The days of the Fyre Festival, “Tiger King,” and NXIVM might be over, but there’s still plenty of docuseries covering scams and oddball topics.
As many scripted shows went on hiatus in the now-resolved writers and actors strikes, 2023 boasted an embarrassment of riches for unscripted TV.
And, it wasn’t your mother’s classy Ken Burns documentaries.
This year’s documentaries covered conspiracy theories, people who believed they were deities, murders, oddball subcultures, and news stories so strange that it’s hard to believe they’re true.
And yes, there’s always an endless supply of cults.
Here are the wildest documentaries and docuseries of 2023.
“The Curious Case of Natalia Grace,” ID
This unnerving and bizarre docuseries was a news story in the genre of, “Truth is stranger than fiction.”
It covered the story of Indiana couple Michael and Kristine Barnett, who adopted 6-year-old Natalia Grace from Ukraine and later claimed that she was a sociopathic adult “masquerading” as a child (due to her dwarfism).
“[Natalia] threatened to stab my sons, drag their bodies outside and bury them under the deck,” Michael alleged in the docuseries, which aired in May.
In the six-part series, Michael described the alleged abuse that he, Kristine and their biological sons, Jacob, Wesley and Ethan claim they faced at the hands of Natalia.
After believing that she was an adult posing as a child, Michael said, “We don’t know who she is. We don’t know where she’s really from. Who the f – – k is this person?”
Grace will tell her side of the story in a six-part series titled “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks” (premiering January 1 at 9 p.m. on ID).
“Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping the Twin Flames Universe,” Prime Video
This docuseries covers an alleged “love cult.” It’s about an online group run out of suburban Michigan by the YouTube influencers and self-proclaimed gurus Jeff and Shaleia Divine, who promise to match members with their soul mate, or “twin flame.” However, former participants onscreen describe the extreme lengths they were told to take, in order to win a romantic partner.
According to the documentary, members would pay thousands of dollars to take Zoom conferences led by the Divines, who told group members to pursue their “twin flames” even if their actions would involve violating a restraining order. They allegedly even told some members to change their gender in order to attract a partner.
“Last stop Larrimah,” HBO
This quirky documentary is about a man who vanished – and was possibly murdered – in a remote Australian town with a population of 11 people. Set in the titular Australian outback town, where there’s no cellphone service or police station, the documentary covers the town’s history, the eccentric residents’ squabbles, and the missing persons cold case of Paddy Moriarty, 70, who vanished in December 2017 along with his dog, prompting a police investigation.
With fewer than a dozen people, everybody knows each other’s business, and some of them must have known what happened to him. A missing person’s cold case in a town of less than a dozen residents sounds like the stuff of a movie, but the documentary unspools the story in a way that’s very real.
“Merpeople,” Netflix
A new entry in the documentary category of, “you wouldn’t believe that this is a real job,” “MerPeople” is a four-part series about the world of mermaid performers, or people who don mermaid costumes and perform underwater as “professional mermaids.”
Like any worthwhile doc about an unusual subculture, it’s peppered with quirky subjects, such as Sparkles, who considers herself a “landlocked mermaid” because she lives in Arkansas (“I’m sh-t out of luck, being a mermaid here,” she says onscreen).
The series covers all aspects of this subculture, such as the surprisingly steep cost of custom tails (which can cost $2,500 to $5,000), the importance of the pH balance of the water, and various events that mermaids perform at, such as Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida. It also informs us that professional mermaiding is a $500 million industry, and covers the skill and stamina involved in the gig.
“Telemarketers,” HBO
Executive produced by Danny McBride and the Safdie brothers, this true crime docuseries follows two office workers at a telemarketing call center in New Jersey who were led to believe that they were raising money for firefighter and police charities – but instead, the money was going toward their employers.
The story follows a 20-year journey of two work pals – Sam Lipman-Stern and Pat Pespas – who become amateur sleuths and whistleblowers on their industry, and their crooked employers.
Everyone loves a good scam, and this docuseries covers one from the insiders’ perspective, since Sam documented his office on video.
“Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul,” Netflix
This four-part docuseries is based on the book “Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul” by Jamie Ducharme, and it covers the marketing and the rise of the Juul e-cigarette — and its alleged aim to convert cigarette smokers to Juul, including using marketing tactics aimed at Gen-Z.
The documentary follows the idea for the company from inception, from founders Adam Bowen and James Monsees, and the subsequent hot water they landed in, after using celebs and influencers to hook teens on vaping. The founders aren’t interviewed in the series, but it features interviews from scientists, marketers, former staffers and people who had near-misses with vaping.
“Our marketing team was built around using influencers — partnering with fashion people and celebrities [to promote content] on social media networks like Instagram,” a former employee who worked on Juul’s supply chain told The Post. “They were going to get young influencers, people that have a big following, and they were going to host parties. Marketing was gaining so much momentum it was able to go unchecked.”
“Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God,” HBO
This docuseries is about the life and death of the Kansas-born Amy Carlson, who convinced herself and her followers that she was a 19 billion-year-old holy known as “Mother God” with the power to cure cancer.
It’s got all the staples of a classic cult doc: an egomaniac leader, wild beliefs (she said she could communicate with the late Robin Williams, had been reincarnated as Marilyn Monroe, and she had conspiracy theories about 9/11, UFOs and QAnon), and a dramatic ending – as her mummified corpse was found without eyes, wrapped in Christmas lights, after dying of alcohol abuse, anorexia and colloidal silver dosing.
Although she died at age 45 in 2021, the doc includes plenty of footage of her, as well as interviews with her family, friends and cult insiders.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
