Seeing is believing
The crazier the story, the more likely it is to be true – Showmax and Co will leave you scratching your head.
Tired of scientific doccies that use jargon to explain concepts you’ll never understand? Here’s an idea: go to Showmax (and other streaming platforms) and binge on these strangerthan-fiction doccies that are all true.
McMILLION$ (2019, SHOWMAX)
The six episodes search for $24 million (R348 million) in missing prize money from the McDonald’s Monopoly game. Not a monopoly in the business sense, but the actual boardgame Monopoly. Each menu item was accompanied by a corresponding token that could be used on a McDonald’s Monopoly board. If you got a specific combination, you won a prize. Simple enough, but a bunch of crooks at the company contracted by the food giant to administer the game were secretly pocketing the most important tokens. And since they were running the whole shebang, no one – from customers to McDonald’s bigwigs – was any the wiser that not a single winner claiming prizes from cars to the $1 million was legitimate.
THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (2018, SHOWMAX)
This is more of a science experiment than anything else. Identical triplets were split at birth and adopted by families who went their separate ways. While they were secretly monitored, the boys grew and at age of 18 learnt of each other by accident. Bobby went to a New York community college and didn’t understand why everyone kept calling him “Eddie”. Surprise! One of his brothers went to that very same school! And when their story made headlines, their third brother David was floored – he had two brothers. The doccie has footage of the boys growing up, as well as interviews. The more the trio dug, the more they learnt about their pasts. And don’t be upset with their adoptive parents: they were lied to, told that it was difficult getting one family to take in triplets, not once questioning whether the boys were part of an experiment.
204: GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER (2014, SHOWMAX)
The murder of politically aligned mine boss Brett Kebble made headlines in 2005. What first appeared to be a simple armed hijacking-gone-wrong in Joburg’s northern suburbs ended up being a crime so well planned that it would sit perfectly in tons of different Hollywood scripts. Brett was involved with South Africa’s underworld. Everything from embezzlement, paying off Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, billions in company shares going missing, hitmen, drugs… you name it, Brett was involved. And his murder was allegedly orchestrated by Brett himself. He roped in three criminal friends, they planned the hit and did it. To get away with the murder, the hitmen turned state witness and claimed it was assisted suicide.
THE CASE AGAINST ADNAN SYED (2019, SHOWMAX)
This is the follow-up to 2014 podcast Serial and tells the story of imprisoned
Adnan Syed. He was found guilty of the 1999 murder of his ex- girlfriend Hae Min Lee who was strangled to death. The problem is that he wasn’t convicted on actual physical evidence like fingerprints. A couple of Hae’s acquaintances claimed to have seen Adnan with her shortly before her disappearance, while “accurate technology evidence” turned out to be nothing more than a couple of inaccurate cellphone signals. Adnan is still in prison while the US Supreme Court reviews his case.
FYRE: THE GREATEST PARTY THAT NEVER HAPPENED (2019, NETFLIX)
The Fyre Festival made news in 2017 for all the celebrities linked to it – from Kardashians to rappers and movie stars. But it was one big lie. What started as an actual party turned into a money pit. And despite the organisers knowing that it was going to be a flop, they still took in bookings, ran ads and let the people go to the festival site… to discover that the celebs weren’t there. No tents, no beds, no stages, no music – shattered dreams. The bosses still refuse to acknowledge that it was fraud.
KILLER INSIDE: THE MIND OF AARON HERNANDEZ (2020, NETFLIX)
NFL star Aaron Hernandez had it all. Family. Friends. A multi-million- dollar contract to play sport. He also had mental instability. A simple murder case in 2013 turned into global news when clues connected the sport star to a series of murders: he rented the murder car in his own name, left fingerprints at crime scene and forgot to clean up bullet casings at the murder site. The more you watch, the more you will be asking if the athlete could really have been that stupid. Aaron suffered a sports head injury that made him unaware that his actions were illegal. Pity that his diagnosis was only made after his 2017 suicide.
TIGER KING: MURDER, MAYHEM & MADNESS (2020, NETFLIX)
This is the doccie series of 2020 and the people involved are as crazy as characters in fantasy sci-fi movies. It investigates the world of big- cat trade across the United States – lions, tigers, cougars and more. But it’s not just the shady deals and how animals are traded that makes the show, but the way that the “collectors” and conservationists are at war. Main man Joe Exotic reveals how he’s been butting heads with a conservationist named Carole Baskin and how Carole murdered her husband, as well as Joe’s three-way marriage and hiring a hitman to kill Carole.
SHIRKERS (2018, NETFLIX)
This movie documentary is intense. It will leave you feeling uneasy. And it will make you question how someone can just disappear, vanish into thin air and not leave a trace. It tells the story of Sandi Tan, who made an indie roadtrip movie with two friends in Singapore in 1992. They were under the tutelage of a director named Georges Cardona. When they wrapped filming, Georges disappeared with their movie and film footage and no discernible need to vanish. Something inexplicable happened. Almost 20 years later, Sandi got a call from Georges’ widow who revealed that she had the footage but that it was incomplete – the audio was missing. Who knows why? Because Sandi is clueless to this very day.
SCREWBALL (2019, NETFLIX)
Baseball is a multi-billion- dollar sport. From sponsorships, to TV ratings, to superstars that fans around the world idolise. And the sport has been haunted by rumours of doping and steroid abuse for decades. So what happens when the man behind the scandal comes clean and exposes everyone? Anthony Bosch reveals how he went from running Miami anti-ageing clinic BioGenesis, to selling performance enhancing drugs to baseball’s biggest stars. Destroying sports idols has never looked so slick.