In this piece · 7 sections+
If you only watch one true crime show this year, make it Mindhunter. It's two seasons of Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany sitting across from real serial killers in the late '70s, asking polite questions while the FBI invents the field of criminal profiling in real time. It's slow. It's quiet. The dialogue does ninety percent of the work and David Fincher directs like he's defusing a bomb. It got cancelled before it could finish, which is its own crime, but the twenty episodes that exist are the high-water mark for the genre. Everything else on this list is measured against it.
Now. The rest of true crime is a swamp. Netflix figured out around 2015 that you could film a guy mumbling about his missing wife for ten hours and people would watch it instead of going outside, and we have not recovered. Half of what gets greenlit is a podcast with B-roll. The other half is a docuseries where the filmmaker is sleeping with the suspect. I've waded through it so you don't have to. Twelve picks, ranked, with bail-early tests so you don't waste a Saturday on something that turns into a real estate dispute by episode four.
Tier 1: Watch These First
Mindhunter (2017, 2 seasons, Netflix)
Premise: FBI agents interview serial killers to understand them. Start here: Season 1, Episode 2 — the Ed Kemper interview. If that scene doesn't grab you, nothing on this list will. Who'll love it: anyone who liked Zodiac, anyone who reads. Who'll bounce: people who need a body every twenty minutes. Time: 19 episodes × 50 min, roughly a long week. Status: ended (effectively cancelled — Fincher said the budget killed it, which is what you say when you don't want to fight HR). The Kemper actor, Cameron Britton, does more with a folding chair and a calm voice than most shows do with a season. This is the one.
The Jinx (2015, 2 seasons, HBO Max)
Premise: Filmmaker interviews a real estate heir suspected of murder. Start here: Season 1, Episode 1, and do not Google anything. Who'll love it: anyone who's ever yelled at a TV. Who'll bounce: people who want a tidy resolution; this gets weirder, not cleaner. Time: 12 episodes × 45 min, two weekends. Status: ended. The finale of season one contains a piece of audio that broke the genre — every documentarian since has been chasing that hot mic and none of them have caught it. Skip the recaps. The second season is fine but the first is the artifact.
The Staircase (2004, 1 season, Netflix)
Premise: A novelist's wife dies on the stairs. Did he? Start here: Episode 1, no skipping. Who'll love it: patient viewers, lawyers, anyone who liked Making a Murderer but wished it had a brain. Who'll bounce: people allergic to French filmmakers and ambiguity. Time: 13 episodes × 45 min, a weekend. Status: ended (this is the original docuseries, not the bad HBO scripted version with Colin Firth — avoid that one, it has an owl theory that makes you feel insane). The defense attorney, David Rudolf, is the most charismatic person ever filmed in a courtroom by accident.
Wild Wild Country (2018, 1 season, Netflix)
Premise: A cult takes over an Oregon town in the '80s. Start here: Episode 1. By minute twenty you're in. Who'll love it: people who think the truth is always weirder. Who'll bounce: anyone who wants a clear villain — there are about nine. Time: 6 episodes × 65 min, a Saturday. Status: ended, limited series. Technically this is true crime by way of Frontline, but the bioterror attack and the immigration fraud and Sheela on a TV news set saying things you can't repeat make this the most rewatchable thing on the list. It's a documentary that plays like a thriller because the people are insane.
Tier 2: Worth Your Time
Making a Murderer (2015, 2 seasons, Netflix)
Premise: A man freed by DNA evidence is charged again. Start here: Season 1, Episode 1 — the original ten-parter is the one that mattered. Who'll love it: people who want to be furious for a week. Who'll bounce: anyone who's heard enough about Steven Avery for one lifetime, which is fair. Time: 20 episodes × 60 min, a real commitment. Status: ended. Season two is mostly lawyers filing paperwork, which is what real criminal defense looks like and also why nobody finished it. Watch the first season and call it.
The Keepers (2017, 1 season, Netflix)
Premise: Two grandmas investigate a nun's murder and a coverup. Start here: Episode 1. Who'll love it: anyone who liked Spotlight. Who'll bounce: people who can't handle abuse storylines — this one goes there, deliberately. Time: 7 episodes × 55 min, a weekend. Status: ended. The reason this one works while a hundred copycats don't is that the investigators are former students of the murdered nun, and they are better at this than the actual police were. It's quietly devastating and never sensational, which in this genre is a miracle.
Tiger King (2020, 2 seasons, Netflix)
Premise: Big cat owners try to murder each other. Start here: Season 1, Episode 1. Who'll love it: people who want chaos. Who'll bounce: anyone looking for a coherent moral universe. Time: 13 episodes × 45 min, a weekend if you can stomach it. Status: ended. I'm putting this here because you'll watch it anyway and I'd rather you know the truth, which is that the first three episodes are genuinely great unhinged television and everything after that is the producers realizing they have a hit and stretching taffy. Bail after the murder-for-hire plot. Pretend the rest doesn't exist.
