Real-life serial killer inspired Netflix series ‘Woman of the Hour’

Top line

The story of a 1970s serial killer and the woman who chooses him as a date after the pair are cast on the TV game show “The Dating Game” will be brought to the small screen next month in Netflix’s “Woman of the Hour,” starring Anna Kendrick, who makes her directorial debut.

Tony Hale as Ed, Anna Kendrick as Sheryl Bradshaw and Daniel Zovatto as Rodney Alcala in “The Woman with the … (+) Time.”

Leah Gallo/Netflix

Key facts

On Tuesday, Netflix released the first trailer for “Woman of the Hour,” which stars Kendrick and Daniel Zovatto as Sheryl Bradshaw and Rodney Alcala. They appear in the clip on a heart-pounding date that never happened in real life.

In real life, Bradshaw and Alcala, who had already committed several murders prior to appearing on the show but managed to evade the police, were cast in the series, and although she later refused to date him because she found him “creepy”, Alcala initially gains the young woman’s interest.

Criminal profiler Pat Brown later told CNN that Bradshaw’s rejection may have intensified the psychopathic tendencies that led Alcala to behave in the way he did until he was arrested in 1979 and convicted of seven murders (though he may have committed more than 100).

“Woman of the Hour” — which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year without the support of its director and star due to the SAG-AFTRA strike — uses Bradshaw’s experiences with Alcala on “The Dating Game” to tell the larger story of what authorities say was a years-long series of rapes and murders in the Los Angeles area and beyond.

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What to look for

“Woman of the Hour” will premiere on Netflix on October 18.

A large number

90%. That’s how much critics rated the film on Rotten Tomatoes after 50 reviews, including those who called it “undeniably powerful” and praised how it “cleverly weaves into the narrative the many ways women are conditioned to endure men.”

Key general information

Alcala’s life has been chronicled several times, first in a 2017 biopic titled “Dating Game Killer” on Investigation Discovery and then in a three-part documentary in 2022. A native of San Antonio, Texas, he was discharged from the military amid allegations of sexual assault and a teenage breakdown. He was cast in “The Dating Game,” a gig that would later catapult him to fame, in 1978 after serving time on two separate child molestation cases and assaulting a 13-year-old girl. He moved across the country several times, charming and later brutalizing women from coast to coast, largely avoiding the police along the way. Alcala was eventually arrested in 1979 and convicted of the deaths of 23-year-old Cornelia Crilley (1971), 23-year-old Ellen Jane Hover (1977), 18-year-old Jill Barcomb (1977), 27-year-old Georgia Wixted (1977), 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb (1978), 12-year-old Robin Samsoe (1979), and 21-year-old Jill Parenteau (1979), although investigators suspected or linked him to other murders in California, Washington, New York, New Hampshire, and Arizona. He died on death row of natural causes in 2021. He was 77 years old.

What we don’t know

A lot about the real Sheryl Bradshaw. Aside from her appearance on “The Dating Game” as the episode’s bachelorette, she was not a public figure. In the film, she is portrayed as an aspiring actress who struggles with Hollywood’s desire to portray women of the era as mindless sex symbols.

Key quote

“On the surface, Rodney Alcala was a handsome, charming, intelligent young man who wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Orange County Assistant District Attorney Matt Murphy told “48 Hours” in 2018. “The woman who won a date with him backed out, saying she found him ‘creepy.’ Her instincts probably saved her life. Others wouldn’t have been so lucky.”