Just stumbled onto this recently (in its 10th season), on Smithsonian. Fortunately, they show previous season episodes each week, so it's possible to catch up. Also, FYI, Amazon has all of the seasons (not part of Prime).
These are reenactments, with actors. HOWEVER, on many episodes, where the original personnel are available (e.g. passengers, pilots, from survivable accidents), they are interviewed, throughout the reenactment, i.e. interweaving the interviews with the reenactment. Occasionally, when no real flight information is available, some speculative dialog or actions (extrapolations) may be depicted, but most episodes are scripted with actions and dialog from both the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder information, in an attempt to meticulously recreate each incident. And, each episode typically includes interviews with the numerous accident investigation team members from the subsequent investigation (except for super-old accidents, where those personnel are now deceased).
As someone else has mentioned, it's not like a "high-budget film", but they do use reasonable CGI, and what appear to often be aircraft simulators, to depict interior and exterior content that is quite believable.
If you have ever asked the question "why do planes crash?", this series is for you. Again, if you fly a lot, and prefer to "not know" (i.e. "ignorance is bliss"), or if true stories, which are inherently horrific, due to the loss of life, are more than you can stomach, then this is definitely not for you. To be clear, they definitely do NOT show real pictures of crash victims, but they do occasionally show real pictures of wreckage, and sometimes depict crash scenes with actors, especially when showing recreations of rescues. Certainly, there is no avoiding thinking about the horror implied by these incidents, when you see the airframe carnage in some of those pictures/scenes, even when they are simply recreations.
The episodes typically depict a (condensed) version of the resulting investigation, as they uncover individual facts and leads, allowing them to eventually understand all of the factors that lead to the accident. It might seem that they are sometimes injecting a bit of drama/tension in into the program, but I always remind myself, that they are often condensing a year-long investigation, plus in-flight reenactments, into a 40-ish minute program, and I think it's a minor miracle to pull that off, and I tend to cut the showrunners some slack, for their efforts.
I would be remiss to not mention that lessons learned from many of these accidents are VERY applicable to non-aviation settings. In any field where lives (or monetary considerations) are a factor, and where "proper training", and/or failure to properly use/follow processes and procedures, could result in "bad things happening", there are important lessons that can be learned, here. It is truly depressing, just how many of these deadly accidents come back to improper training, failure to simply "follow a checklist", or even just deciding to "not fill out some form", because it seems like a waste of time.
I would also be remiss to not stress, once again, that some of these incidents are disturbing, especially for regular travelers. There are incidents depicted here, which have occurred on (supposed) top notch airlines, where things that "should never happen", amazingly do. Cockpit crew members who appear to have never learned basic flying skills (for example, how to recover from a stall, which is something that private aircraft pilots typically learn in the first few hours of flight training), and "maintenance procedural nonsense" that has resulted in the loss of an entire aircraft, and everyone onboard. Again, if you can't handle knowing the truth, then some of these investigations will keep you awake at night.
On the flip side of that, there are some stories of amazing piloting efforts, where flight crews have done just the opposite, and saved part, or all, of their passengers and crew by applying team work, flying skills, and simply being unwilling to give up, right to the very last second.
So, this is a great series, for many reasons. It is almost a 10 out of 10 for me, but as have some other reviewers, I decided on a 9 (which might be unfair, again, considering how much they do with the time allotted).
