In the mid aughts, no show captured the attention of viewers quite like To Catch a Predator. The Dateline NBC show, which ran from 2004-2008, aimed to catch and expose sexual predators through undercover sting operations. Now, the show’s complicated legacy is being dissected in a new documentary, Predators, premiering Monday, December 8, 2025, on Paramount+.
Hosted by Chris Hansen, the show used the following format: decoys impersonating minors would have online conversations with adult men to arrange in-person encounters; when the men showed up at the sting house to presumably engage in sexual contact with the minor, Chris Hansen would appear from another room to question the perpetrator and get law enforcement involved. Everything was captured on hidden cameras.
The show ran for four seasons, exposing elementary school teachers, religious leaders, firefighters, doctors, and other well-respected community members as sexual predators. The ratings were great, but the ethics were … iffy. Viewers immediately had questions about the moral and legal implications of the sting operations.
Everything came crashing down in 2008, when a suspected “predator,” Kaufman County assistant district attorney Bill Conradt, died by suicide when NBC and local police arrived at his home to serve him with a search warrant. The incident thrust the show’s ethics into the spotlight, questioning the journalistic integrity of the production and raising concerns about the show’s relationship with law enforcement.
Predators, which was acquired by MTV Documentary Films, scrutinizes the Dateline NBC series. The award-winning documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and is now available to stream on Paramount+.
In a released statement, Paramount+ described the documentary: “Dateline’s To Catch a Predator was a popular television show designed to hunt down child predators and lure them to a film set, where they would be interviewed and eventually arrested. Predators is a thought-provoking exploration of the fascinating rise and staggering fall of the show, and the true-crime genre it helped create.”
