You remember the shows that our parents would have on in the background while they were cooking dinner? The sensationalised news programmes about catching drug smugglers, the gold rush or online scammers? Or perhaps one of the most famous Dateline NBC segments to date, To Catch a Predator with Chris Hansen. Well, director Lance Oppenheim sure does. Primetime, his new A24 film, out now in American cinemas, follows the rise and fall of Hansen’s true crime programme, unravelling the tangled web of motives and interests behind a vigilante-esque broadcast. It has us reliving one of the peak eras of true crime media and got me thinking about the state of the genre today. So, why don’t you have a seat? Because we’re taking a trip down memory lane through the true crime hall of fame.
The Early Days
Most of us probably think of docuseries on Netflix when we hear ‘true crime’, but its history is much longer and contextualises the evolution of the genre. More than four hundred years ago, the first true crime publications came in the form of pamphlets passed around the literate classes, detailing society’s gory murders and crimes. They effectively functioned as a gruesome Lady Whistledown.
The real turning point came in the 20th century with narrative non-fiction writing, particularly Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. This was a seminal text in true crime, using characteristics we now see as hallmarks of the genre. Anchored in the research of a real murder, Capote takes on the perspectives of both the killers and the victims, immersing us in the story and keeping the suspense alive to the very last page, much like a docuseries would. In his writing, he also blended factual information with dramatised or reconstructed scenes, adding his own narrative to the retelling.
He planted the seeds for more subjective storytelling that captivates an audience and added a new spin to a genre that had largely focused on being as objective as possible: presenting the facts and walking away. Capote wanted readers to feel something, to lean from one side to the other, to be gripped by existential questions about crime. In Cold Blood was able to blur the lines between fact and fiction in the name of a good story. Modern true crime inherited that strategy, but now it’s pushing subjectivity further for profit.
The Broadcast Television Era
What came next is the inspiration behind Primetime: broadcasters developing true crime programmes such as To Catch a Predator, Unsolved Mysteries and Forensic Files. The list goes on. What made these shows iconic were the hosts, the speed, the investigations, the sting operations and the real footage. Hosts such as Chris Hansen acted as moral heroes, catching pedophiles and working with law enforcement to take action. Robert Stack acted as a guide to the investigations, uncovering clues and letting us play detective along with them. Each episode had standalone cases, all resolved within forty-five minutes, but sacrificed the nuance of long trials or the different points of view within a single case. This structure lasted for decades and no doubt influenced the true crime podcast world. But Netflix completely changed the framework, overhauling the format by drawing out the storylines and questioning the perspective.
The 2010s and the Dawn of Netflix
At this point, our viewing habits as consumers were changing massively with streaming platforms. From 2013 onwards, instead of releasing new episodes weekly, platforms would drop entire seasons at once, and we ate it all up, binge-watching every episode in one sitting. As if we were children who grew up in healthy-food households and finally visited the junk-food friend’s house, we couldn’t contain ourselves.
True crime shifted from standalone episodes to intricate stories, with each episode leaving you on another cliffhanger, hungry for more, until, ten hours later, you’ve finally finished and the central dramatic questions — Are they guilty? Were they framed? Where are they now? — have been resolved. Using talking-head interviews, real footage, reconstructions, specific colour grading, suspenseful pacing and more narrative storytelling, Netflix cemented its stylistic signature in these longer, more complex cases.
Making a Murderer and The Staircase
With more time also comes more nuance. Netflix’s 2015 true crime docuseries Making a Murderer explored the case from a perspective broadcast television had rarely considered meaningfully: the accused’s. Following a more documentarian approach, the series looked at Steven Avery, a man who served eighteen years in prison for a sexual assault before advances in DNA evidence exonerated him. After filing a lawsuit against the county over his wrongful conviction, he was arrested and tried again, this time for the murder of Teresa Halbach. The series follows him through the trial and conviction, and later through the appeals process. Avery maintains his innocence, stating that police corruption put him in this position. Making a Murderer doesn’t necessarily question that. Instead, it looks at Avery’s case from the perspective of systemic injustice.
This series laid the groundwork for what everyone now thinks of as the Netflix-style docuseries. So, when The Staircase came to the platform with new episodes in 2018, it’s no surprise that it shared many of the same production elements as Making a Murderer. The Staircase spans a fifteen-year production timeline as the case of Michael Peterson swept the nation. Kathleen Peterson was found dead at the bottom of a staircase, and her husband, Michael, was taken into custody as the prime suspect. The production follows his case from the point of view of him and his defence team, arguing that she fell and that he’s innocent. He was ultimately convicted of murder, but later entered an Alford plea and was released after his sentence was reduced to time served.
Both productions maintain the innocence of their subjects, tackling a very uncomfortable truth in the United States: wrongful conviction. Studies have estimated that between 2.3 and 6 per cent of the country’s prison population may be innocent — tens of thousands of people. The Staircase and Making a Murderer question the American legal system and make the audience sceptical of court proceedings. The stories themselves were unique, taking on ‘the other side’s’ perspective in a Capote-esque way that emphasises the subjectivity of the story and even criminality.
This kind of storytelling was groundbreaking for the genre: it asked us to ignore our natural allegiance to victims and sympathise with alleged perpetrators, a clear departure from broadcast television true crime. The Staircase and Making a Murderer were huge hits for the platform. The investigative journalistic practices used to find and create the stories, coupled with the focalisation, or narrative perspective, through which the shows are filmed, make for bingeable series.
