crime

04 May

Line of Duty: the Best Crime Thrillers to Watch Next

New DVD releasecrime, thrillers, watch

Line of Duty is over, perhaps for good. It’s time to dismantle that evidence wall, file the exhibits away, and close the door on AC-12. With H unmasked, we can all rest our adrenal glands and get back to a healthy, Jimmy Nesbitt-free sleep pattern. Once that’s achieved, if you start to feel the itch for more seismic shocks and sleights-of-hand, here are a few suggestions of what to watch next – eight TV thrillers that provide similar doses of double-dealing, truth-concealing, witness-squealing, case-breaking shenanigans. Add your own recommendations below!   Bodyguard Bodyguard proved that there was life after the Red…

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02 Apr

Netflix’s The Serpent True Story: the Book That Inspired the True Crime Drama

Netflix, New DVD releasecrime, drama, inspired, netflix, serpent, story

French-Algerian actor Tahar Rahim first learned about serial killer Charles Sobhraj as a teenager in the 1990s. He picked up the book On the Trail of the Serpent from his older brother’s nightstand, and read about a manipulative murderer who drugged, stole from and killed a series of mostly backpacking victims along South Asia’s “hippie trail” in the 1970s. Two decades later, Rahim would be cast as Sobhraj in true crime drama The Serpent, an eight part series now on Netflix. In it, the actor sought to channel the unnervingly still, hypnotic but fast-striking cobra-like quality the book’s descriptions of…

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14 Feb

White House Farm Episode by Episode Breakdown: True Crime Drama on Netflix

Netflix, New DVD releasebreakdown, crime, drama, episode, house, white

White House Farm is a dramatisation of the Jeremy Bamber story, a horrible case that saw the killing of five members of the same family including two children. The show came to ITV in 2020 in week by week episodes and has now arrived on Netflix in a full boxset. It’s a compelling look at what happened in 1985 at a remote farmhouse and the man who was convicted of the murders, as well as the dogged cop who wouldn’t settle for the obvious answer despite the negative impact it had on his career. While elements of the story are…

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11 Feb

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel and the Danger of ‘Web Sleuths’

Netflix, New DVD releasececil, crime, danger, hotel, scene, sleuths, vanishing

The first thing I thought when I heard the title of the latest true crime documentary to arrive on Netflix, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel was “please be the Elisa Lam case! Please be the Elisa Lam case!”. The second thing I thought was “My God, you utter monster, that was a young woman’s life”. It’s a conflict that most true crime fans juggle with constantly. We are fascinated by these cases but we know the importance of questioning our motives, of keeping the victims as people front and centre and of trying to remember that this…

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10 Feb

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel – The Elisa Lam Case explained

Netflix, New DVD releasececil, crime, elisa, explained, hotel, scene, vanishing

Netflix documentary Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel explores the strange case of Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian woman who disappeared in January 2013 while she was staying at the Cecil Hotel in downtown LA. It’s a very famous case with many theories posited across the internet, which captured people’s imaginations after some very odd footage of Lam was released by the LAPD, hoping to find out what happened to her. More than two weeks after Elisa was last seen her body was discovered in a water tank on top of the hotel, after guests at the hotel…

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15 Jan

The Pembrokeshire Murders and the Comfort of Formulaic True Crime Drama

New DVD releasecomfort, crime, drama, formulaic, murders, pembrokeshire

True crime dramas have become a staple of British television and streaming services. Their popularity seems endless and ever growing. Episodes are devoured at incredible rates as the true stories behind the dramatizations are the start of many an internet k-hole.  The British true crime drama has fallen into a somewhat formulaic way of being made. The narratives are almost classical; a clear, yet flawed hero, triumphing over an unquestionably evil villain. The focus is either on the lead police officer investigating the case, or the perpetrator of the crimes. Both or one of them is usually white, they are…

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04 Jan

The Jane Doe Murders Review: Compassionate True Crime Doc Provides Closure

New DVD releaseclosure, compassionate, crime, murders, provides, review

This The Jane Doe Murders review contains spoilers. The Jane Doe Murders is another in a long line of true crime breakdown procedurals. However, it showcases something rare but obvious in the majority of these video journalism projects. At the heart of the case which is probed on Oxygen’s two-hour forensic investigation special is a personal story. The victim is neither famous nor infamous. She wasn’t at the center of a nationwide manhunt. Parents weren’t told to check on their kids at 10 o’clock because of her. Her case went unsolved without so much as a name to identify her.…

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06 Oct

American Murder: The Family Next Door: How Far is Too Far for True Crime?

