Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Never Let Him Go’ On Hulu, A Docuseries About A Man’s 35-Year Quest To Prove His Brother Was Murdered

Never Let Him Go, directed by Jeff Dupre and Jacob Hickey, is a four-part docuseries now streaming on Hulu that examines how Steve Johnson spent over 30 years insisting that his younger brother Scott, whose naked body was found at the bottom of a cliff near Sydney in December, 1988, was murdered. His quest came to fruition in 2022, when Scott White pled guilty to manslaughter charges.

NEVER LET HIM GO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The skyline of Syndey, Australia. We then see reporters setting up outside the Supreme Court of New South Wales.

The Gist: Through archival footage, especially family video shot by Steve in the late 1980s, we learn that the Johnson family — Scott, Steve and their older sister Terry — were very close, having been born to a young mother who raised them on her own after a divorce. Scott and Steve were exceedingly smart, and both were shy and reserved through high school. Scott ended up at Caltech studying mathematics, eventually making his way to Cambridge, then the Australian National University in Canberra.

During that time, Scott fell in love with a fellow grad student and came out to his family. This is in the early ’80s, where being publicly out was a lot more risky, due to a rash of violence against gays. Of course, the AIDS epidemic also started during that time, as Steve’s wife Rosemarie points out.

In Australia, Scott found a growing gay bar scene in Sydney, three hours away from the capital. But in December, 1988, the 27-year-old was found naked at the bottom of a cliff in the nearby town of Manly. The constable who was called to the scene and wrote up the case didn’t find any evidence that pointed away from suicide, and Scott’s partner mentioned in interviews that Scott had considered killing himself in previous months, something Steve and his sisters — including their half-sister Becca, who grew close to Scott when she was a kid — refused to believe.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Never Let Him Go brought to mind Last Call: When A Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York, mostly because of how the Johnson case turned out parallels the kind of violence the LGBTQ community faced pretty much all over the planet in the ’70s and ’80s.

Our Take: Because of the length of Steve Johnson’s quest to prove that his brother was killed instead of taking his own life, Never Let Him Go is one of the few docuseries that can justify its four-hour length. But the show’s directors wisely weave Scott Johnson’s story in with the initial phases of the investigation into his death. When at first it seems like Steve Johnson looks like a grieving brother who just can’t be convinced his brother took his own life, it quickly becomes apparent that there’s more to the story.

There was a 13-year period, between 1988 and 2001, when the case was more or less cold, and Rosemarie admitted that she and Steve spent the time living their lives and raising their family. We were a bit curious to see what might have been roiling in Steve’s mind during that period; he certainly never forgot about what happened to his brother, but it seems like whatever effort he made during that time was stonewalled by law enforcement in New South Wales.

The emotions involved in how Johnson kept the hope for justice alive, however, are readily apparent during his interviews, and the memories of Scott build a picture of a shy, brilliant guy who could have gone onto an amazing career if he hadn’t been killed.

The three other episodes will examine how the deaths of other gay men in the same location causes law enforcement to reopen all the cases, and just what the extent of violence against gays in Sydney was during that time period. There’s also going to be tension between Johnson and the police, in yet another example of how law enforcement had blinders on when dealing with then-marginalized communities. But the first episode goes over more than enough of the basics of Scott Johnson’s case to persuade us to want to watch more.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Steve Johnson says he traded the mystery of why Scott would jump for “the mystery of who killed him and why.”

Sleeper Star: Rosemarie Torres Johnson seemed to be a source of calm for Scott, and she grew close to his brother-in-law by the time he died. Her emotions when talking about Scott all these years later are palpable.

Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Never Let Him Go is an emotional, respectful, measured take on the Scott Johnson case and the forces that contributed to his killer not being found for over 30 years.

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.