The three part docuseries Depp V. Heard, directed by Emma Cooper, clips together the testimony of Amber Heard and Johnny Depp during their 2022 defamation trial and mixes it with other witness testimony, as well as reactions from the many, many social media armchair legal analysts that closely watched the six-week trial.

Opening Shot: A few lines of text explain that, in 2022’s defamation lawsuit between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, the two sides testified two weeks apart, but the testimony has been edited to show the testimony side-by-side.

The Gist: Depp initially sued Heard after she wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post where she said she was a victim of domestic violence. She countersued, claiming Depp’s legal team defamed her by saying her abuse claims were a hoax. The trial took place in Fairfax County, Virginia; the location’s only link to the case is that the Post has servers and a printing press there.

We get some brief clips of the opening statements from the litigants’ lawyers, then we see Depp’s and Heard’s testimony. But instead of hearing one, then the other, Cooper has edited the testimony together. We hear Heard talk about the abuse Depp inflicted on her, and the video she shot of a drunken Depp slamming kitchen cabinet doors and drinking a “mega pint” of wine. Then we cut to Depp, who says he has never touched Heard or any woman.

Interspersed with the former married couple’s testimony is reactions from various social media commentators, most notably a YouTuber in a Deadpool mask calling himself Darth News. It seemed that most of the commentators were in Depp’s corner, claiming that Heard was acting on the stand. A few commentators in Heard’s corner decry that, as usual, she’s automatically seen as “unhinged” because she’s a woman.

Much of the first episode was devoted to the “poop incident,” where Depp’s people found what they thought was human feces on the bed in the couple’s Los Angeles penthouse. Heard claims it was one of their two tiny dogs who left the poop, and that it was a prank gone bad.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We haven’t seen a docuseries that’s quite in this format before, with no talking heads at all, just trial footage interspersed with social media commentary. This certainly could have been an episode of Trial By Media, however.

Our Take: We were only tangentially engrossed in the hoopla surrounding the Depp-Heard trial last year; we heard about the big reveals, like the whole poop to-do, but didn’t really care all that much about the rest of it. So when Depp V. Heard concentrated on the testimony of the two litigants, each giving their very differing views of their brief marriage, we were riveted.

But then we switched to the noise from social media, and we just got angry. We get what Cooper was getting at by showing the memes, the TikToks, the YouTube videos where people basically did live commentary on the trial like they were on Court TV. The trial captured the attention of people on social media in the same way the O.J. Simpson trial captured the attention of the TV-watching public in 1995. We also get why Cooper showed the social media commentary — most of which was by men — leaning heavily in Depp’s favor, because that’s how it was.

What got us angry is that there was so much of it. The trial itself was a classic case of “who do you believe?”, as some of the more measured analysts shown talked about. Anyone watching the trial with no skin in the game could see that both Depp’s and Heard’s testimony had issues, and that, at the very least, there was verbal abuse from both sides during their marriage.

However, most of the online commenters were on one side or the other going in, and their commentary was colored by that. Why show a guy like Darth News, for instance, when you know he was in the tank for Depp? Because he actually was in the gallery during the trial? Why automatically show these commenters accuse Heard of being “crazy”, which is about as old an accusation against women as it gets in domestic violence cases?

There’s no context given to the social media frenzy, the commentary, or even the case itself. Which might be what Cooper and the series’ producers was aiming for. But it makes for a very disjointed viewing experience that draws you in with the trial footage and how it’s edited, then kicks you right back out with the mostly idiotic social media commentary that added nothing but noise to the whole trial.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: After hearing some audio of Heard being verbally abusive with Depp, and testimony from Depp that says he was also a victim of domestic violence, we see Darth News in his Deadpool mask say, “Yeah… Amber’s fucked.”

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to the editors who sat with Cooper to edit the trial and the inane social media commentary together. It must not have been an easy task.

Most Pilot-y Line: A TikToker asks “why do we have such crazy access to this trial?”, referring to the fact that cameras were allowed by the judge. That question should have been asked over 30 years ago, when cameras were first allowed in the courtroom and TV coverage of big trials became common. That ship has long since sailed.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re recommending Depp V. Heard for the edited-together trial footage, especially the back-and-forth testimony from Depp and Heard themselves. The rest of it is just irritating, but not irritating enough to keep us from watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.