Although the year 2020 has been marred with delayed seasons of a few shows, Netflix's Tiger King easily made everyone's year with it's 'stranger than life' narrative. The documentary series narrates the exploits of the outrageous, flamboyant zookeeper and convicted felon Joe Exotic on how he created his own empire of tigers in America, along with what led to his fall. Another major character is Carole Baskins, an animal conservationist who has her own share of sketchy and hypocritical behavior.
By the end of the series, one would end up taking no character's side as each has their own dark secrets, revealing how messed up humans can be. We ourselves are the real animals in the end! If you too liked Tiger King's brand of bizarre humor and drama, here are a few other documentaries that you should add to your watchlist.
Blackfish
Like the tiger business, there's a high-earning business of capturing orcas and whales. The offsprings are often separated from their parents and bred in conditions that aren't natural enough for them.
Blackfish is a BAFTA-nominated film that attempts to delve deeper into this inhuman business. After watching this well-researched documentary, viewers would think twice before cheering for a dolphin or killer whale at a Sea World-like amusement park.
Evil Genius
Brian Wells was a mysterious pizza delivery man whose death created national news in 2003. Wells had a collar attached to his neck which was eventually detonated on live television. Behind this explosion was a complicated network of bank robbery and scavenger hunts that this true-crime documentary series attempts to unravel.
Apart from uncovering the perpetrators of the crime, Evil Genius also tries to find out the truth behind Wells' involvement in the case. Was he a blameless victim or a planner of the bank robbery itself? Such questions make this four-part series binge-worthy.
Wild Wild Country
In Tiger King, Joe Exotic, Carole Baskins, and a few other characters' personas are such that they start developing a committed cult of followers. Wild Wild Country takes this a notch higher revealing the negative impact that cults can have on such followers.
Osho Rajneesh was a mysterious self-styled godman from India who founded his own city called Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, much to the dismay of the locals over there. While Osho as such might have not propagated anything negative, but his close aide Ma Sheila and a few others who seem to have been crazed with all their power and devotion.
The Pharmacist
The Pharmacist's story is one of pain and hope. When a small-town pharmacist finds his son dying in a drug-related shooting, he witnesses many other kids showing up to his shop for opioids.
This is when he realizes that the opioid epidemic is about to start in the 90s. Disillusioned by the local law enforcement, he decides to take matters in his own hands. Dan Schneider makes it his life's goal to bring his son's killer to justice and sue the pharmaceutical companies making money off teenage addiction.
Fyre
A documentary film on 'the largest party that never happened', Fyre functions as a well-made satirical look around 'hype' culture and social media in modern times. It deals with a music festival that was marketed by rapper Ja Rule on a private island in the Bahamas, complete with VIP tents, upscale music performances, and supermodels.
But when the partygoers actually flew to the island, they found out that this Fyre Music Festival was no big party. It was a big scam. Even though Hulu produced a documentary on the same subject matter, Netflix's Fyre is a funny, sarcastic (if not fully accurate) take on this phenomenon.
Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez
Just like OJ Simpson's fall from grace, Aaron Hernandez was a top-rated NFL player once. But his life went topsy turvy when he was involved in a high-profile murder case in 2013. The case further unearthed evidence linking him as a suspect for many other murders revealing a serial killer pattern.
Charged with life imprisonment, Hernandez eventually hung himself to death in his prison cell, complicating the case further. Killer Inside is a hard look at how random situations can lead to lethal encounters, making it gut-wrenching and cautionary at the same time.
The Wolfpack
The Angulos, a group of six children was confined to their houses by their overprotective parents, wary of the outside world. Their main source of education? Cinema. It's only ironic that their father's name was Oscar!
When one of the brothers decides to step out, the family's world changes as they follow suit. The Wolfpack is bizarre and thoroughly entertaining enough to grip viewers.
Three Identical Strangers
Three Identical Strangers is another tale on siblings with a troubled family that feels scripted like a taut thriller but it isn't one. A hauntingly real film, the documentary reunites three identical triplets who were separated at birth.
When they meet again, there's amusement in the air but they're still unaware of what caused their separation in the first place. The truth turns out to be pretty haunting as they were all part of a 'nature vs nurture' experiment. The documentary gets more amusing as archive footage is combined with a few bittersweet re-enacted scenes.
Beware The Slenderman
Slenderman has been a myth for quite some time, thanks to urban legends and conspiracy theories on social media. But sometimes, this hysteria can be taken too far especially if one has a history of mental illness. This chilling documentary focuses on one case where two schoolgirls planned to kill a peer in order to summon the Slenderman.
The girl survived but the incident changed the lives of everyone involved. It serves as a warning for us to not get too involved with the neverending mythos of social media conspiracies.
The Staircase
American novelist Michael Peterson was convicted of killing his second wife in a gruesome manner. But in his defense, Peterson stated that the lady died while falling off a staircase! After a constant battle of wits, the court did rule him guilty but French documentarian Jean-Xavier de Lestrade attempted to find his own truth.
The Staircase is a miniseries that commenced shooting from the time the case began in 2001. Then in 2013, Lestrade resumed production with more developments in the case and a plea that allowed Anderson to be free. The compiled version of all these findings can be streamed now on Netflix as a 13-part miniseries.