Sunday Special: A Sea of Streaming Docs

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

There was once a time when documentaries could be found only on public television or in art-house cinemas. But today, documentaries are more popular and accessible than ever, with streaming services serving up true crime, celebrity documentaries, music documentaries and so much more. On today’s Sunday Special, Gilbert is joined by The New York Times’s chief television critic, James Poniewozik, and Alissa Wilkinson, a Times film critic, to talk about the documentaries that are worth your viewing time. Discussed on this episode: “The American Revolution,” 2025, directed by Ken Burns “The Alabama Solution,” 2025, directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” 2015, directed by Andrew Jarecki “Making a Murderer,” 2015, directed by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos “The Yogurt Shop Murders,” 2025, directed by Margaret Brown “The Perfect Neighbor,” 2025, directed by Beet Gandbhir “The Last Dance,” 2020, directed by Jason Hehir “Copa 71,” 2023, directed by Rachel Ramsay and James Erkine “Cheer,” 2020, created by Greg Whiteley “Last Chance U,” 2016, directed by Greg Whiteley, Adam Ridley and Luke Lorentzen “Pee-wee as Himself,” 2025, directed by Matt Wolf “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” 2024, directed by Benjamin Ree “Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of SNL Music,” 2025, directed by Questlove “Cameraperson,” 2016, directed by Kirsten Johnson “An American Family,” 1973, created by Craig Gilbert “Look Into My Eyes,” 2024, directed by Lana Wilson “When We Were Kings,” 1996, directed by Leon Gast

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Gilbert Cruz, and this is the Sunday special.
0:09.9	There was a time when documentaries could only be found on public television and maybe at your local art house theater.
0:18.4	But today, if you fire up almost any streaming service,
0:21.9	you'll find that they're chock full of documentaries.
0:25.0	True crime documentaries, celebrity documentaries,
0:28.5	music documentaries, poop cruise documentaries.
0:32.4	Maybe there's just the one poop cruise documentary.
0:35.3	Today, we're talking about it all.
0:37.1	We're talking about documentaries. And, we're talking about it all. We're talking about documentaries.
0:39.3	And if we're talking about docs, even in this era of incredible glut, there's one
0:44.9	gentleman we have to talk about, and that is Ken Burns.
0:48.2	He has made more than 40 documentaries.
0:51.0	He's done jazz, which is the first one that I saw, baseball, the Civil War,
0:56.3	country music, and so many other subjects. This month, he's got a new one out, a six-part,
1:02.2	12-hour opus called The American Revolution. Here to talk about Ken Burns and the wide,
1:08.0	wide world of docs. I've got two of my wonderful colleagues.
1:11.3	Alyssa Wilkinson is a movie critic at the Times.
1:14.1	She writes our documentary Lens column about new documentaries.
1:17.6	Hello, Alyssa.
1:18.5	Hello.
1:19.4	And James Panoazek is our chief TV critic.
1:22.3	He needs no introduction.
	...

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