Catching Killers

Crime documentary that doesn't waste it's time on people's backstory or long boring scenic shots. Just the case and nothing else. Waiting for more! This is how a crime documentary should be done.

The series isn't bad if all you're looking for is the Reader's Digest condensed versions of the cases being profiled. The actual detectives on these cases lend a good deal of credibility and eliminate the need for a schmaltzy narration. But the sound effects editing needs to be dialed way back. It really isn't necessary to punctuate every sentence uttered with a rumbling whoosh or a highly-reverberated tribal drum, or a shrieking string crescendo. These sonic burps only serve to cheapen any documentary value and drag the series into the horror B-picture territory.

The cased are interesting but every investigator tells their story in an extremely dramatic fashion and it all feels very overdone and almost insulting to the watcher. And it wouldn't be necessary at all.

We see these stories being told from the perspective of the investigators and we get some insight in how they deal with the horrible stuff they have to deal with while doing their investigations.

There's not a whole lot of filler, which can be considered a good thing.

Sometimes it felt a bit overly dramatic, while still staying on the surface of the emotions that are shown.. To me that felt a bit cheap by the creators.. I wanted to know more about these investigators and how they experienced it besides seeing that single tear, but it never quite went there. A missed opportunity.

Perhaps this documentary didn't entirely know what it ultimately wanted to be or achieve.

What we end up with is reasonably interesting for what it is, but at the end of the day, rather forgettable.

6,5/10, rounding up to a 7.

This is probably one of the worst homicide documentaries ever made. It very superficially touches upon different cases. The makers obviously decided to do some cherry picking in the case files in order to be able to tell a complex entertaining story in only 40 minutes. This way of working just leaves too many questions unanswered to ever become a decente in depth documentary. It does not do any justice to the victims and or perpetrators. The series aims at creating only entertainment build on top of dramatic events. That will probably enough for a lot of viewers, but is essentially a disgrace.