On May 13, 2026, the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned Alex Murdaugh's double murder convictions in a unanimous 5-0 ruling. On May 18, Netflix started filming a documentary about it. On May 30 — twelve days later — that documentary was streaming globally. That timeline is the story. Not just the Murdaugh story, though that is genuinely extraordinary in its own right. The story is what Netflix just demonstrated is possible: a documentary that moves at the speed of news without sacrificing the depth that makes documentary worth watching. Instadocs: Alex Murdaugh, Unconvicted is the first installment of a new Netflix format called Instadocs, and it arrives as both a compelling piece of true crime journalism and a proof of concept for something the television industry has been trying to figure out for years. What Happened — and Why It Matters Alex Murdaugh was convicted in 2023 of murdering his wife Maggie and his son Paul on the family's South Carolina hunting estate. The ...
Personal essays on television and film. One viewer's honest thoughts on the stories worth watching — written with care.