Traditional circuses still crisscross the country, but on a much-reduced scale from when they ruled America as the undisputed "greatest show on earth." Sharon Grimberg's two-part documentary The Circus rewinds to that era of big tops and big crowds that exploded more than 100 years ago. The circus helped knit together…

The song "My Bathroom" from 1969 never made it onto the Billboard charts. But that doesn't mean this ode to the commode—with lyrics like "My bathroom, my bathroom, is my very special room, where I primp and fuss and groom"—isn't worthy of deeper appreciation. That's the guiding spirit of Bathtubs Over Broadway, the…

Susan Lacy's HBO documentary on Jane Fonda opens with a White House recording from 1971 in which then-President Nixon disparages the actress-turned-activist. "What in the world is the matter with Jane Fonda?" Nixon asks. "I feel so sorry for Henry Fonda." The excerpt suggests how much the Hollywood star, who had…

To say Jharrel Jerome's acting career is off to a hot start would be an understatement. At 21, he has already starred in an Oscar Best Picture winner—2016's Moonlight. And his latest role, in Ava DuVernay's four-part Netflix series When They See Us, is winning rave reviews (Oprah, an executive producer on the show…

Serial killer Ted Bundy continues to fascinate the American public even decades after his execution. The latest demonstration of that comes with the popular success of the Netflix docuseries Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger. The four-part series from…

Free Solo's path to likely Emmy nominations has been paved with gold—the Oscar kind. The film about mountain climber Alex Honnold's breathtaking ascent of Yosemite's El Capitan—without ropes—won the Academy Award in February for Best Documentary Feature. It's now on Emmy nomination ballots in multiple nonfiction…

The 2017 publication of Salt Fat Acid Heat, winner of the James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook, established author Samin Nosrat as a major culinary authority. But the Netflix series adapted from her book has gone even further—turning her into a television star. "It’s been overwhelming," Nosrat says of reaction…

"Missing my daughters growing up. That's what I was sentenced to." Cindy Shank voices those words in The Sentence, an HBO documentary directed by her younger brother, Rudy Valdez, that explores the impact of mandatory minimum drug sentences on one tight-knit family. In 2007 Shank was married and raising three…

Over three seasons of National Geographic's docuseries The Story of God, the filmmaking team and host Morgan Freeman have traveled widely, exploring faith traditions around the world. But there's some parts of the globe they generally avoid—anywhere with arctic temperatures. "I’m allergic to it," the Oscar-winning…

There was a time in American history when an influential scientist could ask, without raising eyebrows, "Can we build a wall high enough around this country so as to keep out these cheaper races?" That time, in the early 20th century, is explored in The Eugenics Crusade, a documentary directed by Michelle Ferrari…

The Serial podcast that triggered public fascination with the murder case of Adnan Syed—the Baltimore teen convicted in the 1999 killing of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee—has been downloaded well over 100 million times. One of those listeners was filmmaker Amy Berg. "I came to the podcast late. I listened to it in the…

The great photographer Garry Winogrand took more than a million pictures during his career. Among his preferred subjects was people at airports, especially those saddled with luggage. "When we talk about people psychologically and having issues we say, 'Oh, they've got baggage,'" notes Geoff Dyer, author of a book on…