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.
Premiering Wednesday on Netflix is the newest film from Skye Borgman, who directed the shocking Netflix hit “Abducted in Plain Sight.” Her latest film, “The Girl in the Picture,” is about a tragic death of a young mother, and the subsequent kidnapping of her son from his foster parents by her husband, a federal fugitive. As investigators look into her death and his kidnapping, questions about her identity arise, and about the decadeslong crime spree and many aliases her husband left in his wake.
“The Girl in the Picture” is a riveting mystery told through the victim’s closest friends, as well as the FBI investigators who could not shake the case, and the crime author who brought the story to a wider audience of citizen detectives. It ultimately becomes a beautifully victim-focused remembrance of this young woman who lost her identity but regained it thanks to the yearslong efforts of those whose lives she touched.
Another notable true crime series bowed on Hulu in late May, hosted by Emmy winner and Broadway legend Kristin Chenoweth, who has a personal connection to the grisly story. “Keeper of the Ashes: the Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders” details the as yet unsolved murders of three Tulsa Girl Scouts on a camping trip in 1977. Chenoweth, also a Girl Scout, was due to go on the trip but had to skip it due to illness. With her memories and this brush with death guiding her, Chenoweth walks audiences through the four-episode series, which takes a look at the lasting impact of this horrible crime on the victims' families.
Also on Netflix, “Our Father,” directed by Lucie Jourdan, is a nontraditional crime tale and twisty genetic mystery. Produced by the successful horror film studio Blumhouse, the documentary has the slick and chilling production value of a horror movie, and many of the subjects play themselves in reenactments. Jacoba Ballard discovered she had a slew of half-siblings through an at-home DNA test and in doing so, she realized that her biological father was her parents’ fertility specialist, Dr. Donald Cline, who inseminated an extensive number of patients with his own sperm. This mystery isn’t your average true crime tale of murder and mayhem, but of other actions that are incredibly sinister and insidious. There’s far more lurking underneath the surface of this bizarre story, and the newly united siblings go after their father’s secrets.
So if you’re looking for something on the dark side to cool off in the July heat, or you’re just a fan of the genre, queue up one of these true crime docs to get your fix.
———
