The 13 best documentaries on Netflix

The 13 best documentaries on Netflix

A well-made documentary film or series can be as entertaining and gripping as any piece of big budget celluloid fiction – and there’s the added bonus of it actually making you smarter to boot.

Netflix is absolutely stacked with documentaries, some of which are fantastic – and many of which are little more than schlocky trash TV.

But fear not: we’ve picked through the detritus to bring you our definitive list of the best pieces of fact-based film and TV on the streaming service.

JIM & ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND

Much of the footage that makes up this raw, funny and touching behind-the-scenes doc was only recently unsealed by Universal Pictures. Because Carrey insisted on staying in character while filming Andy Kauffman biopic Man on the Moon, he baffled, infuriated and entertained his co-stars in equal measure. It’s a fascinating insight to Carrey’s state of mind at the time, when he seemed to genuinely believe he was channeling Kauffman throughout filming.

ICARUS

Icarus is effectively two documentaries in one, with the first third of the film a kind of Super Size Me for performance-enhancing drugs. The filmmaker, a semi-pro cyclist, embarks on a hardcore doping program to show how flawed the drugs-testing process is. But when his advisor, Russian scientist Gregory Rodchenkov, suddenly finds himself in the eye of an international storm over Russia’s state-sponsored doping program, Icarus handbrake turns into an enthralling fly-on-the-wall thriller about being a whistleblower in Putin’s Russia.

MAKING A MURDERER

Steven Avery served 18 years in prison for a horrible crime that he didn’t commit, and the revelations about the police handling of that case could be a 10-part series of their own – but here they’re just the prologue to a far wider-reaching story. That’s because, a scant two years after his exoneration and release, Avery is charged with another crime: the brutal murder of a young woman. Given the circumstances surrounding the previous case, the local sheriff department’s involvement comes under serious scrutiny, and to say there are troubling inconsistencies in the state’s case against him would be a huge understatement.

WORMWOOD

A Netflix Original series directed by documentary maker Errol Morris (responsible for the likes of The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War), Wormwood is a six-part series mixing Morris’ staple of one-on-one talking head interviews with dramatised scenes. Being a bid budget production, those dramatised scenes are a cut above any we’ve seen in other docudramas, with superb special effects and big name actors like Peter Sarsgaard and Tim Blake Nelson playing the roles.

PLANET EARTH

Arguably among of the BBC’s greatest series ever, Planet Earth is beloved worldwide for its glorious camera work (achieved through sheer skill, graft and bloody-minded patience rather than fancy CGI tricks), which offers an unprecedented look into dozens of aspects of the natural world, spread all over the globe. From polar bears to killer whales to birds of paradise, the viewer is shown a gorgeous greatest hits collection of our planet’s flora and fauna.

THE KEEPERS

Concerning the unsolved murder of a nun in 1960s Baltimore, The Keepers delves deep into the lives of many of those around her in an attempt to get to the truth – and ultimately, reveal the killer’s identity. It’s quickly discovered that what was initially viewed as a random “wrong place, wrong time” killing may be part of a wider-reaching conspiracy, and from then on the series doesn’t slow down as it pulls out thread after thread. Enthralling, dismaying stuff.

CHEF’S TABLE

This series (now three seasons strong) shadows several world-renowned chefs as they take viewers on a personal journey through their culinary evolution – providing an intimate, informative glimpse into what gets their creative juices flowing. Lovingly shot in razor-sharp Ultra HD quality (for those with the necessary Netflix subscription), Chef’s Table lets you almost smell the aromas seeping through your screen and tickling your nostrils.

13TH

There’s a sequence from this Netflix original documentary that went viral shortly after the USA elected Donald Trump as its new president. It shows the commander-in-chief eulogising the “good old days”, while clips of protestors getting roughed up at his rallies play next to old footage of African-American citizens being beaten in the streets. It’s a powerful summary of 13th, a film that lays bare the realities of being black in modern-day America, and shows exactly how far the country has – or hasn’t – come since the abolition of slavery.

TEAM FOXCATCHER

If you’ve seen the movie Foxcatcher, you might be surprised by how much it differs to this documentary, which explores the same sad events. For starters Mark Schultz (played by Channing Tatum in the Hollywood retelling) doesn’t show up in this non-fiction account at all because he wasn’t even at “the farm” at the same time as his brother Dave. If you’ve seen neither film, this is a story about an apparently benevolent benefactor who set out to enable the US wrestling team’s quest for sporting glory by housing and training the athletes in top quality facilities on his vast private estate. The twist? Said benevolent benefactor, John du Pont, turned out to be extremely strange and increasingly paranoid.

BLACKFISH

Despite their name, killer whales are highly intelligent social animals that ordinarily pose little danger to humans – so what made one orca attack and kill its trainer? That’s the question posed by Blackfish, which takes a deep dive into the world of show whales and the psychological damage that captivity might be inflicting upon them.

VOYEUR

This feature-length documentary doesn’t hit the salacious heights its title suggests, but rather ends up an intriguing look into the lives and characters of two very different men: legendary New York journalist Gay Talese and Gerald Foos, the titular voyeur. The subject of a major book by Talese, who has kept in contact with him for decades, Foos once owned a motel which he’d modified in order to snoop on guests unseen, subsequently documenting the things they did when they thought nobody was watching.

CASTING JONBENET

The 1996 case of six-year old JonBenet Ramsey’s murder is embued with a near-mythical quality in America, due to its salacious circumstances, its media prominence (it coincided with the rise of 24-hour cable news) – and, of course, the fact that it has never been solved. Rather than conduct a convention examination of the murder and its aftermath, this documentary explores it via the means of dramatic recreation using actors from the Ramseys’ home town of Boulder, Colorado.

LOUIS THEROUX’S WEIRD WEEKENDS

Before he spent time with the likes of Jimmy Savile, Paul Daniels and Max Clifford, Louis Theroux specialised in meeting, interviewing and often living with what you could politely call “controversial” groups. Over the course of two BBC series he hangs out with swingers, wrestlers, hardline Christians, black nationalists, UFO watchers and more, using his disarming personality to gain the sort of access and insight that a more “serious” journalist couldn’t (or perhaps wouldn’t) get.