Netflix, New DVD releaseamerican, crime, family, murder

The latest buzzy Netflix documentary tells the story of Chris Watts who murdered his pregnant wife Shanann and their two daughters Celeste and Bella. In this doc we hear the 911 call from Shanann’s friend Nickole Atkinson the morning of her death and the police footage of the moments they arrived at the house to find a frantic Nickole and later a very cagey Chris Watts. We see the last text messages Shanann sent and the last moments her daughters were alive. And we see Chris Watts lying about Shanann and their kids’ disappearance mere hours after he had killed…

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05 Aug

Line of Duty: Why You Should be Watching the Hit UK Crime Thriller

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On the 22nd of July 2005, the day after a series of failed terrorist bombing attempts in the UK capital and a fortnight after fifty-two people had been killed in the London Underground bombings, a Metropolitan Police surveillance team misidentified Brazilian electrician Jean-Charles de Menezes as a fugitive terrorist and fatally shot him as he entered Stockwell Tube Station. The aftermath of de Menezes’ death, the circumstances of which were the subject of intense press speculation in the run up to a 2008 inquest that resulted in no criminal prosecution for the officers involved, caught the imagination of screenwriter Jed…

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01 Jul

Unsolved Mysteries Review (Spoiler-Free): True Crime With More Questions Than Answers

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This Unsolved Mysteries review contains no spoilers. Unsolved Mysteries Season 1 The Netflix rebooted series Unsolved Mysteries could really use someone like Robert Stack to lead audiences through these mysterious cold cases. He may not have been the biggest named crime-fighting icon, but he brought his Elliot Ness from the original The Untouchables to the scene. He also brought his trench coat. True crime shows are coming from all directions, and most of them follow a similar pattern which was laid out by Unsolved Mysteries. What set it apart were that voice and that trench coat. Stack hosted the groundbreaking…

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05 Jun

The Last Days of American Crime

Max SchindlerMovie reviewsamerican, crime

As a final response to terrorism and crime, the U.S. government plans to broadcast a signal making it impossible for anyone to knowingly commit unlawful acts. Graham Bricke (Edgar Ramírez), a career criminal who was never able to hit the big score, teams up with famous gangster progeny Kevin Cash (Michael C. Pitt), and black market hacker Shelby Dupree (Anna Brewster), to commit the heist of the century and the last crime in American history before the signal goes off.Release Date: Jun 05, 2020

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20 May

The Last Days of American Crime Trailer and Release Date on Netflix

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Shakespearean Transformer Olivier Megaton is back with a brand new actioner. The Versailles-born director of Taken 2 and Taken 3 will bring his latest cars-and-shooting movie to Netflix in June, and the streaming service has just released a first trailer for it. The Last Days of American Crime is based on the 2009 Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini graphic novel, and has been adapted for the screen by Oblivion scribe Karl Gajdusek. It’s got a decent cast, too – The Assassination of Gianni Versace‘s Edgar Ramírez leads the pack alongside Anna Brewster (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) with a surprising…

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27 Apr

Daisy Ridley Eyed to Star in Crime Thriller The Ice Beneath Her

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Daisy Ridley is moving on from her star-making role as Rey in the recent Star Wars films, having permanently put away her lightsaber with this past December’s Sequel Trilogy closer, The Rise of Skywalker. Consequently, Ridley’s would-be first role after that wild franchise ride could show her in different form, as a psychological profiler in a dark crime drama. Talks have commenced with studio STX for Ridley to star in The Ice Beneath Her, an adaptation of Swedish author Camilla Grebe’s 2016 crime novel of the same name, reports Deadline. Should the deal be finalized, then Ridley would be working…

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07 Mar

Calm With Horses Review: A Bruising Crime Drama

New DVD releasebruising, crime, drama, horses, review

“I don’t think violence is the work of hateful men, sometimes it’s just the way a fellow makes sense of his world,” says Cosmo Jarvis’ former boxing-champ-turned-enforcer for the drug dealing Dever family. He’s a man whose life has been defined by violence in one form or another and he’s at something of a crossroads, torn between his love for his five-year-old son and the obligation he feels to the Devers. Calm With Horses is a confident, brutal, and poignant feature debut from Brit director Nick Rowland. It’s technically impressive, boasting extraordinary performances, although as a crime thriller it’s less…

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22 Aug

Crime + Punishment

Max SchindlerMovie reviewscrime, punishment

Amidst a landmark class action lawsuit over illegal policing quotas, Crime + Punishment chronicles the real lives and struggles of a group of black and Latino whistleblower cops and the young minorities they are pressured to arrest and summons in New York City. A highly intimate and cinematic experience with unprecedented access, Crime + Punishment examines the United States' most powerful police department through the brave efforts of a group of active duty officers and one unforgettable private investigator who risk their careers and safety to bring light to harmful policing practices which have plagued the precincts and streets of…

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18 Jan

Small Town Crime

Max SchindlerMovie reviewscrime, small

Ex-cop Mike Kendall (John Hawkes) discovers the body of a young woman and, in an act of self- redemption, becomes hell bent on finding the killer. While his un-couth and quirky detective style helps break open the case, his dogged determination unwittingly puts his sister (Octavia Spencer) and best friend (Anthony Anderson) in danger. Rated: RRelease Date: Jan 19, 2018

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