Netflix found a market for a modern-day In Cold Blood, and once streaming services find an algorithm that works and brings people back for more, they stick to it. But in replicating the formula over and over again, they lost the most important parts in favour of volume and efficiency. Now we are left with a collection of true crime docuseries that all feel, look and sound the same and have become known as ‘Netflix documentaries’, delivered with a tinge of predictability and disappointment.
The Netflix Formula
What was once a revolutionary upheaval in the genre now feels stale: the format, the storytelling, the perspective. Netflix kept the same structure, colour grading, interview style, music and foreshadowing, simply repeating it to produce series where, if you know the formula, you can tell who the killer is going to be, what is going to happen and what the plot twist will be. As with any murder mystery, there’s still suspense, but with enough media literacy and critical thinking, it’s spoiled within the first episode.
The investigations that made The Staircase and Making a Murderer so riveting were, yes, the defence of alleged perpetrators, but also the research presented to us, the interviews with the suspects and their defence teams, the backstories and the incredibly long periods over which they were filmed. A good story is one that is not rushed or squeezed into an algorithmic box — it has personality, mistakes and sparks debate. It doesn’t need the wildest, most out-of-the-box theory to stun people out of their sectionals. In true crime, shock value has always been an element of the genre, but now it’s synonymous with its motives. This kind of sensationalism cemented the Netflix formula because it kept viewers watching and the money flowing. Being shocked by taboos or a disturbing new twist at the end of each episode retains viewers. Thus, we come to the Netflix blueprint: scandal over substance.
The shock factor of focusing on the perpetrator is also starting to feel old and take an ugly turn. Perhaps we’ve become so interested in the psychology and the ‘why’ behind the killer that we’ve forgotten about the victims. This can contribute to why some people become violent in the first place: they want the infamy, the notoriety, the attention, even if it is for something absolutely horrendous. To be feared, revered, marvelled at or despised — whatever the intense emotion, they want it directed towards them. It’s why we’re not supposed to sensationalise murders or give serial killers nicknames: someone sees that on the news and thinks, ‘I want people talking about me like that’ or ‘I want to be known.’ The victims become an afterthought, and the focus is on the perpetrator.
True crime series falling into this pattern could have been anticipated, though. If a killer wants infamy, they will agree to a documentary about them; they will bare all with an interviewer because they want the attention. Meanwhile, victims and their families might not agree to a production because reliving the worst moments of their lives is a harrowing, traumatising experience. So, regardless of the victims’ side, streaming platforms move forward with the story, make the series and ultimately make money, commodifying the narrative in whichever direction gets more streams.
Monster and Mindhunter
Take, for example, Netflix’s Monster, a dramatised anthology based on true events, with seasons focusing on infamous figures including Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, Ed Gein and Lizzie Borden. Family and friends of Dahmer’s victims spoke out against the show, saying that moments were fictionalised, that the show retraumatised them and that they had not been consulted during production. While the case is legally a matter of public record and showrunners don’t have to reach out to them, common etiquette surrounding murder and violence suggests this should be a priority.
But the show is not without its merits. We get to understand the psychology of a serial killer or murderer more deeply, which, whether you admit it or not, is something most humans are curious about. Abusers, rapists, paedophiles, murderers and mass shooters — all the worst humankind has to offer — are not simply born; they are also shaped by their environments. This balancing act is something few shows or docuseries have figured out. You want to understand what makes a violent criminal without delegitimising the heinous acts they committed or romanticising them.
Mindhunter, another fictionalised series about the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit, manages to come closer to this symmetry. Based on real events and people, but taking quite a few creative liberties, it follows two agents interviewing serial killers about their childhoods and pasts, and connecting those experiences to their motives. Yet the show’s storytelling never loses sight of how sick the perpetrators are. It even shows how their mindsets can become infectious, doubling down on the development of a serial killer’s psychology rather than presenting it as an innate characteristic found in a few psychotic people.
What’s Next?
Fictionalised series like these got more attention and shook up the status quo of true crime because they were able to take greater creative licence. They came with their own set of problems, but they felt fresh to audiences. Docuseries, on the other hand, haven’t had a revolutionary moment like that since Making a Murderer or The Staircase. So, what’s next for the genre?
At the moment, streaming platforms keep releasing true crime titles that follow the same stale formula. Sometimes they switch up the perspective, as with A Toxic Love Story or Maternal Instinct, but they don’t necessarily feel new and exciting in terms of developing the medium. Corporate formulas and the fear of failure in creative pursuits stagnate what the genre could become.
Max’s new true crime series A Killer Story pulls us closer to what the future of true crime might look like. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joe Sexton is contacted by a frantic Kansas couple who believe they’ve found the real murderer in a 2002 case. Rather than focus on wrongful convictions or the new suspect, though, the docuseries breaks the fourth wall and analyses the effect of true crime on its audience. The Kansas couple, pulled into their own pseudo-investigation and steadfast in their assumptions, become the subjects of Sexton’s curiosity. He flips the camera around to all of us who, in our curiosity to find the real killer and understand why they do it, become enraptured by a genre that preys on our susceptibility to sensationalism.
