Please don’t label Tiger King as a documentary — it’s sloppy and extremely superficial reality TV

Granted, the popular Netflix series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is entertaining. It is also exploitative, hollow, and all over the place.

I was reluctant to start watching Tiger King because I’ve seen too many true crime documentary series this past couple of years just dragging on (and on) — only to be able to squeeze one or two more episodes out of them. And I get the economics: documentary makers get a bigger paycheque for a five or six-part miniseries than for a tightly edited true crime masterpiece like Capturing the Friedmans, which runs for ‘only’ an hour and a half. But in the end, though, I often felt duped.

Tiger King is, unfortunately, no exception. Which is strange, because you absolutely get the impression there is enough good stuff here for a seven-episode documentary series. But its focus is all over the place (i.e. non-existent), and it often feels more like watching a sloppy and extremely superficial reality TV show than an in-depth documentary.

It’s like the whole thing was financed by Giphy and the meme department at Reddit