‘Have you ever used anal beads while playing chess?’ This ridiculous question was asked by Piers Morgan to chess wonder kid Hans Niemann who found himself caught up in a cheating scandal. So begins the fascinating documentary ‘Chess Mates’ out now on Netflix. For many, chess was seen as a game reserved for intellectuals and…
Caroline Muirhead is an extraordinary woman though not in the way most stories would lead you to expect. This three-part limited series on Netflix (each episode running around an hour) begins like a modern love story before quickly descending into something far darker and more unsettling. At 29, Caroline meets Scottish farmer Sandy McKellar on Tinder, just…
“I have to betray them to save them.” Those words, spoken by Christine Marie, sit at the heart of this compelling and deeply upsetting four-part Netflix documentary series about the continued abuse within Utah’s Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints community. Christine and her husband, Tolga Katas, move slowly and carefully into the heart of the…
I haven’t seen many Michael Jackson documentaries before, and when he died I was too young to really understand everything surrounding him. I still liked his music, though, so watching this felt like filling in gaps I never properly explored. The title of this three-part BBC documentary raises a bigger question: whose story is it really telling? Is it…
After watching the BAFTAs, it’s hard to ignore how nuanced and complicated this situation really is. There was a strong and justified condemnation of the slur itself but when Alan Cumming read a quickly prepared statement it all felt a bit rushed and thoughtless. He said at the end, “we apologised if you were offended,” it…
I normally love a Louis Theroux documentary. His interview style is usually brilliant: he asks a quiet question, gives someone just enough rope, and then waits while they slowly tie themselves in knots on camera. It’s awkward, patient, and oddly polite and more often than not it works. Part of the frustration with Louis Theroux: Inside…
There have been countless documentaries about Michael Jackson a superstar whose meteoric rise collapsed in the 2000s amid allegations of child sexual abuse that followed him until his death in 2009. This four-part Channel 4 documentary focuses on the events leading up to the 2005 trial for molesting Gavin Arvizo, a 13-year-old boy a case in which Jackson was…
Netflix has built a formidable reputation for true-crime documentaries that linger in the public consciousness long after the credits roll, and its output continues to outshine much of the competition. Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart, arriving at the start of 2026, is another unsettling but ultimately inspiring addition to that catalogue. The documentary revisits the horrific events of…
“It really was an adventure of a lifetime.” Those are the final words spoken in One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5, and they land with the kind of weight only a decade-long journey can earn. I started watching Stranger Things when I was 15 years old. Now I’m 25, and like the cast who grew…
When I look back at the films that mean the most to me, certain names come up again and again. These directors may work in completely different genres, but they all create stories that stay with me in one way or another. Christopher Nolan Interstellar, Oppenheimer, Inception, Dunkirk Nolan’s films were some of the first…
