The B.E. Most Wanted: True-Crime Documentaries
the true crime that's worth your time
I’d like to put together an ongoing list or “chart” of the all-time classics in true crime — one for each medium. Feature documentaries, docuseries, TV movies, books, magazine articles, podcasts…hell, we can do a murder-ballads list if anyone’s into that. I might leave the polls open all year, I might make it an annual thing, I still don’t have a catchy name for it that isn’t also utterly tasteless (I just can’t bring myself to use “Number One With A Bullet,” for example) so for now it’s The B.E. Most Wanted and if someone comes up with a clever jury-prize pun we’ll discuss it in chambers. (Suggestions on the categories also perfectly welcome!)
But it’s never too early to start the nominations process, so let’s begin with true-crime documentaries — by which I mean feature-length projects that we think of as movies, not series, though it’s fine if they aired on TV. Documentary “shorts” qualify here; the Paradise Lost trilogy qualifies here; if you’re not sure, just throw it in here and I’ll cull the list later.
Your best, most important documentaries, the ones you’d put on a class syllabus or send into space on Voyager 3. Go. — SDB