Based on the novel, Catfish, the completed award winning pilot of Catfish—
a 6-Episode Limited Series.
Pilot script and series bible available upon request.
TITLE: CATFISH
CREATED BY: Elle Carling (Based on her novel, Catfish)
FORMAT: One Hour Limited Series (6 Episodes) | Psychological Thriller
LOGLINE: A lonely ER nurse, living under a stolen identity to escape a traumatic past, finds her carefully constructed life unraveling when her escalating online deceptions and a virtual romance with a man closer than she thinks threaten to expose her buried secrets.
COMPS: The Undoing meets Fleabag with the coastal suspense of Big Little Lies.
WHY THIS STORY NOW:
In an era of digital curation, we are all "catfishing" to some degree—editing our lives to appear more successful, more loved, and more whole. Catfish peels back the glossy veneer of modern dating to explore the raw, uncomfortable reality of female loneliness and the lengths one woman will go to for a sense of agency. It’s a razor-sharp, provocative journey that asks: in a world where you can be anyone, how do you find the courage to be yourself?
SERIES REGULARS:
JEWEL / MELISSA SNOW (38): An empathetic ER nurse by day and a master manipulator by night. Haunted by her role in her mother’s death and living under a dead friend's identity, she uses elaborate online personas (Chelsea, Raquel, Estelle, Amanda) to feel a sense of control. She is bitingly witty and deeply fractured, using a laptop screen as both a weapon and a shield.
SAM DREYFUSS (40): Jewel’s kind, observant neighbor. He represents the genuine connection Jewel craves but fears. However, Sam harbors his own secrets; seeking his own escape from loneliness, he unknowingly enters Jewel’s digital web under a fake profile, creating a dangerous feedback loop of proximity and deception.
CATE (36): Jewel’s best friend—a chic, high-society woman who appears to "have it all" but struggles with kleptomania and a need for validation. She is Jewel’s enabler and confidante, but her own compulsions threaten to bring their shared house of cards tumbling down.
JAKE (40): Jewel’s narcissistic ex-boyfriend. His callous "ghosting" and the discovery of his deceptive online life serve as the catalyst for Jewel’s descent into catfishing. He is the original "hook" that Jewel cannot stop trying to reel in.
TONE & VOICE:
The series is a sophisticated blend of prestige suspense and dark, cynical humor. Much like a David E. Kelley production, the dialogue is sharp and character-driven, featuring a "biting and confessional" voice-over from Jewel that grants the audience intimate access to her unreliable perspective. The visual style contrasts the sterile, chaotic reality of the hospital with the warm, performative glow of high-end Malibu bars and the cool, blue light of late-night scrolling.
THE PILOT: "SLIDING DOORS"
We open at Mastro’s in Malibu, where Jewel is executing a real-time con on a handsome man named KYLE. She isn’t there as herself; she’s there to "intercept" a date Kyle was supposed to have with her persona, "Estelle."
Flashbacks reveal the inciting incident: Jewel’s devastating breakup with JAKE. When she finds him back on the dating app weConnect just days later, she creates CHELSEA—a sexy, confident brunette—to bait him into telling the truth. Through his online match Jewel learns why he ended their relationship. Although sobering, the thrill of the manipulation is intoxicating.
Back in the present, Jewel’s con on Kyle backfires spectacularly. When she unmasks herself as "Estelle," he is repulsed rather than charmed, branding her "batshit crazy." Publicly humiliated, Jewel spirals. She flees to her apartment, shunning a rare moment of genuine warmth from Sam to retreat into a shoebox of traumatic memories surrounding her mother’s death in hospice. In a defiant act of reinvention, she births a new persona, RAQUEL, and matches again with Jake. The pilot ends on a staggering cliffhanger: Jake tells Raquel he “called off an engagement last year”—a revelation that effectively erases Jewel’s entire history with him. Shattered by this ultimate betrayal, Jewel retreats deeper into the digital shadows of weConnect—a safer harbor where she can own the narrative and control the story the physical world keeps trying to steal from her.
THE SERIES ARC:
As the season progresses, Jewel’s deceptions grow more complex and incendiary:
· The Virtual Romance: Jewel (as "Amanda") begins a deep, emotional connection with a man named "Max." Unbeknownst to her, Max is actually her neighbor, Sam. Their real-world proximity and virtual intimacy create a ticking clock of inevitable exposure.
· The Shared Lie: Jewel helps Cate "catfish" her own cheating boyfriend, blurring the lines between sisterhood and psychological warfare.
· The Past Resurfaces: When the hunt for Jake’s secrets leads Jewel to his pregnant wife, Tracey, she launches a campaign of digital sabotage. However, the escalating fallout threatens to breach her own firewall, unmasking the truth of her stolen identity and the calculated fraud she now lives.
· Stolen Identity: A mysterious figure from the real Jewel’s past, AUNT CAROL, arrives in L.A. searching for her long-forgotten niece. This unearths the backstory of the deadly fire that Melissa Snow (our Jewel) allegedly died in twenty years ago.
THE CLIMAX & BEYOND:
The walls close in when Benji—a digital persona created by Sam, a tech entrepreneur—grows suspicious of "Amanda" and threatens to trace her via her IP address. Pushed to a breaking point, Jewel surreptitiously accepts a life-changing inheritance from a deceased patient and vanishes to Paris, burning her life down once again. In her wake, the arrival of Aunt Carol at her empty apartment forces Sam and Cate to exhume the contents of her memory box. They piece together a macabre, false narrative, branding Jewel a cold-blooded killer who murdered her mother, her patient, and her doppelganger, the real Jewel Parker. The ultimate tragedy lies in the gap between their dark conclusions and Jewel’s nuanced reality: a woman defined by acts of mercy, desperate opportunism, and a lonely quest for a clean slate.
The finale fast-forwards to a quiet Luxembourg bar. When a handsome bartender asks to hear her "story," Jewel—now sleek, stylish, and unrecognizable with ombre pink and blue hair—holds his gaze and delivers a practiced, flawless lie: "I don't have a story. I’m just Maeve from Wales." It is a haunting, open-ended conclusion that leaves the audience questioning: has she finally outrun the ghosts of her past, or has she just started a brand-new game with a fresh set of lures?
