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Since the true-crime explosion a decade ago – kickstarted by Netflix’s Making a Murderer – audiences have been fed a steady small-screen diet of cold-case killings, catfishing scams and creepy cults. And, after years of varying results, Netflix’s latest show, A Toxic Love Story – which recounts how a California couple framed an innocent woman for stalking, intimidation and recruiting men from Craigslist to rape her ex’s new wife – is being billed as a return to true-crime form. But when it comes to similar shows worth your viewing time, what else is up there?
Here’s a selection of the genre’s 25 standout shows and where to watch them – which, let’s face it, is mainly Netflix. Let the boggle-eyed bingeing begin.
OJ: Made in America (2016)
Disney+
This ESPN-produced five-parter, which won an Oscar and an Emmy, is the definitive account of the fairytale rise and steep fall of the former NFL running back OJ Simpson. It chronicles the buildup to and fallout from the 1995 trial at which Simpson was accused (and acquitted) of the brutal murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. A stunning state-of-the-nation study of race, gender and celebrity.
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (2015-24)
Sky/Now (UK), HBO Max (UK/US/Australia), Foxtel Now (Australia)
An oldie but a goodie. The HBO series remains groundbreaking for reasons we won’t spoil. The film-maker Andrew Jarecki follows Durst, a billionaire New York real estate heir, who is suspected of three murders across 19 years. When Durst agrees to a sit-down interview, it proves to be the biggest miscalculation of his life.
Girl in the Picture (2022)
Netflix
The director Skye Borgman, whose 2017 film Abducted in Plain Sight also merits a watch, keeps the victim front and centre in this jaw-dropper. In 1990, a young woman was found in critical condition at the side of an Oklahoma highway. What begins as an investigation into an apparent hit-and-run soon escalates into a harrowing tale of abduction, abuse and identity fraud.
The Alabama Solution (2025)
Sky/Now (UK), HBO Max (US/Australia), YouTube TV (US)
People behind bars in Alabama used contraband phones to film the footage and make the calls from which this startling documentary was largely assembled. The result of a six-year investigation by the directors Charlotte Kaufman and Andrew Jarecki (of The Jinx pedigree), it viscerally lays bare the cruelty inflicted on prisoners as they are beaten, abused and even killed by prison guards. It’s a righteous howl of protest about systemic failures.
Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist (2018)
Netflix
In 2003, Brian Wells, a pizza delivery man, walked into a Pennsylvania bank with a bomb locked around his neck and demanded $250,000 in cash. He was killed when the device detonated before cops could disarm it. The film-makers Barbara Schroeder and Trey Borzillieri unravel the conspiracy across four episodes, until a climactic revelation flips everything on its head.
Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
Prime Video (UK), HBO Max/YouTube TV (US)
It starts as a HBO film about clowns hired for children’s parties. It soon morphs into a haunting deep dive into the retired New York schoolteacher Arnold Friedman and his 18-year-old son, Jesse. In 1987, the pair were convicted of owning an extensive cache of child sexual abuse images and abusing local boys who took computing classes in their basement.
American Murder: The Family Next Door (2020)
Netflix
In 2018, a pregnant woman, Shanann Watts, and her two toddler daughters were murdered in their Colorado home by Shanann’s husband, Chris. Only days before, he had posted smiley family snaps on social media. Via text messages, home videos, Facebook reels and police bodycam footage, the director Jenny Popplewell constructs a digital portrait of domestic tragedy.
Mommy Dead and Dearest (2017)
HBO Max (UK, US, Australia), Foxtel Now (Australia)
The stranger-than-fiction story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard. From birth, the Missouri girl was in and out of hospital, diagnosed with all manner of debilitating diseases. She used a wheelchair and was tube-fed and shaven-headed due to cancer. Or so everyone thought. When Gypsy Rose learned the truth, she murdered her mother, Clauddine. This compelling film interviews her in prison. She has since been released on parole.
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish (2025)
Netflix
A true-crime phenomenon that doesn’t involve murder. Just don’t Google it first or you may ruin the head-spinning twist. This cleverly crafted film from Skye Borgman (Girl in the Picture) follows a teen couple in small-town Michigan who are relentlessly cyberbullied by an anonymous caller. A community is torn apart by finger-pointing before the culprit is unmasked. Cue your jaw hitting the floor.
The Keepers (2017)
Netflix
The unsolved murder in 1969 of a nun called Catherine Cesnik is the gateway into a panoramic exposé of endemic abuse at the all-girls school in Baltimore where she taught. Was Sister Cathy killed by a priest when she tried to blow the whistle? This searing seven-parter gives voice to victims, while the lead investigators aren’t journalists but two retired former pupils, working from their kitchen tables.
One Night in Idaho: The College Murders (2025)
Prime Video
Those who had followed the tragic case were agog last summer when Bryan Kohberger, accused of fatally stabbing four university housemates in 2022, took a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. Directors Liz Garbus and Matthew Galkin rushed to update their forensic four-parter, which follows not just the investigation but the impact of social media sleuths. A second season is in the works.
