Re: [TV orNotTV] TV Documentaries [Was: Netflix US Top 10 4/11]

[PGage]

I am watching “This is a Robbery...”, like many, I always like a good (sometimes even a not so good) art heist story.

The story here is interesting, but there are elements of the documentary style that I dislike (musical and sound effects, and some visual effects, added to create cheap drama). But what is really interesting to me is how this relates to the state of TV (especially cable and streaming) documentaries. After the shit show that was ‘Allen v Farrow’, I did some reading and found that there is a general sense that the skyrocketing popularity of documentaries on places like Netflix and HBO has been accompanied by a plummet in credibility and journalistic integrity. That helped me place the Allen project in a better context: more infotainment than actual news documentary. 

It does seem that someone, perhaps news divisions at the TV networks, or outside sources like Columbia School or Journalism, needs to define a sub genre of news documentary, and establish criteria and best practice guidelines. Then we could have like entertainment documentaries, that would perhaps contain a disclaimer of something like “inspired by real events”, and news documentaries, that would indicate it was produced based on accepted journalistic standards.

I’m only halfway through “This is a Robbery”, and so far think it is not as entertaining as a Ian Pears novel, and about as credible as a documentary on the History channel.

On Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 7:16 AM Mark Jeffries <spotl...@gmail.com> wrote:

For the Sunday after Easter: (Snip)

2.  THIS IS A ROBBERY:  THE WORLD'S BIGGEST ART HEIST--The Netflix original true crime docu-mini about the 1990 theft from the Gardner Museum in Boston of $500M of art works dropped Apr. 7 and has an 88% RT 

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[Adam Bowie]

I think that it's pretty clear that quite a few things have changed in the documentary genre, but like everything, there are good ones and bad ones.

My personal bete noire is the over-extension of stories into multiple episodes when the story just doesn't deserve it. I guess that this all follows the success on Netflix on series like Making a Murderer, and then more recently Tiger King. The former was a well told narrative, made over years, and deserving of the series length they delivered. But I believe that Netflix only came on board fairly late in the day. It was a massive success, at least by Netflix's metrics, where keeping audiences coming back for many hours is critical for maintaining subscribers. The worst case of this I came across recently was the HBO series on McMillions. It was a decent story, but could have been told in 90 minutes instead of six hours. I didn't make it to the end I got so frustrated with it.

Some of these series getting long run times are greater than series covering major wars or political figures. 

The same problem is also becoming true for many fiction series where something that could be told in six episodes is stretched out to ten or more. But that's another discussion.

Then you've got the likes of Tiger King, where the story is clearly more "scripted." Which takes us into my second big bugbear - the late reveal. You see this over and over, where some major piece of information that the protagonists knew very early on, is withheld from audiences because it creates a cliffhanger at the end of an episode. I think it was the Netflix series Don't F**k with Cats that did this really egregiously, painting one person as a potential culprit before revealing a key piece of information that only 'cleared' them relatively far down the line, when in reality it happened very quickly. 

If there's a clear, "We learnt this... then we learnt that a few months later," narrative arc to the story, then it's acceptable that the documentary series. But if the reveals are being scripted in after the fact, and I don't believe that's good journalism. I read that the HBO Robert Durst doc might have been culpable of that, with the makers holding on to his self-incriminating statements until much later than they actually learnt it. I understand that series, especially those with complex stories, do need some kind of structure to guide viewers through. But what we're seeing more and more, is artificially devised cliffhangers.

The corny dramatisation is also a problem. If you're producing a historical piece on Alexander the Great or someone, then of course you might want to have some CGI of him crossing the Alps with elephants or whatever. That makes sense if done well. But for grisly true-crime stories, it can just be salacious and pandering to the lowest common denominator. And if events have taken place in the lifetimes of real friends and family of victims, then this kind of thing can be simply the worst kind of tabloid journalism. Do we really need to see the serial killer attacking their victims? 

It's possible to work around it. Recently, the BBC aired an excellent documentary on a notorious British killer from the late 70s known as the Yorkshire Ripper. But it was told very much from the victims' perspective - one of the problems in the case being that because many were working class and some prostitutes, they were all considered the latter and therefore, not really worthy of thorough investigation. The acts of murder themselves were not detailed unnecessarily (Don't confuse this doc with another similar one that turned up on Netflix recently. It may be good, but I've not seen it, and it'd have to go a long way to beat the BBC one. This also highlights the problem of the same stories being told over and over). And then ITV made a drama about another notorious killer - Dennis "Des" Nielsen, played in the drama by David Tennant. They managed this without showing any murders whatsoever. Again, it was more about the victims than the crimes perpetrated on them.

