Television series

Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist

Name: Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist
Genre: Documentary, Crime, Mystery
Released: 2018

Evil Genius is Netflix's four-episode plunge into the 2003 "pizza bomber" case in Erie, Pennsylvania — a robbery so byzantine it makes you laugh before it makes you queasy. Directors dig past the tabloid headline into a genuinely deranged web of hoarders, exes, and a self-styled criminal mastermind. Bingeable, unsettling, and packed with real footage; ideal for anyone who wants true crime that gets weirder, not simpler, the longer you look.

TVMaze rating

6.6

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Andrew Jarecki's series about Robert Durst is the gold standard for true-crime docs where the subject seems to be performing his own guilt on camera, building to one of the most jaw-dropping endings in the genre.

But The pacing is deliberately slow, and the filmmakers' handling of evidence still draws real ethical criticism.

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Wild Wild Country2018

A sprawling, gloriously unhinged docuseries about an Oregon commune, a cult leader, and a small-town war that spirals into bioterrorism — as strange as Evil Genius, with better hair.

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Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer2019

Internet sleuths chase a killer across continents in this tense, format-savvy true crime series that treats amateur investigation as its own genre of thriller.

But The subject matter is genuinely disturbing, more so than Evil Genius's blackly comic tone.

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

30 Minutes or Less2011no page yet

It's Hollywood's fictional retelling of the very crime Evil Genius investigates, swapping tragedy for slapstick — same heist, opposite register.

A black comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg, loosely — and controversially — inspired by the exact same pizza-bomber case, played entirely for laughs as a stoner heist farce.

But It's shallow and silly, and the real victim's family sued over it — knowing the true story going in makes some jokes land badly.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness2020

Zoo owners, murder plots, and a cast of American eccentrics so vivid you'll assume it's exaggerated — it isn't. Pure documentary chaos you have to see to believe.

But It's trashier and less rigorous than Evil Genius, more spectacle than investigation.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness poster

Soupçons2004

The original fly-on-the-wall courtroom documentary that basically invented this genre's slow-build intimacy, following a murder trial with startling access to the defense.

But It's methodical and legalistic rather than pulpy — patience required, no easy villain.

Making a Murderer2015

A small Wisconsin town, a wrongly-maybe-convicted man, and a police force that looks worse every episode — the series that made bingeable true crime a cultural event.

But It's one-sided by design and its conclusions have been contested since release.

Abducted in Plain Sight2017

A jaw-dropping documentary about a real kidnapping so absurd and poorly handled by everyone involved that it plays like dark comedy despite being entirely true.

But The story is upsetting and the family's decisions are maddening to watch, which some viewers find hard to sit through.

The Keepers2017

A decades-old murder, a corrupt cover-up, and amateur investigators who won't let it go — a slow-burn docuseries with real moral weight.

But It's heavier and sadder than Evil Genius, dealing with abuse and institutional failure rather than dark comedy.

American Murder: The Family Next Door2020

Built entirely from texts, home video and police footage, this documentary about a domestic murder case feels unbearably immediate and modern.

But It's grim rather than strange — none of Evil Genius's absurdist humor, just dread.

American Murder: The Family Next Door poster

Capturing the Friedmans2003

Like Evil Genius, it's a documentary about a family's collusion and denial where the "truth" keeps refusing to settle — but played entirely straight, without a shred of the Netflix show's wit.

An extraordinary documentary about a Long Island family torn apart by accusations, mental illness, and conflicting truths nobody can fully untangle — devastating and genuinely ambiguous.

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The Thin Blue Line1988

This is the film that pioneered the "documentary as investigation that overturns the official story" structure Evil Genius borrows wholesale, three decades before Netflix got there.

Errol Morris's landmark documentary reopened a Texas murder case with stylised reenactments and interviews that let liars hang themselves — it helped free an innocent man and invented a whole genre.

But It's slower, stranger, and more formally experimental than modern true crime — no propulsive plot twists, just patient dread.