Netflix Documentaries We Watched While Under Quarantine

Originally appeared in New Yorker, April 2020

“Unlikely Animal Friends with Benefits”

“‘He Also Tipped Reasonably Well’: Wringing the Last Feel-Good Drops Out of Mr. Rogers”

“Aging Men with Ponytails Speak Rhapsodically About Some Dead Session Drummer”

“Robert Durst: The Untold Belches”

“You’re Smart for Hating That Politician: An Algorithmically Generated Confirmation-Bias Documentary”

“The Adult Clown Whose Dad Was Somehow the Creepy One”

“It Wasn’t All Bad: Meatless Mondays at Jonestown”

“Tiger King 2: Big-Fanged Bloody Bloopers”

“Approaching Everest: Actually, Base Camp Is Good Enough”

“Bastards at the Gate: The Story of Baseball’s Craziest Ticket-Takers”

“Michael Pollan’s Let’s Walk Around the Food Court”

“Medical Miracles 3: My Spleen Is a Ball of Snakes”

“Some Extra Photos of JonBenét Ramsey We Just Unearthed, Set to Eerie Music”

“Whatever It Takes: The Wit and Wisdom of the Fyre Festival Evian Blow-Job Guy”

“Fantastic Drone Footage 4: Two Wolves Eat a Discarded Hoagie”

“Outrageous Sexual Fetishists in Their Messy Bedrooms”

“Scientology Takes Another Beating”

“A Turd in the Hot Tub: Horror Stories from DoubleTree Cleaning Staff”

“I Filmed Myself Pulling Apart This Old Cuckoo Clock”

“Charles Manson: The Hamburg Years”

“The Secret Life of People Who Pretend to Be Chimps”

“ESPN 30 for 30: That Night Tommy Lasorda Ate Twenty-four Hotdogs”

“The Dark Side of the Franklin Mint”

“Who Killed Leaping John? The Ultimate Frisbee Doping Scandal”

“Jiro Dreams of the ihop Build-Your-Own-Pancake Combo”

“Dads Who Watch a Ton of Nazi Docs”

“Ted Bundy: America’s Yummiest Serial Killer”

“Michael Moore Accomplishes Nothing”

“The Plant-Based Food Revolution That Will Transform the Way You Eat for Nearly Two Weeks”

“Old Cranks Making Weird Eye Contact: An Errol Morris Omnibus”

“I Thought That’d Be Harder: The Civil War’s Most Bloodless Battle”

“R-O-I-D: The Gorilla Hormone Scandal That Rocked the National Spelling Bee”

“More Than Just a Serial Killer: John Wayne Gacy’s Unparalleled Clowning and Tumbler Skills”

“Periodontal Disease Me! Morgan Spurlock’s Year Without Flossing”

“Dogs: Pretty Stupid in the Grand Scheme of Things”

“He Stayed Fat”

“Kids Winning High-School Basketball Championships But Then Failing When It Comes to Life”

“Taylor Swift: Coached Toward a Simulacrum of Candor”

“Up from Above: The Alien-Anal-Probe Aetna Insurance Conspiracy”

“Wry Brit vs. Confused Redneck: A Travelogue”

“Bratz Dolls: My Totally Bratty Obsession, by Werner Herzog”

“American Masters: The Guy Who Invented Cheese-in-the-Crust Pizza”

“District 14: The Story of a Single Congressional Race That Will Renew Your Faith in Democracy Until the Next Time You Check Twitter”

–With Scott Jacobson, Todd Levin, Jason Roeder and Ted Travelstead

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