Most of us don’t enjoy committing crime ourselves, but we *do *love watching other people do it on TV. And while shows about fictional crimes and detectives are fun, there’s something especially alluring about true crime. These are shows about real-life people who actually stepped outside the bounds of the law, and more often than not paid the price. It gets you thinking about who in your life might be willing to step over that thin line separating order from chaos, or if you could do it yourself.

But best not spend too much time dwelling on that. Instead, you can enjoy these great true crime shows that didn’t get enough attention when they first dropped.

The Dropout (2022)

The new queen of fraud

*The Dropout *is about Elizabeth Holmes, a young entrepreneur who started what she claimed was a revolutionary healthcare company called Theranos. She talked a big game and even got huge movers and shakers like former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz to be on her board. The problem was that the innovative product she said she was going to sell — a way to run blood tests on very small amounts of blood taken from a finger — was never real or close to being real. She was eventually found guilty of conspiracy and wire fraud and sentenced to over a decade in jail, which is where she is now.

As played by Amanda Seyfried in The Dropout, there’s clearly something not quite right about Elizabeth Holmes. But is that psychosis, or did Holmes just believe in the American dream of striking it rich through entrepreneurship so much that it got a little weird and criminal? There’s a fascinating, Citizen Kane-esque quality about her rise and fall.

It was recently revealed that Holmes’ sentence has been reduced by a few years, so maybe there’ll be a sequel when she gets out and starts work on her next idea.

Release Date 2022 - 2022-00-00

Showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether

Directors Michael Showalter

Writers Elizabeth Meriwether

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Amanda Seyfried

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Naveen Andrews

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Dylan Minnette

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Ebon Moss-Bachrach

The Staircase (2022)

HBO does true crime

*The Staircase *follows over a decade in the life of Michael Peterson (Colin Firth), an author who in 2003 was convicted of murdering his wife Kathleen (Toni Collette), who was found dead at the foot of their staircase in 2001. In another trial in 2011, the original conviction was vacated after it was shown that a blood analyst had presented misleading evidence in the first trial. In 2017, Peterson faced trial yet again. In the end, it remains unclear what Peterson actually did, and *The Staircase *reflects that ambiguity. The show is less concerned with finding out the answer than in showing how truth is an ever-elusive, evolving thing.

That doesn’t mean the show isn’t good watching, though. It’s made with typical HBO polish and sheen, with terrific performances from Firth, Collette, and others.

Release Date 2022 - 2022-00-00

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Colin Firth

Michael Peterson

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Toni Collette

Kathleen Peterson

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Michael Stuhlbarg

David Rudolf

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Dane DeHaan

Clayton Peterson

Genres Drama

Black Bird (2022)

Let’s all go to prison

Sometimes real life provides you with a drama more tense than anything a screenwriter could come up with. Case in point: Blackbird, about a real-life drug dealer named James Keene (Taron Egerton) who’s offered a commuted sentence if he can get close to fellow inmate Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) and get the guy to admit to being a serial killer. So now Jimmy has to befriend this very dangerous man without letting on that he has an ulterior motive. You couldn’t ask for a better setup.

And the show delivers. Apple TV+ is basically a repository of great shows that way too few people have watched, and Black Bird is one of them.

Release Date 2022 - 2022-00-00

Showrunner Dennis Lehane

Directors Dennis Lehane

Writers Dennis Lehane

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Taron Egerton

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Paul Walter Hauser

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Ray Liotta

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Greg Kinnear

Genres Drama, Crime, Biography

Welcome to Chippendales (2022)

You can’t even trust male strippers anymore

*Welcome to Chippendales *is one of those true crime stories so wild you wonder how true it really is. The miniseries exaggerates and rearranges things a bit, but mostly stays true to life.

The show is about Somen "Steve" Banerjee, an Indian immigrant who dreams of striking it rich. He starts a struggling backgammon club before getting the bright idea to turn it into a male stripper revue for women: Chippendales, which became a huge success.

But with success comes paranoia and jealousy, and by the end Steve finds himself committing arson against rival clubs and hiring people to kill rival dancers and promoters. Chippendales is still very much around, touring all over the world, but Banerjee made sure he’s not a part of it.

You can stream *Welcome to Chippendales *on Hulu.

Related

8 detective shows that never became mainstream — but deserve to

You’ve seen mainstream hits like True Detective, Sherlock, and Mare of Easttown, but these lesser-known detective series are just as worth your time.

Griselda (2024)

A million miles from Modern Family

*Griselda *is a biopic miniseries about Griselda Blanco, a notorious drug lord who helped establish the cocaine trade between Columbia and the United States; at the height of her influence, her distribution network brought in around $80 million per month. The series traces her rise to power, which included her inventing assassination techniques like the motorcycle drive-by, where one person drove the motorcycle and a gunman sat on the back. Like Steve Banerjee, Griselda Blanco became paranoid and lashed out with violence, although her body count was a lot higher. In the end, she was assassinated herself, in Medellin.

There’s something about these epic rise-and-fall stories that we can’t resist. And Griselda Blanco is a great subject, the rare woman who thrived as a high-level boss in this kind of criminal environment. Blanco is played by Sofía Vergara, best known for playing Gloria on the sitcom Modern Family. It’s hard to look at her the same way after seeing Griselda.

Release Date 2024 - 2024-00-00

Showrunner Ingrid Escajeda

Directors Andrés Baiz

Writers Ingrid Escajeda, Doug Miro, Cassie Pappas

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Alberto Ammann

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Paulina Davila

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Alberto Guerra

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Martin Rodriguez

Genres Crime, Drama, Biography

Unbelievable (2019)

Believe that you’ll be completely engrossed

*Unbelievable *starts by following Marie Adler (Kaitlyn Dever), a survivor of sexual assault who tells the police what happened to her only to not be believed. After changing her story slightly under intense pressure, she’s actually charged with the crime of filing a false police report. Meanwhile, a pair of detectives (Toni Collette and Merritt Wever) investigate cases of sexual assault in Washington and Colorado and find that they sound eerily similar to Adler’s story. Eventually, they figure out that there’s a serial rapist on the loose.

The idea of surviving a sexual assault is harrowing enough, but then to report it only to get charged with a crime takes things to a new level. *Unbelievable *is a careful, sensitive series that has a lot on its mind beyond the hunt for the criminal, although that’s exciting too.

Release Date 2019 - 2018

Directors Michael Dinner

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Mike Merritt

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Toni Collette

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Kaitlyn Dever

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Danielle Macdonald

True crime then, now, and forever

I’ve tried to shed a light on some of the lesser-known true crime series out there in this article, although if you haven’t had a chance to check them out yet, you can’t go wrong with some of the heavy hitters in the genre like Narcos,* Mindhunter*, Inventing Anna, and Monster. And there are plenty of great true crime documentaries out there for you to enjoy, as well.

And as long as people keep committing crimes (and I don’t expect them to stop), we can expect more of these sorts of shows.