Television series

The Movies That Made Us

Name: The Movies That Made Us
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2019
Cast: Danny Wallace, Donald Ian Black

Light-hearted
Dip in and out

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.

TVMaze rating

3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy the nuts and bolts of how a movie got made, the gossip and near-disasters from the people who were in the room, and the warm pull of your own childhood favourites.

Skip it if you want a tight, plotted story or a fast watch, since each episode is a loose chain of anecdotes and interviews that can feel padded across fourteen episodes.

What it asks of you: Around forty-eight minutes an episode over fourteen episodes, it is unhurried and chatty, happy to let one production story breathe, and it rewards viewers who stay put.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

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.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Movies That Made Us

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.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse poster

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 19762015

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 Hollywood2003

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.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood poster

The Last Movie Stars2022

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.