jennifer Grey plays Caroline’s mother, with Paul Reiser chiming in as Bankman-Fried’s father.

Did you know Garner had only two recordings of Ellison to work from, while Boyle had a mountain of Bankman-Fried footage? Moore did not want impersonations, thank God, because eight episodes of celebrity mimicry would become, you know, boring.

When does The Altruists come out?

November 19th: That’s the day you want to mark. All eight episodes, straight to Netflix. So yeah, maybe give self-control a rest on the 19th because trust us, once you’re in, you might not want to stop.