Rivalling sourdough and perpetual dread as the most exhausting side effect of the early pandemic, Tiger King was Netflix snake oil. Dressed up in prestige true-crime packaging, the smash hit docuseries was a modern-day Jerry Springer Show, built upon the exploited backs of eccentrics and criminals on society’s fringes. Luckily, everyone got sick of it. Its sequel, Tiger King 2, sank without a trace last November. This hypnotically pointless eight-part dramatisation will hopefully follow suit.
Tiger King explored the stranger-than-fiction saga of Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin, flamboyant rivals in the big cat world. It was a tale as old as time: man with bad hair and a cage full of tigers is accused of abusing them by an animal rights activist, man hires assassins to take the activist out, man goes to jail and the activist goes on Dancing with the Stars. The specifics were lurid and bleak, with Exotic and Baskin linked by traumatic histories and deceased spouses and the show treating it all like the world’s most depressing carnival attraction. Baskin would end up attempting to sue Netflix, claiming she’d been betrayed as the series implied she’d potentially murdered her former husband and fed him to her big cats.
