In July, I shared my picks for the best true crime so far in 2025. To close out the year, here are four offerings that have stood out since those earlier highlights.
Documentary Film
‘Predators’
There has been growing interest in recent years to revisit and reappraise reality-type shows from the 1990s and 2000s that essentially used humiliation as a means to big ratings — whether it be “The Biggest Loser,” “The Jerry Springer Show” or, as we see in this documentary film (newly streaming on Paramount+), the “Dateline NBC” series “To Catch a Predator.”
The conceit of that series, which aired from 2004 to 2007, was ultimately an undercover operation: hire a young-looking adult actor to act as a decoy to lure adults seeking a sexual encounter with a child. At a so-called sting house, the would-be predator was confronted by cameras and the show’s host, the reporter Chris Hansen, before being ambushed by the police.
The documentary filmmaker David Osit comes at this project by posing ethical, even existential, questions: Why were millions of TV watchers drawn to seeing these people humiliated? Can entertainment be a public service? Was law enforcement helping a TV program, or was a TV program helping law enforcement?
Osit also examines the homemade, vigilante-justice, pedophile-hunter shows that “To Catch a Predator” has spawned, particularly those that stream online, where content moderation is loose at best.
Hansen is interviewed here, as are some of the decoy actors and an ethnographer named Mark de Rond, who ruminates on the show’s draw. “What you’re seeing is effectively someone else’s life end,” he says, “and they realize it.”
Documentary Mini-Series
‘Amy Bradley Is Missing’
Ever since I watched this three-part Netflix docuseries a few months ago, Amy Bradley has often drifted into my thoughts — a gut punch every time. In 1998, when Bradley was 23 years old, she vanished in Curaçao while on a Royal Caribbean cruise with her parents and her brother. With every new detail, revelation and interview here (and there are plenty of them), the more shocking, confounding and tragic this case becomes.
Bradley’s parents continue to devote their lives to locating their daughter, believing she’s still alive. And they have reason to think it: Possible sightings of her have bubbled up over the decades. Some of the people convinced that they encountered her go on camera to recall their experiences. (After this series aired, thousands of new tips poured in, according to Bradley’s brother.)
Many clues point to human trafficking, and the depth to which we learn about Bradley, including that she came out of the closet a few years before her disappearance, makes this one of the most humanizing accounts ever in such a documentary.
Podcast
‘Not a Very Good Murderer’
A jewel heist at gunpoint, an attempted murder via Viagra, a supposed affair with a former vice president, a house set ablaze: Buckle up. This eight-part Audible original podcast from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow is a wild ride into the heart of an affluent enclave, Paradise Valley, Ariz., and, more specifically, the life of one its most notorious inhabitants: Celia, or Cece, Doane.
A former Miss Arizona now in her 70s, Doane is an eccentric, well-to-do socialite with a spotty past. She has been a “person of interest,” so to speak, in more than one murder — among many other potential misdeeds.
Farrow spends seemingly countless hours talking to and visiting with Doane as he plumbs the tale, painstakingly sorting truth from lies (a mind-boggling task here). In all, the series is a refreshing break from what are often the far bleaker, less pulpy stories of the true crime genre, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Amid all the juicy details he uncovers is a surprising peek into the not-so-obvious ways that the rich and well-connected influence the United States.
Dramatized Mini-Series
‘The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox’
Amanda Knox was just 20 years old when she was arrested in 2007 for the murder of Meredith Kercher, one of three roommates she had while studying in Perugia, Italy. The trial quickly became a global media circus, and Knox became a household name as the tabloid machine dragged her character through the mud. She would be wrongfully convicted, and spend a total of nearly four years in an Italian prison before her murder conviction was overturned.
This ambitious, eight-episode, dramatized Hulu mini-series, which is largely in Italian, recounts the infamous international crime saga while guiding viewers through its roller coaster of a legal case, which was profoundly complicated by cultural differences. Part prison drama, part courtroom drama, it pushes the boundaries of anxiety viewing.
In August, I spoke with Knox, who served as an executive producer on the show, and with the actress who plays her, Grace Van Patten.
“This is not a show about the worst experience of someone’s life,” Knox said. “This is the show of a person’s choice to find closure on their own terms and to reclaim a sense of agency in their own life after that agency has been stolen from them.”
Maya Salam is an editor and reporter, focusing primarily on pop culture across genres.
The post True Crime to Stream: The Best of 2025 (Part 2) appeared first on New York Times.
