Television series
O.J.: Made in America
- Crime
- Biopic
- Investigative journalism
- Very dark
Ezra Edelman's five-part, nearly eight-hour epic uses O.J. Simpson's rise and fall as a scalpel to dissect fifty years of Los Angeles race relations, celebrity worship, and police violence. It moves at a patient, essayistic pace rather than true-crime propulsion — more social history than whodunit. For viewers who want context and consequence, not just the Bronco chase and the glove.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you want a long, patient look at how race, celebrity and the press fed one another, and you don't mind a history lesson that circles back to the present day.
Skip it if you came for a fast true-crime thriller; this spends most of its running time on the decades before the killings and the wider social story around them, not on the case itself.
What it asks of you: It runs five long episodes, so you need to settle in for a sustained, deliberate stretch of viewing rather than dipping in for an hour between other things.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
American Crime Story2016
The dramatized flip side of the same story — courtroom theatre with Sarah Paulson and Courtney B. Vance turning Marcia Clark and Johnnie Cochran into fully-drawn tragic figures rather than cable-news caricatures.
But It compresses complicated history into soapy TV shorthand, and after Edelman's rigor its dramatic flourishes can feel a little cheap.
13th2016
Ava DuVernay's clear-eyed history of mass incarceration picks up the systemic thread Edelman only gestures at — how the justice system Simpson evaded traps millions of ordinary Black Americans.
But It's argument-driven rather than character-driven; if you wanted more of OJ's narrative pull, this is denser and more academic.
When They See Us2019
Same city, same decade, the other outcome — five Black teenagers crushed by the machinery Simpson's money and fame let him slip past. Devastating, precise, unforgettable performances.
But It is relentlessly grim with none of the pulpy momentum of a trial; go in braced, not looking for entertainment.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from O.J.: Made in America
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Thin Blue Line1988
Morris's film is the direct ancestor of Edelman's method: interview-driven, skeptical of official narrative, obsessed with how a justice system decides who to believe. Watch it to see the technique invented.
Errol Morris invented the modern true-crime documentary with this one — stylised reenactments, contradictory testimony, a wrongful conviction unraveling in real time. Everything Edelman's camera language descends from is here first.
But It's 82 minutes of formal cool where OJ is eight hours of social sprawl — a much colder, more clinical experience.
More like this (8)
LA 922017
Pure archive footage, no narration, no talking heads — just the fury that exploded across Los Angeles a year before Simpson's arrest. It plugs directly into the rage Edelman spends hours explaining.
But The complete absence of narration or context can feel disorienting if you want a guide rather than raw immersion.
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst2015
A different rich man, a different murder, the same fascination with how wealth and charisma bend an investigation. Andrew Jarecki's series has one of the great gut-punch endings in the genre.
But It's pure entertainment where Edelman's film is analysis — thrilling, but it has little interest in the bigger social picture.
Wild Wild Country2018
Another sprawling American media circus, another community that hijacked the news cycle and warped a legal system — this one about a cult, not a murder trial, and just as bingeable.
But Race isn't the engine here, so if that's what pulled you into O.J., this scratches a different itch entirely.
Icarus2017
Starts as a cyclist's doping experiment and turns into an expose of Russian state corruption — a reminder that institutions protecting the powerful aren't unique to the LAPD or the NFL.
But The sports-science opening is slow, and the tonal lurch into geopolitics won't be what everyone signed up for.
Soupçons2004
A French crew embeds inside an American murder trial for years, watching a defense team build a case in real time. Quietly the template Edelman's structural patience owes a debt to.
But It's slower and more procedural, without O.J.'s cultural weight — a study of one family's ordeal, not a nation's.
Amanda Knox2016
A young woman convicted, twice, largely by tabloid appetite and a prosecutor in love with his own theory — media trial-by-narrative from the other side of fame.
But At 90 minutes it's a sketch next to Edelman's mural; don't expect anywhere near the same scope or depth.
I, Tonya2017
Same machine — fame, class, and a press hungry for a story — chewing up a different American figure, but played as tragicomedy instead of tragedy. It shows how thin the line is between coverage and punchline.
Margot Robbie is ferocious as Tonya Harding in this whiplash black comedy about a working-class woman torn apart by a media desperate for a villain — and public opinion that convicted her before any court did.
But The tone swings from slapstick to genuine cruelty fast, and some viewers find that mix of laughs and abuse queasy rather than clever.
La Haine1995
Swap the LAPD for French police and football for banlieue youth, and it's the same story Edelman tells about a city one incident away from combustion — just filmed as fiction, abroad, in real time instead of retrospect.
A blistering, black-and-white 24 hours in the Paris projects after a police beating, following three friends toward a violence you can feel coming from the first frame. French cinema's answer to Edelman's Los Angeles.
But Subtitled, unapologetically bleak, and offers no trial or verdict — just the pressure that builds when nothing gets resolved.
Recommended by
The Central Park Five, 13th, The Last Dance, I Am Not Your Negro, The Two Escobars, Tyson, American Crime Story, The Undertaking, Crash, Diego Maradona, Raging Bull, Of Miracles and Men, LA 92, When We Were Kings, Muhammad Ali, North Dallas Forty, Murder on a Sunday Morning, Belichick & Saban: The Art of Coaching, Untold, Trial By Media, This is Football, All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs, Ali, Extremis, Whose Streets?, Murderball, The Test: A New Era for Australia's Team, The Toys That Built America, Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, Mayor, Broke, Brooklyn Castle, Take the Ball, Pass the Ball, Ballplayer: Pelotero, Cunningham, Be Water, American Dream, Strong Island, The Price of Gold, Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball, State of Play: Trophy Kids, End Game, Rio Ferdinand's Tipping Point, The Australian Dream, Gamechangers: Dreams of BlizzCon, They Call Me Magic, Tyson, More than a Game, The Jeffrey Dahmer Files, Union, Becoming Champions, Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992, Benda Bilili!, The Interrogator, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, Disgraced, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, The Motivation, The Romantics, Mr. Gaga