The subject of director Joe Berlinger ’s captivating, penetrating, four-part “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street” is described by one of its kinder voices as a “financial sociopath.” Later, someone just comes right out and calls him a “serial killer.” All of which may help explain our persistent obsession with the man who perpetrated the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. After so many productions, dramatic and documentary, shouldn’t we be tired of Bernie Madoff ? One might as well ask if we’re tired of Charles Manson , or Jack the Ripper. It’s certainly not violence that makes the Madoff story magnetic, although the death toll does begin to resemble the post-heist body count in “Goodfellas” after Madoff’s nearly $65 billion rip-off goes belly up in 2008. Madoff, who died in 2021, is very matter-of-fact about the crimes he committed, dispassionate, even clinical.

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