Lately, I’ve been having what I call based-on-a-true story fatigue. I first used that admittedly inelegant phrase in March, when a mini-boom of shows about headlining scandals in relatively recent history premiered in the span of a month, with splashy premises that fizzled on arrival. Those shows – Hulu’s The Dropout, Netflix’s Inventing Anna, Showtime’s Super Pumped, Apple TV’s WeCrashed, Peacock’s Joe v Carole – varied in quality (The Dropout, on starring Amanda Seyfried as corporate fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, was the only one to transcend mere dramatization and balance entertainment and clarity) and were all weighted by an awkward, often tiresome relationship to truth.
Since then, the number of shows that double as Wikipedia rabbit holes have cascaded into a full true story boom. An incomplete list of shows released this spring that have turned headlines into scripted television: FX on Hulu’s Under the Banner of Heaven, Hulu’s The Girl from Plainville, Starz’s Gaslit, Showtime’s The First Lady, Hulu’s Pam & Tommy, HBO’s Winning Time, Peacock’s The Thing About Pam and HBO’s The Staircase. There’s not one but two mini-series on the 1980 axe murder of Betty Gore by her friend Candy Montgomery – Hulu’s Candy, which premiered this month and stars Jessica Biel as Montgomery, and an upcoming HBO series from Big Little Lies’ creator David E Kelley with Elizabeth Olsen.
