If you’ve sped through Dahmer, been shocked by Our Father, shivered during Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, and vowed to avoid dating apps after The Tinder Swindler, it’s safe to assume you have a true crime fixation.
The genre’s popularity is apparent, with series depicting the most shocking events in real life making for intriguing, if often uncomfortable, viewing.
But we just can’t seem to shake our morbid fascination with the worst of human behaviour, as evidenced by the massive success of Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which is now the fourth most popular English-language television series ever on Netflix, with 856.22 million hours of the series watched in the month following its release in September 2022.
So, as we enter a new year, what shows are expected to capture our interest in 2023?
The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker
Caleb ‘Kai’ McGillvary, a hitchhiker, became a viral sensation in 2013 after telling a Californian reporter on TV that he had used a hatchet to repeatedly hit a man who had caused a car wreck and was then attempting to abuse a young woman.
His line “smash, smash, smash” was made into a song and has been viewed over 11 million times on YouTube.
McGillvary was initially portrayed as a “happy-go-lucky homeless man,” but three months later he was back in the news for a much darker reason: murder.
Despite his claim that he was acting in self-defense when he killed a 73-year-old man, McGillvary was found guilty and sentenced to 57 years in prison.
The judge referred to him as a “powder keg of explosive rage” during his sentencing.
Streaming: January 10 on Netflix.
Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street
Bernie Madoff, the creator of the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, was an American financier turned fraudster who was once regarded as a Wall Street titan.
Despite being a well-known individual who was essential in the founding of NASDAQ, he was arrested in 2008 after it was discovered that he had been running a decades-long fraud for a staggering $64.8 billion (£53.75 billion).
More than 40,000 investors, including the New York Mets, Larry King, Kevin Bacon, hospitals, colleges, and pension funds, had their monies stolen.
His deception wrecked not only the lives of numerous investors, but also those of Madoff’s sons, who turned him in when he confessed to his crimes.
Now streaming on Netflix.
Tokyo Crime Squad: The Lucie Blackman Case
Lucie Blackman, a British woman, was working as a hostess at a bar in Tokyo when she went missing in July 2000.
Her family flew to Japan and launched a public search for her, but her remains were discovered just outside the city six months later.
Later that year, the main suspect, a Korean-Japanese national named Joji Obara, was caught and accused with drugging, raping, and killing Blackman, as well as the rape and manslaughter of an Australian lady named Carita Ridgway and the rape of eight other women.
Obara was acquitted of Blackman’s rape and murder in 2007 after being sentenced to life in prison on the other charges.
Although he was eventually found guilty of the accusations against Blackman, this series will look at how, despite the ‘huge amount of proof of his horrible atrocities, the Japanese court system almost failed Blackman and the many hundreds of victims of Obara’s crimes.
Streaming: TBC on Netflix.
Spector
Phil Spector was widely recognised as one of the most important figures in pop music history, having produced iconic rock hits such as the Ronettes’ Be My Baby and the Beatles’ Let it Be.
In 2003, however, he found himself in the centre of a murder investigation after actress Lana Clarkson was shot while staying at his house.
While Spector initially claimed it was a suicide and that he had no involvement, he was charged and was permitted to continue working on several music projects while out on bond.
But when he eventually made it to trial, Spector did all he could to humiliate his victim, helping to paint her as merely being a fame-hungry ‘B-grade actress’.
This four-part series uncovers what happened on that fatal night, interacting with people like Spector’s daughter Nicole to learn more about a guy who was dubbed a musical genius but subsequently became a recluse and murderer.
It helps to reframe the narrative that was lacking during the trial and gives Clarkson more credit than she was given shortly after her death.
Streaming: January 8 on NOW.
Untitled Bitfinex Hack documentary
When the team behind Tiger King and FYRE is involved, you can bet this yet-to-be-titled project will be a crazy journey.
As Netflix wrote when announcing the documentary just a week after the arrest of the couple at the centre of it all in February last year, the streaming service shared that the series would be about ‘a married couple’s alleged scheme to launder billions of dollars’ worth of stolen cryptocurrency in the biggest criminal financial crime case in history’.
The series will centre on Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, a New York-based couple who are involved in the laundering of stolen cash.
The pair was accused of conspiring to launder about $4.5 billion (nearly £3.7 billion) in Bitcoin, liquidating their digital assets by creating new identities and online accounts and purchasing real gold, NFTs, and other assets in one of the greatest exchange breaches in Bitcoin history.
Streaming: TBC on Netflix.
Rolf Harris: Hiding in Plain Sight
He was previously regarded as a national treasure in both the United Kingdom and his native Australia, yet Rolf Harris’ public prominence helped shelter him from dark mysteries from his past for decades.
Harris lead a terrible double life, molesting programme donors and personnel for years before being investigated in the aftermath of the Jimmy Savile affair.
He was eventually convicted of sexually assaulting four minor girls in 2014, effectively ending his career.
This film, now a decade after his imprisonment, will talk directly to his accusers and describe how his assaults became “gradually more serious throughout his excellent television career” in the 1970s and 1980s.
Streaming: TBC on ITVX.
Big Mäck: Gangsters and Gold
It only took being identified as ‘the obese one’ to convict Donald Stellwag of a crime he did not commit.
After being convicted of a bank robbery in Nuremberg four years earlier, the German man was sentenced to nine years in jail in 1995.
Stellwag, an outsider who had been bullied for years, was a heroin addict who was just getting his life back on track when he was mentioned in connection with the heist on a TV show, and despite having an alibi, a questionable expert eventually convinced a judge of his guilt.
The genuine offender was apprehended two weeks after his sentence was reversed nearly a decade later.
However, when €1.8 million in gold (£1.5 million) was stolen during a highway robbery shortly after, he was drawn back into the case, with evidence accumulating that he was involved.
Streaming: January 20 on Netflix.