New true crime documentaries on streaming services aren’t exactly newsworthy these days. Streamers have made it easy to fulfill a craving for crime content with lots of documentaries and docuseries about scammers, swindlers, kidnappers and killers. However, there are some recent highlights of the genre that are worth seeking out.
First up, acclaimed documentarian Nanfu Wang breaks into the true crime docuseries space with the HBO miniseries “Mind Over Murder,” which premiered on June 20, and will be rolling out over six weeks. Wang is the director of three Oscar-shortlisted films, the COVID-19 pandemic film “In the Same Breath,” “One Child Nation,” an intimate look at China’s one-child policy, and the harrowing portrait of Chinese activist “Hooligan Sparrow.” In “Mind Over Murder,” she turns her uniquely curious point of view toward a notorious murder in Beatrice, Nebraska, where the group of people who confessed to the murder of grandmother Helen Wilson were later exonerated.
Wang uses an interesting device to explore the details of the case, casting local actors from Beatrice in a play about the murder. The casting, rehearsal and staging of the play become a part of the process of telling the story of this confounding case, and examining the way in which storytelling is a part of both the investigative process and the ways in which we understand these events through true crime.
