Putting 4 Recent Netflix Docuseries In The Line-Up

The Line-Up: Recent Netflix Releases

I can remember a time when I wouldn’t have had any recent Netflix true-crime get past me, never mind most of the streamer’s recent offerings. Maybe it’s increased competition from other streaming services; maybe it’s me trying to triage what’s out there for you guys, so none of us is spending 6-8 hours with properties that just by-numbers a specific case; whatever’s going on, I looked at my recent-releases spreadsheet and realized, hey, it’s time to run a Line-Up on Netflix’s summer true-crime offerings before the coming week’s releases — Only Murders returning; Painkiller — take center stage. (Uh, as it were.)

What’s a Line-Up? In short, it’s that triage I mentioned: we read 10 pages or watch/listen to 10 minutes of a handful of true-crime properties, then give you a buy/sell/hold on each one. I put a bunch of new books in a Line-Up at the end of last year; today I’ll look at four docs from Netflix and advise you: watch it; save it for later on My List; or don’t bother.

The Playing Card Killer // “A playing card left at a murder scene connects a string of killings in this docuseries tracking a notorious serial killer who terrorized Spain in 2003.” The three-parter starts out predictably, with the seemingly unavoidable sizzle reel for itself: talking-head sound bites, overproduced pan-and-scans of the titular cards (which as far as I can tell are tarot cards, not Bicycle/etc. “playing cards,” so that translation choice is interesting), and so on. (For that reason, I’ve given most of the properties here 15 minutes, since here in 2023, these docuseries need until at least the credits to settle down.) The re-enactment of the first murder, lousy with lens flares, is quite painstaking…possibly to give the subtitles time to do their work, which for some viewers is perhaps another point against TPCK.