The best true crime documentaries to watch in 2025

Sherri Papini: 'the captive and the culprit'

(Image credit: Alamy / Zuma Press Inc)

By Irenie Forshaw, The Week UK, Adrienne Wyper, The Week UK

last updated 16 April 2025

The "true crime wave" is showing no signs of "crashing", said GQ. From infamous murders to "high-level coverups", these real-life stories reveal how "humanity's darkest parts are vast and varying". Here are some of the most gripping true crime documentaries to binge this year.

The Curious Case of Natalia Grace

When a suburban American family adopts a six-year-old Ukrainian girl, Natalia Grace, they allegedly find themselves in a nightmarish situation reminiscent of 2009's horror movie "Orphan", said Entertainment Weekly. They believe she is "an adult with murderous intent". Examining this "uniquely unsettling case" and the ensuing legal battle, the series draws viewers into the "thought-provoking borderlands where truth and myth intersect". It makes for a gripping watch.
Apple TV+

This three-part documentary about a Mormon "mommy vlogger", Ruby Franke, who ends up in prison for child abuse is "pointed and insightful", said The New York Times. Some of the most "arresting" footage looks just like any other "peppy family vlog". But this "pert blonde woman in bright lipstick" isn't delivering "chummy parenting tips" – outtakes reveal "startling and cruel" exchanges with her young children. Going beyond the "tabloid fodder", it's a sensitive documentary that shows you can never really know "what's going on behind closed doors".
Disney+

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Unlike most other missing persons docudramas, Sherri Papini (pictured above) "doubles as the captive and the culprit", said Rolling Stone. The three-part series begins by "painting a glossy picture" of Papini, a happily married mother of two who vanishes, before returning three weeks later "covered in bruises". But what makes the story so "enthralling" is that Papini was "never kidnapped at all" and her claims of being abducted by two Hispanic women were entirely false. It's a "troubling case" that "gave a new name to the hapless white damsel in distress".
Disney+

This chilling documentary explores the controversial relationship between Anna Stubblefield, a white philosophy professor at Rutgers University, and Derrick Johnson, a non-verbal Black man with cerebral palsy. Netflix's account of the case is a "shocking crosscurrent of race, romance and consent", said Vanity Fair. Stubblefield, who had "devoted" her life to the study of disability rights, was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault (her conviction was later overturned). The film carefully "lays out the case" before using her husband's words to accuse Stubblefield of being a "pathological liar" with a "saviour complex".
Netflix

Originally aired as a podcast, the "UK's longest-known case of catfishing" has "come to Netflix in the form of a new film". Victim Kirat Assi tells the "gobsmacking tale" of how she began a relationship, eventually becoming engaged, to someone who did not exist "in the way she'd been led to believe", said GQ. Beginning with a Facebook friend request, the friendship "deepened into a virtual romance, an engagement and eventually an all-consuming web of unfulfilled promises" that consumed most of Kirat's 30s, said The Guardian. Kirat is a "cogent and remarkably grounded narrator", who explains "how she grew closer and closer to 'Bobby', as well as to his friends and family".
Netflix

The elements of this documentary are "lurid, brash and sensational", said The Guardian. It's a "horribly mesmerising look" at a group of Los Angeles TikTok dancers who sign up to 7M, a "management company that is also a private, invite-only church" led by Robert Shinn. This pastor saw "an opportunity" in their "combination of creative ambition, relative poverty and a youthful lack of business knowhow or desire", and encouraged them to devote themselves to him, and to cut themselves off from "the people who love them in order to strengthen their ties to their new belief system". "Dancing for the Devil" is a "harrowing look at abuses of power, allegations of sexual assault" and how hard it is to bring people to justice "when the US legal system still doesn't fully recognise coercive control", said GQ.
Netflix

From the creators of "The Tinder Swindler", this three-part 2024 docuseries follows the bizarre story of what the media dubbed a "real-life 'Gone Girl' ruse", said Entertainment Weekly. On 23 March 2015, Aaron Quinn called 911 to report that he and his girlfriend, Denise Huskins, had been attacked in their home by an intruder who blindfolded and drugged them, then abducted Denise in the boot of his white Mustang car.

When a decaying corpse wrapped in 41 layers of plastic turns up in the "sleepy" village of Beddau in south Wales, the community is "shaken", said The i Paper. As we start to hear from locals, an elderly woman soon emerges as the prime suspect: Leigh Sabine. Expertly mixing the "claustrophobia" of a small town with a "family mystery spanning generations", the first episode sets a compelling scene. "It's been a long time since a film gripped me quite like Sky's stylish and surprising" three-part series.
Sky

"The odd thing about the characters" in this saga is "how familiar they are from fiction", said The Telegraph. "A powerful family ruling over a small town. An indulged and entitled son who thinks he's above the law. Corruption and murder in a Deep South setting." The two seasons feature a fatal boating accident, in which the wife and younger son of disgraced lawyer Alex Murdaugh were found dead. The filmmakers "do a fine job spinning the yarn, pulling the viewer this way and that, and letting the 'Can you top this?' details slowly pile up", said Rolling Stone.
Netflix

The shooting of John Lennon outside his New York home in December 1980 by Mark Chapman is "so well known that it's extraordinary to realise how much has never been revealed till now", said the Daily Mail. Chapman surprised his own defence team by pleading guilty and never stood trial, meaning many witnesses have not testified publically before. This "tense and economical documentary" has an "emotional punch", said The i Paper. It "comes from the unflinching fashion" in which many of the eyewitnesses speak on camera for the first time and "share their recollections, along with flinty narration by Kiefer Sutherland".
Apple TV+

Adrienne Wyper has been a freelance sub-editor and writer for The Week's website and magazine since 2015. As a travel and lifestyle journalist, she has also written and edited for other titles including BBC Countryfile, British Travel Journal, Coast, Country Living, Country Walking, Good Housekeeping, The Independent, The Lady and Woman’s Own.