I think some of the problem is that the same broadcasters/streamers produce both good docs - the kind that win Oscars, BAFTAs and Emmys - and tabloid trash. The same glossy "sheen" is applied to all of them, and it's really hard to tell in advance, without knowing at least something of the makers and perhaps their previous output, whether we're going to get something good, or something trashy.

Adam

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[PGage]

Totally agree about the bloated run times, as I think we discussed with the Woody “Doc”. I have had a couple of No Shows today at work, so almost done with “This is a Robbery”. Clearly it would be much stronger at under 2 hours than closer to 4.

Your closing point is my main point as well. I am not in favor of banning bad or pseudo documentaries, but it is pissing me off to see bad docs passed off as good ones. I don’t think it would be that hard to set some basic criteria, then come up with a term that refers to “real” documentaries, and another, non pejorative term, that refers to the other.

On Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 3:23 PM Adam Bowie <ad...@adambowie.co.uk> wrote:

I think that it's pretty clear that quite a few things have changed in the documentary genre, but like everything, there are good ones and bad ones.

My personal bete noire is the over-extension of stories into multiple episodes when the story just doesn't deserve it. I guess that this all follows the success on Netflix on series like Making a Murderer, and then more recently Tiger King. The former was a well told narrative, made over years, and deserving of the series length they delivered. But I believe that Netflix only came on board fairly late in the day. It was a massive success, at least by Netflix's metrics, where keeping audiences coming back for many hours is critical for maintaining subscribers. The worst case of this I came across recently was the HBO series on McMillions. It was a decent story, but could have been told in 90 minutes instead of six hours. I didn't make it to the end I got so frustrated with it. (SNIP)

I think some of the problem is that the same broadcasters/streamers produce both good docs - the kind that win Oscars, BAFTAs and Emmys - and tabloid trash. The same glossy "sheen" is applied to all of them, and it's really hard to tell in advance, without knowing at least something of the makers and perhaps their previous output, whether we're going to get something good, or something trashy.

Adam

On Mon, Apr 12, 2021 at 6:55 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am watching “This is a Robbery...”, like many, I always like a good (sometimes even a not so good) art heist story.

The story here is interesting, but there are elements of the documentary style that I dislike (musical and sound effects, and some visual effects, added to create cheap drama). But what is really interesting to me is how this relates to the state of TV (especially cable and streaming) documentaries. After the shit show that was ‘Allen v Farrow’, I did some reading and found that there is a general sense that the skyrocketing popularity of documentaries on places like Netflix and HBO has been accompanied by a plummet in credibility and journalistic integrity. That helped me place the Allen project in a better context: more infotainment than actual news documentary. 

It does seem that someone, perhaps news divisions at the TV networks, or outside sources like Columbia School or Journalism, needs to define a sub genre of news documentary, and establish criteria and best practice guidelines. Then we could have like entertainment documentaries, that would perhaps contain a disclaimer of something like “inspired by real events”, and news documentaries, that would indicate it was produced based on accepted journalistic standards.

I’m only halfway through “This is a Robbery”, and so far think it is not as entertaining as a Ian Pears novel, and about as credible as a documentary on the History channel.

On Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 7:16 AM Mark Jeffries <spotl...@gmail.com> wrote:

For the Sunday after Easter: (Snip)

2.  THIS IS A ROBBERY:  THE WORLD'S BIGGEST ART HEIST--The Netflix original true crime docu-mini about the 1990 theft from the Gardner Museum in Boston of $500M of art works dropped Apr. 7 and has an 88% RT 

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[Kevin M.]

There are entire TV series which are disguised as documentaries but really aren’t. “America’s Book of Secrets” is sometimes interesting but rarely factual (and nothing they televise is ever a secret). And those shows about hunting ghosts (which don’t exist) are shot in the style of a factual documentary, albeit in darkness. 

The term documentary can be used to describe a lot of media, including some reality shows, but I don’t think narrowing the definition will solve anything. There is a market for badly produced TV, and I suspect there always will be, regardless of its label. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYLmkiPTh3UmnyvvCwg37ri_%2B1v1dBOSqZqmWq1sO6xNZA%40mail.gmail.com.

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[PGage]

Yes, but the problem with what goes by the name documentary is more than just production values. Books are classified as “Non-Fiction”, without implying they are journalistic. 

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