It is not a mystery why the drama Tiger King has caught on in such a big way: It is a compelling story, that is involving in unusual people, doing all varieties of fantastic things that you were never have seen before. Tiger King, Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, a seven-part documentary that debuted on Netflix about a week ago and clung to the top spot on the service’s top ten list for much of that time, has assisted to keep a lot of homebound TV viewers sane during these scary, uncertain times.
Sure, the program is something of a mess, especially structurally, as it frequently jumps all over the place storytelling-wise. But the show has clearly captured the nation’s imagination because it takes a wild true story and tells it in the wildest way possible. You will be probably recognized the colorful characters on true crime streaming shows before, but that was nothing compared to this.
Tiger King is full of the sort of moments that are so off-the-charts crazy that you will want to rewind to watch them again. The series is also a rare piece of true crime pop culture that would have been worthwhile even there had not happened a murder plot associated with it. The drama Tiger King, which was got directed by Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin, is nominally the story of Joe Exotic.
This Oklahoman oddball who not only operates the tiger zoo but also tinkers in electoral politics broadcasts an Alex Jones-style Livestream, writes country music songs, and marries a sequence of much younger men-including, at one point, two of them at once. The story mostly coalesces around Joe’s blood feud with Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist and rival zookeeper whom he was ultimately convicted of trying to murder-although the series also spends the bulk of one episode looking at allegations suggesting the unsolved disappearance of Baskin’s former husband, who Joe believes vanished by Baskin’s hand.