Catching up with true crime TV
The latest true crime headlines dealing with the small screen
the true crime that's worth your time
The past couple days have brought a bounty of TV-related true crime news. From upcoming shows to prominent figures who face trouble, we’ve got it all! So let’s get to it. But before I do, remember that there’s still time to vote in October’s review poll. Right now, Keeper Of The Ashes: The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders (aka Kristin Chenoweth is in the Woods, but isn’t in In The Woods, ha ha) is in the lead, if you want it to remain there, go vote in its support — and if you want to unseat it, you know what to do.
Paid subscribers will get Sarah’s review at the end of the month, yet another reason to support Best Evidence if you haven’t already. Thank you! — EB
Showtime’s docuseries on Phil Spector’s slaying of Lana Clarkson will drop next month. There’s something about the logline that Showtime appended to the trailer for Spector that doesn’t sit quite right with me:
Through the lens of a notorious crime and the media hysteria following the case of Phil Spector, this major four-part documentary series uncovers the hidden layers to tell the story both of Lana Clarkson and the man who was convicted of her murder. SPECTOR re-examines the life of one of the most important, yet mysterious, cultural figures of the 21st century in a way that has never been done before.
I don’t know that it’s “media hysteria” to provide significant reporting on a high-profile homicide case, and as I recall from reporting around the fatal 2003 shooting, it was fairly par for the course — coverage of Gabby Petito’s disappearance, for example, seemed much more fraught and sloppily frantic, for example. (Also, not nuts about the use of a gender-loaded word like “hysteria” when it comes to a man killing a woman.)
The description on Showtime’s site also gives me pause:
SHOWTIME Documentary Films will air SPECTOR, a four-part documentary series produced by Lightbox from directors Sheena M. Joyce and Don Argott (Framing John Delorean, Believer) about enigmatic, legendary music producer Phil Spector and what happened on the fateful night of February 3, 2003 when actress Lana Clarkson was shot dead in his mansion.
That the convicted killer gets “enigmatic, legendary” and the victim gets “actress” as adjectives is a choice, and even more of a choice is the apparent effort to cast doubt on the person who pulled the trigger. It’s not “why Phil Spector shot Lana Clarkson,” it’s “what happened on the fateful night of February 3, 2003 when actress Lana Clarkson was shot dead in his mansion.”
Marketing doesn’t always reflect the final product, of course, but there’s certainly a Spector-sympathetic edge to how this series is being presented to potential viewers. I sure do wonder why! We’ll have a chance to figure out why that is on November 4, when all four episodes of the show drop on Showtime’s streaming app; people who prefer to watch “live” must wait until November 6. — EB
Hip Hop Homicides has dropped its first trailer. If you’ve forgotten about Hip Hop Homicides, that’s understandable: we haven’t talked about it here since it was announced in January, and part of me was wondering if it had gotten dropped in one of this year’s revenue-driven streaming platform content shuffles.
But I shouldn’t have worried, as the eight-episode show just dropped its trailer, with producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson front-and-center — he arguably overshadows host Van Lathan, who I recognized from TMZ and who has a delightful Twitter presence.
According to co-producer Mona Scott-Young, the show has an investigative edge. Per Deadline, she said via what’s clearly a press release that “50 and I created this show in response to the disturbing number of murders in hip-hop. With this boots-on-the-ground investigative series, we will look to closely examine and explore leads surrounding these cases with the hope of finally providing loved ones with answers.”
We don’t have a lineup of cases yet, but the premiere episode is about Pop Smoke (real name: Bashar Barakah Jackson), who was killed in a 2020 home invasion while his first studio album (al produced by 50 Cent) was still in production. The circumstances of his death were, indeed, head scratching: As ABC News reported at the time, Jackson was Airbnb-ing a Hollywood Hills mansion owned by Real Housewife Teddi Mellencamp (the daughter of decidedly non-hip-hop musician John Mellencamp) when he was killed; police initially suggested the Crips might be involved by conceding it could have been a robbery turned violent.
Five people were arrested and charged in the slaying, and the case continues to wind its way through the SoCal court system. It’s unclear, given this, what answers are left for Hip Hop Homicides to uncover. That episode drops on November 3 on WEtv, and will be available the Monday following on ALLBLK, a streaming service from AMC. Subsequent episodes will follow that decidedly odd Thursday/Monday schedule, an AMC press release notes. — EB
Hulu is set to adapt Under the Bridge. Unlike the previous two properties mentioned here, this is a dramatic take on Rebecca Godfrey’s book about the British Columbia slaying of fourteen-year-old Reena Virk.
This is a particularly nasty case, and it’s hard to imagine how (per The Hollywood Reporter) screenwriter Quinn Shephard (an actress and director) will make it palatable for streaming audiences. Virk was, as you might recall, beaten, tortured and killed by a group of teens she thought were her friends in 1997. It’s challenging stuff, and as I recall, the book is well-constructed but remarkably depressing, with a layer of dark “girl world” stuff that makes it an especially painful read.
