Four Outstanding Documentaries Every Writer Should See
Put that screen time to good use
If you grew up during the 1960s and 1970s, the title of this article may have caused an unpleasant flashback; the documentaries they showed us in school back then were pretty awful (except for Jacques Cousteau’s undersea adventures, which were amazing). By the mid-2000s, kids were getting far superior documentaries like David Attenborough’s Planet Earth series, so readers under 40 probably weren’t traumatized by my title.
Documentaries have definitely come a long way over the past two decades; now they even have two categories dedicated to them at the annual Academy Awards: Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary (Short Subject). Sadly, these are awarded off-air (even if they have a famous narrator like Tom Hanks, for example) and that’s a shame; many of them are infinitely better than the latest Fast and Furious installment or newest episode of The Bachelor (actually, all of them are better than The Bachelor).
With the proliferation of streaming services in recent years, the number of documentaries to choose from is almost overwhelming, covering every possible subject. The most common, at the moment at least, are in the areas of true crime and music, along with an alarming number of profiles of former WWE wrestlers (I didn’t say all…