Don't F**k With Cats (2019, 1 season, Netflix)
Premise: Internet sleuths hunt a man who hurts animals online. Start here: Episode 1, but content warning is real — the cat stuff is offscreen but described. Who'll love it: people who liked Catfish but with stakes. Who'll bounce: literally anyone with a pet. Time: 3 episodes × 65 min, an evening. Status: ended, limited. The reason this one makes the list is the third episode pivots into a meditation on whether the internet detectives created the killer they were chasing, which is a question the genre normally refuses to ask about itself.
Tier 3: Lesser-Known Picks (This Is Where You Win)
The Vow (2020, 2 seasons, HBO Max)
Premise: Insiders document the NXIVM cult from inside. Start here: Season 1, Episode 1 — but if you want the express lane, watch HBO's Seduced instead, which is the same story told in four episodes by one of the women who escaped. Who'll love it: Wild Wild Country fans, anyone interested in coercion. Who'll bounce: people who need bodies; this is psychological crime, not violent. Time: 18 episodes × 60 min, or watch Seduced for 4 × 50. Status: ended. The Vow is bloated. Seduced is sharper. Most people don't know the second exists, and that's the pick — watch Seduced and you've gotten 80 percent of the value in a quarter of the time.
The Confession Tapes (2017, 2 seasons, Netflix)
Premise: Coerced confessions, anthology format, real cases. Start here: Season 1, Episode 1 ("True East"). Who'll love it: anyone who watched Making a Murderer and wanted more cases like it. Who'll bounce: people who want a single narrative thread. Time: 13 episodes × 50 min, but anthology — bail anytime. Status: ended. Nobody talks about this one and it's better than half the Netflix front page. Each episode is a different case, each one shows you a different way the system breaks a person until they confess to something they didn't do. The Reid Technique segments alone are the most useful thing on this list.
Long Shot (2017, 1 season, Netflix)
Premise: A baseball game accidentally clears a murder suspect. Start here: It's one episode. Who'll love it: people short on time who still want a true crime fix. Who'll bounce: nobody — it's 40 minutes. Time: 1 episode × 40 min, an after-dinner watch. Status: ended (short film). This is a 40-minute Netflix doc about a Dodgers game that became an alibi, and it's better than entire eight-part series. The genre rewards economy and almost nobody practices it.
I'll Be Gone in the Dark (2020, 1 season, HBO Max)
Premise: A writer hunts the Golden State Killer; she dies before he's caught. Start here: Episode 1. Who'll love it: people who read the book of the same name, people who liked Mindhunter's tone. Who'll bounce: anyone who wants the killer to be the main character — this is about the woman chasing him, and it's better for it. Time: 6 episodes × 60 min, a Saturday. Status: ended. Michelle McNamara died working on this case. The doc treats her death and her work as the actual center of gravity, which is the right call. It's the rare true crime show that makes the obsession itself the subject.
A Quick Word on Why the Genre Looks Like This
True crime got commodified the second Netflix realized a six-part docuseries costs less than one episode of prestige drama and pulls similar numbers. So now every streamer has a content farm pumping out a show a month about a husband who killed a wife, and the good ones are buried under fifty bad ones with the same color grade and the same droning synth score. The genre isn't dying — it's drowning. The picks above are the ones that haven't drowned yet. If you want to support better, watch the older stuff that took three years to make instead of the new stuff that took six weeks.
FAQ
Is Mindhunter coming back?
Probably not. David Fincher has said the show was too expensive to justify the audience size, and Netflix moved on. He's hinted at finishing the story as films, which is the kind of thing executives say when they want to seem open without committing to anything. Treat the existing two seasons as a complete-ish thing and you'll be happier.
What's the best true crime show for someone who hates true crime?
Wild Wild Country. It plays like a thriller, the people are unbelievable, and it's only six episodes. If your partner refuses to watch "murder shows," this is the one that wins them over because the crimes are the smallest part of the story.
Is The Staircase scripted version on HBO worth watching?
No. Watch the original 2004 documentary on Netflix. The HBO version with Colin Firth has good performances but invents an owl-attack theory and turns a real, ongoing legal nightmare into a prestige soap. The original doc has access HBO can't manufacture and is shorter.
What about Dahmer, Dahmer, and the other Dahmers?
Skip them. The Ryan Murphy series is a dramatization that the victims' families publicly asked Netflix not to make, and Netflix made it anyway because it tested well. If you want the actual story, the documentary Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes is also on Netflix and uses his real interview audio. Less stylized, more honest, no Evan Peters cheekbones.
What to Watch Tonight
If you have two hours: episodes 1 and 2 of Mindhunter. If you have one hour: the Long Shot doc on Netflix. If you've already seen those: start The Keepers, episode one. Don't open Netflix and scroll. That's how they get you. Pick one of the three above, hit play, and be the rare person this week who actually watched something good.
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