Making a Murderer (2015-18)
Netflix
Along with The Jinx, which was released months earlier, this is the one that began the true-crime boom. The directors Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos spent a decade immersed in the case of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, Avery’s teenage nephew and alleged accomplice, to build a genre-defining masterpiece. Hard-hitting and heartbreaking, it sparked national outrage and a presidential petition demanding justice.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (2020)
HBO Max (UK, US, Australia), YouTube TV (US), Foxtel Now (Australia)
The crime author Michelle McNamara spent years obsessively hunting the Golden State Killer – a nocturnal home invader responsible for at least 50 rapes and 13 murders in California in the 1970s and 1980s. This HBO series from Liz Garbus (One Night in Idaho) weaves together the manhunt with a profile of McNamara, who died before the bogeyman was caught at last.
Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer (2025)
Netflix
Another Garbus-directed banger – less a whodunnit, more a look at how the legal system values certain lives above others. She spent nearly a decade researching the Gilgo Beach killings, in which more than a dozen women, many of them sex workers, were murdered between 1993 and 2011. Garbus shows empathy for the victims and illustrates how those left behind built a supportive community from their shared pain. In June, Rex Heuermann pleaded guilty to seven murders and admitted to an eighth; he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The Staircase (2004-18)
Netflix
When the eccentric novelist Michael Peterson called 911 in 2001 and said his wife, Kathleen, had died after drunkenly falling down the stairs of their North Carolina mansion, he was soon arrested for murder. For this Canal+ (and latterly Netflix) series, the director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade was embedded with Peterson’s defence team, capturing the courtroom drama up close as he defended the charges. In 2017, Peterson entered an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter, maintaining his innocence but agreeing there was enough evidence to result in a guilty verdict. Not to be confused with the 2022 HBO dramatisation starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette.
The Mother of All Cons (2026)
BBC iPlayer (UK), Britbox (US)
This BBC three-parter tells the devastating story of Jean O’Brien and her daughter Megan Bhari, who set up a charity for terminally ill children in 2012 after Bhari was diagnosed with a brain tumour at 13. Other parents started to question O’Brien’s claims about her daughter’s condition, while funds raised for Believe in Magic – including millions from the boyband One Direction – went unaccounted for.
Wild Wild Country (2018)
Netflix
In 1981, the utopian Rajneesh cult – led by the Indian spiritual teacher Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, AKA Osho – established itself on a ranch in rural Oregon. Three years later, its followers committed the first and biggest bioterrorist attack in US history. This mesmerising, Emmy-winning series interviews perplexed locals and Ma Anand Sheela, formerly a PA to Osho, who died unrepentant in 1990.
Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York (2023)
Sky/Now (UK), HBO Max (UK, US), YouTube TV (US), Binge (Australia)
In the early 90s, the serial killer Richard Rogers – AKA the Last Call Killer – murdered and dismembered four gay men on the east coast of the US. The case was covered by the media in a sensationalist, homophobic style, while the justice system failed the victims; Anthony Caronna’s infuriating but ultimately redemptive series humanises them at last. Each of the four episodes is dedicated to one of the men killed.
Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (2020)
Netflix
We all know the enraging story by now, but this gut-punch series about the notorious sex trafficker – based on James Patterson’s book – lays bare the human tragedy behind the headlines. The director, Lisa Bryant, hears the candid testimony of survivors, including Virginia Giuffre and Maria Farmer, along with former members of Epstein’s staff and the police who investigated his exploitative empire.
The Perfect Neighbor (2025)
Netflix
Geeta Gandbhir’s unflinching documentary investigates the fatal shooting of a Black Florida woman, Ajike Owens, by her white neighbour, Susan Louise Lorincz. Comprised mostly of police bodycam and interrogation footage, it builds into a searing indictment of community tensions, the state’s controversial “stand your ground” law and systemic racial bias.
Paradise Lost Trilogy (1996-2011)
HBO Max
In 1993, the murders and mutilation of three eight-year-old boys in Arkansas sparked a moral panic about heavy metal and satanic rituals, resulting in the wrongful arrests of three teenagers. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills remains the only docuseries for which Metallica have allowed their music to be used. Two sequels followed the case’s progress over the next 15 years.
The Vow (2020)
HBO Max (UK, US, Australia), YouTube TV (US), Spectrum (US), Foxtel Now (Australia)
Nxivm styled itself as a global self-improvement organisation. Of course, it was a cult – one that abused, blackmailed and branded its female members. Its svengali-like leader, Keith Raniere, was ultimately convicted of charges including sex trafficking and racketeering. This unsettling HBO docuseries began filming inside Nxivm years before the FBI investigated, capturing the mechanism of manipulation in action.
Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer (2021)
Netflix
Reminiscent of the Zodiac Killer in 1960s San Francisco, Richard Ramirez terrorised Los Angeles in the summer of 1985 with a string of brutal, seemingly random murders and sexual assaults. This four-parter documents his deadly rampage through the lens of the two detectives, Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno, who became consumed by the case and doggedly tracked him down.
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness (2020)
Netflix
“Hey, all you cool cats and kittens.” It’s now inextricably linked with the early months of the Covid pandemic, but if this talking-point series managed to escape you, it’s worth seeing what all the fuss was about. Investigative film-making with the pull of reality trash, it follows an eccentric Oklahoma zookeeper, Joe Exotic, who allegedly hired a hitman to kill a big-cat activist, Carole Baskin.
Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer (2019)
Netflix
A twisting, turning thriller with the kicker that it’s all too real. This three-parter beggars belief as it follows Facebook sleuths who launch an amateur investigation into online videos of kitten cruelty. The armchair detectives repeatedly express their fears that the culprit will escalate to murdering more than just pets – and are proved correct.
