Happy Face, a new true crime thriller, may be the seventh most-watched show on Paramount+ in the past week, but it’s failing to leave audiences with a, erm, happy face.
Despite being based on Melissa Moore’s smash hit book and podcast, the show currently sits at just a 57% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an even lower audience score.
The show is inspired by Moore’s experience being the daughter of Keith Hunter Jesperson (played by Dennis Quaid in the show), aka the Happy Face killer, a man responsible for the murders of at least eight women in the early 1990s. While the show loosely follows true events, audiences have been left disappointed by the largely fictionalised account of a story so expertly covered previously in other mediums.
Happy Face may not rank among the best Paramount+ shows, but we’ve got just the thing to turn true crime fans’ frown upside down, as we give our pick of three of the very best crime documentaries that one of the best streaming services has to offer.
Outcry
RT Score: 89%
Episodes: 5
Director: Pat Kondelis
Outcry tells the story of Greg Kelley, a promising Texas high school football star accused of sexually assaulting a young boy.
Convicted of the crime, Kelley is sentenced to 25 years in prison. Soon, support emerges, calling into question the small-town police force’s investigation, the tactics of the prosecution and the validity of the conviction.
The documentary covers the full story, from Kelley’s initial arrest to his exoneration in 2019 after five-years in prison. Throughout, filmmaker Pat Kondelis shines a light on those responsible, while exploring the reasons something like this could happen. The series depicts a justice system that’s inherently broken, one more focused on convicting someone than convicting the right person, while attempting to take an objective stance on the subject. While not the propulsive whodunnit of some true crime shows, Outcry is addictively engaging as the full scale of errors that led to Kelley’s imprisonment are revealed.
Active Shooter: America Under Fire
RT Score: 96%
Episodes: 8
Director: Star Price
An eight-part docuseries, America Under Fire takes a look at some of the worst mass shootings in US history, with each episode exploring how events unfolded and the impact they had on their local community and America as a whole.
Stepping away from the news reports filled with footage of police cordons and images of the perpetrators, Active Shooter instead talks to the survivors, victims’ families and first responders, humanizing a subject so often defined by faceless statistics.
The show isn’t Bowling for Columbine 2, there’s no hard stance advocating policy change, instead, it aims to spark a conversation around the mass shooting epidemic and larger gun control issue without dividing the audience into ‘for’ or ‘against’ camps. A difficult watch at times, but essential viewing for those who prefer a less sensational approach to true crime filmmaking.
#Cybersleuths: The Idaho Murders
RT Score: 83%
Episodes: 3
Director: Lucie Jourdan
This meta true crime documentary sees a group of TikTok sleuths attempt to unravel the murders of four students at the University of Idaho.
The brutal crime saw the victims murdered in their beds while their roommates supposedly slept through the whole thing, not contacting the police until late the following morning. Exactly the sort of suspicious circumstances that are catnip to the online amateur sleuthing community. Meanwhile the local police force, desperately trying to solve the case and calm a frightened town, are fighting a growing fire of rumour and conjecture.
Featuring interviews with a number of the cyber detectives, the documentary series shows how the work of these novices can both help and hinder the investigation and the differences between those who are essentially unpaid PI’s, on the ground, doing real investigative work, and those who simply log in to message boards and post their own, often baseless theories. #Cybersleuths is a must-see for true crime fans, just be prepared to have the camera turned inwards once in a while.
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