The devil works hard but television networks work harder.

How else to explain the fact that the year’s biggest news stories are already in production at various different companies? There’s not one but two Anna Delvey miniseries currently being written for Netflix and HBO. There’s already been an Elizabeth Holmes documentary at HBO, with a movie to follow. And Lifetime is hard at work on both a Jeffrey Epstein documentary and a TV movie about the infamous college admissions scandal in which both Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were charged with fraudulently securing college places for their children.

The news about the Epstein documentary comes less than a month after the financier was arrested on federal charges of alleged sex trafficking of minors in both Florida and New York. According to Lifetime, Epstein’s documentary will be a four-part series in the same vein as the network’s Emmy-nominated Surviving R Kelly. Epstein’s documentary will follow the same formula as Lifetime’s series on Kelly, right down to the name: Surviving Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein isn’t the only news event that Lifetime is tackling. The network is also producing a fictionalised recreation of the college admissions scandal for television.

The TV movie will be called, unsurprisingly, College Admissions Scandal, and will focus on two privileged and connected mothers who are obsessed with getting their children into the best universities to the exclusion of all else. “When charismatic college admissions consultant Rick Singer offers a side door into the institutions of their dreams,” the movie’s synopsis reads, “they willingly partake with visions of coveted acceptance letters in their heads.”

It’s easy to assume that the two mothers in the lead roles will be Huffman and Loughlin, who were both charged in the real college admissions scandal. But because the TV movie will be fictionalised they may not be referenced by name. Some 34 parents were charged as part of the FBI’s fraud case, so Lifetime really has a wealth of potential characters to draw from.

If you’re still craving real life drama on the television, Annapurna TV is producing a college admissions scandal miniseries called Accepted. Hollywood, if you’re listening, if you could get Laura Dern for the role of Huffman and Connie Britton for Loughlin, that would be fantastic.  

Surviving Jeffrey Epstein and College Admissions Scandal will air on Lifetime in the US, with details in the UK to be announced. 

Images: Getty