Rachel Mason’s three-part documentary about parents who put their lives online to make big money asks questions about entitlement, child safety, relationships with followers and more

Those of you who already feel that the world is too much would be best advised to stay well away from all three parts of the documentary An Update on Our Family. The family in question are the Stauffers – married couple Myka and James and their children – who were, until very recently, colossally successful family vloggers.

Director Rachel Mason’s series starts slowly, spending most of the first hour introducing the uninitiated to the world of YouTubers who specialise in filling their channels with videos of their gorgeous homes, gorgeous children and perfect lives, and to the fans who glom on to these affectless yet somehow intimate and generally wildly aspirational portraits of domestic bliss. “I was literally a part of their life every day,” says former devotee Hannah Cho. She and around 700,000 subscribers to The Stauffer Life channel watched as Myka revealed positive pregnancy tests, had babies, a miscarriage, gave house cleaning tips, appraisals of her post-partum body and altogether so much desirable content that she began to accumulate sponsorship deals and the family’s videos became the family’s (very) lucrative business.