Godfrey spoke with Interview about her book in 2019 (that’s when it was re-issued; it was first published in 2005) saying then that the case
was interesting because it was all such a big media story. The Canadian media in particular took this tact of these kids being monsters, and there was a lot of talk about gangs, even though they were suburban kids. As a result, a lot of the teenagers were really sort of abandoned by the adults in their lives. Another sort of thing at the time—it was the late 90s—there was that influence of hip-hop. There was this whole conversation about hip-hop, because they were all into N.W.A and DMX, and they had this romantic fantasy of being gangsters that was completely detached from their reality. It was just what they saw on television, it was romantic to them.
…
I have a daughter now, so I find the subject material much more painful and difficult to think about. When I was younger, I was more easily fascinated by it, but now I find it quite troubling. I’ve sort of forgotten how dark that world was, and thinking of all the places I’d gone, I just couldn’t imagine now saying to my daughter, “I’m going to a maximum security, all-male prison.”
Godfrey had me ’til that last bit, as I think daughters benefit from mothers that demonstrate bravery, but her words about how distressing the case is remain true. That said, there are notes of hope to the Virk case, like Suman Virk’s remarkable forgiveness of her daughter’s killer, but that happened long after the book’s publication so it’s unclear how it might be worked in.
There isn’s an air date or casting info this early in the game, but this is one we’ll be keeping an eye out for. — EB
Things are getting pretty bumpy for Jeanine Pirro. The prosecutor turned true-crime pundit turned Fox News conspiracy theorist has been specifically named in a new filing in the $1.6 billion defamation case filed against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems, NPR reports.
Pirro, who was basically ubiquitous as a true-crime talking head in the early aughts, took a sharp turn to the publicly alt-right in recent years, trading her televised speculation on high-profile cases for a job spreading widely-debunked misinformation on matters including the 2020 election and the role the voting machine company played. Snip:
In documents filed Thursday in a Delaware courthouse, the voting tech company explicitly identified Pirro, a former Westchester County district attorney and New York state judge, as central to its case. Its filings argue that by questioning Pirro, Dominion can meet the key legal threshold of proving Fox showed "actual malice" when it broadcast false claims the firm sought to throw the race to Joe Biden over then-President Donald Trump.
The case is at a pre-trial phase of the litigation, where both sides are able to obtain testimony and documentary evidence from key figures in a process called "discovery."
"Discovery has revealed that...Fox News host Jeanine Pirro help[ed] spread the verifiably false yet devastating lies against Dominion," the company's lawyers wrote in the legal documents … “Ms. Pirro's conduct and role in the spread of this disinformation lies at the heart of Dominion's claims."
At present, Pirro isn’t actually being sued by Dominion, but she did appear for a deposition in August. Now Dominion is asking “the court to compel Fox to bring Pirro back” for more questions. According to NPR, “she remains at the heart of the Dominion drama, which has a trial date of next April.” — EB
Trust Dateline to do it backwards. “Mystery Solved: ‘Dateline’ Finds Path From TV to Podcast Stardom,” reads the headline in the Sunday New York Times, a phrase I had to read twice for it to compute. Is the Times celebrating a longstanding true-crime TV show’s move — arguably, a step down — into podcasting? Yes, it is.
Maybe that’s because it didn’t think too much of Dateline in the first place. Describing the show as “the long-in-the-tooth and occasionally overlooked television newsmagazine from NBC,” much of this article seems to express wide-eyed surprise that a crack team of folks who’ve created gripping crime content for 30 fucking years can also churn out a solid podcast.
I’m not exaggerating, look:
What “Dateline” has done so well for so long on television — true crime, told with relish and deep reporting — appears to have met a moment in an entirely new medium.
“At a time where it is so hard for new television programs to break through, or for new brands to be established, the fact that ours seems to have renewed life? It’s great,” said Liz Cole, the executive producer of “Dateline,” who helps oversee both the TV show and the podcasts.
Of course, true crime and podcasts go hand in hand. The Hulu comedy “Only Murders in the Building” is explicitly a parody of the ubiquitousness of the genre. And there are plenty of other podcasts on the charts that center on bloody mysteries, with titles like “Morbid,” “Crime Junkie” and “My Favorite Murder.”
Still, the “Dateline” podcasts are helping the genre reach a new audience. The median age of viewers of the Friday night edition of “Dateline” is 63, according to Nielsen. On Spotify, the median age of a “Dateline” podcast listener is 41, according to data from Chartable, which was supplied by NBC News.
Maybe this Times article is…not for me, but for someone less familiar with TV, podcasts, crime or media. You know, for people who only get their news from print copies of the NYT delivered to their door, or something. Anyway, it’s funny to read this arguably sophisticated outlet tackle these arguably commonly-known matters with such a tourist’s eye. Next up at the NYT: did you know they sell cars where you can unlock them with the push of a button? — EB
Wednesday on Best Evidence: Celebs and true crime.
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