5 Reasons Everyone's Talking About The Netflix Series Bad Vegan

Netflix has released a new series that’s looking to be your next binge watch- Bad Vegan focuses across four episodes on the story of Sarma Melngailis, a vegan chef who gained fame in New York City for her vegan meal creations. However, the new documentary examines across four episodes how the business she was built was dismantled.

She was defrauded by Anthony Strangis, who she had developed a relationship with, who convinced her to give him millions of dollars, and the two were eventually arrested in 2016. The series has been out for a month, but if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s 5 reasons why the show is worth a watch.

The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

One of the best reasons for watching Bad Vegan is that it’s such a bizarre story in many ways. Netflix has produced a multitude of documentaries and dramas about frauds and scams over the years, many of which are outlandish, but there’s a lot of odd quirks in the Bad Vegan story that make it hugely watchable. For one, it’s pretty extraordinary to see how such a successful food empire was brought down by a bad relationship. Strangis’ claims and boasts to Sarma were sometimes downright ludicrous- such as a claim he could make her dog immortal.

The Unexpected Celebrity Cameos

While her food ventures ended up winning praise for notable figures in America like radio host Howard Stern, actress Alicia Silverstone and former President Bill Clinton, another particularly weird and intriguing aspect about the series is that Sarma is documented to have had a close friendship with none other than SNL veteran and 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin. It sort of makes sense given that they were both based in New York, and Baldwin was a fan of one her restaurants, Pure Food and Wine, but its still quite bizarre. She even considered proposing to him, before he then ended up with his current wife Hilaria, whom he met at Sarma’s restaurant. Baldwin also got Sarma into the world of Twitter, and encouraged her to get her dog, Leon.

Anthony Strangis Makes For A Bizarre Villain

Once on Twitter thanks to the SNL star’s encouragement, Sarma eventually started interacting with a man named Shane Fox, who seemed to know Baldwin personally. However, Fox seemed to be an odd character and hiding something, never telling her much about himself, and it was claimed that this was because he was a black ops agent and needed to keep a low profile. He in fact was not called Shane Fox, rather his name was Anthony Strangis, someone who had previously had an encounter with the law for impersonating a police officer fraudulently. Eventually, he started asking Sarma for money, and she complied, but the amounts that they were talking about began to rocket.

You Feel For Sarma Melngailis

Throughout the series, it’s hard not to pity Sarma Melngailis for the ordeal she was put through. While Anthony Strangis’ claims seemed outlandish, the way that he built up these claims and began to emotionally black mail her into giving money to him makes you feel sympathy at how she was abused and exploited for financial gain. Not only that, but the fact that Strangis took over her food empire, caused her restaurants to go underwater with workers walking out, and destroying her life’s work in the process, you end up feeling devastated for the way something that was so carefully constructed and praised ended up completely falling apart.

It’s A Fairly Quick Watch

One of the best things about the show is that it’s a pretty quick watch and easy to binge- at only 4 episodes ranging from 45-60 minutes in length, the whole thing is the same length as a particularly long film. But the series whizzes along, and you could watch it across two nights. While the story of Anna Sorokin in Inventing Anna clocked in at around ten hours (though that was a drama), Bad Vegan tells an equally bizarre and crazy story of fraud and a hell of a lot of money in a third of that time. The show is a compelling watch, and one that’s worth your time to sink into, made more alluring by the celebrities that were pulled into Melngailis, and Strangis’ orbit.