Television series
The Movies That Made Us
A cosy, VHS-glow tour through the blockbusters everyone of a certain age grew up on — Home Alone, Ghostbusters, Dirty Dancing, Splash — narrated with warmth by the directors, actors and studio insiders who actually made them. Each episode tackles one film and its set of war stories. It's comfort viewing for movie lovers: gentle, funny, nostalgic, and mercifully light on cynicism.
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The Toys That Made Us2017
Same producers, same breezy format, same talking-head candour — just pointed at Star Wars figures, Barbie and Nintendo instead of films. The most obvious next binge, and it earns it.
But The formula is now familiar, and toys carry less emotional weight than the movies that made them — some episodes coast on nostalgia alone.
Score: A Film Music Documentary2017
Composers like Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman explain how a handful of notes make a blockbuster unforgettable — the same industry-insider intimacy, narrowed to the score that quietly did half the work.
But It's more technical and less gossip-driven than the stories you've just watched; there's no set-drama here, just craft.
High Score2020
Swap film sets for arcades and bedrooms: the same warm, VHS-tinted nostalgia machine, this time telling the origin stories of Pac-Man, Sonic and the console wars that shaped a generation.
But If you have zero interest in gaming history, the specifics of chip design and cartridge wars won't hook you the way movie trivia did.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse1991
Same premise — cameras on the chaos behind a beloved film — but decades older and shot from inside the disaster as it happened, not reconstructed fondly after the fact.
The making-of documentary that invented the genre decades before Netflix polished it — real, terrifying footage of Coppola nearly destroying himself and his cast while shooting Apocalypse Now.
But There's no cosy nostalgia here — this is a production genuinely falling apart, and it's often uncomfortable to watch.
More like this (8)
Jodorowsky's Dune2013
The making-of documentary for a film that was never actually made — Jodorowsky's insane, brilliant pitch for Dune, told with the same starry-eyed insider access but no happy ending.
But There's a melancholy undertone missing from the cosier nostalgia you're used to; this is a story about glorious failure, not triumph.
Val2021
Val Kilmer narrates his own career from decades of home-video footage he shot himself — a startlingly personal flip on the insider-access format, from the actor's side of the camera.
But It's far more intimate and sad than anything here — a meditation on fame and illness, not a celebration of a beloved blockbuster.
Elstree 19762015no page yet
Small-part actors and extras from Star Wars — stormtroopers, bit players — get their own quiet, funny, occasionally poignant chapter of a story usually told only through its stars.
But No George Lucas, no big reveals — this is about the periphery of fame, which is a much smaller, stranger story.
Best Worst Movie2009
The gleeful, unlikely afterlife of Troll 2 — widely considered one of the worst films ever made — told by its cast with the same warmth this show gives to beloved classics.
But You need to find bad-movie culture funny rather than depressing; some of the humour lands at its subjects' expense.
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood2003no page yet
The New Hollywood story — Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg and the drugs, egos and genius that rebuilt the industry in the '70s — told with the same access-all-areas candour, minus the cosiness.
But It's rangier, denser and considerably less feel-good; this is industry history with real wreckage, not a highlight reel.
The Last Movie Stars2022no page yet
Ethan Hawke's six-part portrait of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, built from unearthed audio interviews and read by an all-star cast — a deeper, more literary cousin of this show's format.
But It's slower and more contemplative, built around a single marriage rather than a rotating cast of famous films.
Cinema Paradiso1988
This show is about the people who made the movies; Cinema Paradiso is about the people who sat in the dark loving them — the other half of the same nostalgia.
An Italian boy falls in love with the movies through the projectionist at his village cinema — a fictional, heart-swelling tribute to why films 'brought us together' in the first place.
But It's subtitled, slow and unabashedly sentimental — a very different pace from talking-head documentary television.
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood2019
Same subject — the mythology of an industry era — reimagined as fiction rather than documentary, with actors playing surrogate versions of the real figures this show interviews directly.
Tarantino's love letter to the late-'60s film industry, fictionalised but soaked in the same affection for sets, stunt work and the machinery of movie-making that this series documents for real.
But It fictionalises the era rather than interviewing the people who lived it, and runs long with a slow, hangout-movie pace.
People
Cast
Danny WallaceNarrator
Donald Ian BlackNarrator
Writing
- Brian Volk-WeissCreator
Production
- Benjamin J. FrostExecutive Producer
- Brian Volk-WeissExecutive Producer
- Cisco HensonExecutive Producer
- Jay ChapmanExecutive Producer
- Edwin ZaneProducer
- Ian RoumainProducer