--- title: "Documentary series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/genre/documentary" region: "US" total: 11 shown: 11 licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Documentary series A documentary series has hours to spend, and what we are judging is how it spends them. The good ones trust their material, whether archive footage, an animal or a shopkeeper with a bad idea, and let it run long enough to become uncomfortable. The weak ones tell us what to feel before we have had the chance, usually with strings. Our shelf leans two ways, towards patient British series of the 1970s and towards Nathan Fielder, and we think that is one taste: both keep the camera on after a polite person would have looked away. Start with [The World at War](/tv/the-world-at-war), 90, still the standard for archive and eyewitness testimony, and hard to file away as history. Then [Life on Earth](/tv/life-on-earth), 88, Attenborough teaching clearly and only occasionally hurrying. Then [Nathan for You](/tv/nathan-for-you), 87, if you doubt a prank show belongs here; stay past the first season. After that, Planet Earth II for the cameras, or Wild Wild Country if you have six hours and a taste for communes. For US. 11 titles; 11 listed here. Add `?region=XX` for another country. - [*JAŸ-Z in 8*](https://film.one/tv/jay-z-in-8.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 58 · Documentary Rick Rubin sits JAŸ-Z down and takes the lyrics apart line by line, and when the series is on the words it is absorbing. Across eight episodes, the friendship that gets him talking is also what stops anyone asking him a hard question. - [*How Are You? It's Alan (Partridge)*](https://film.one/tv/how-are-you-its-alan-partridge.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 65 · 28m · Documentary/Comedy Steve Coogan still makes Alan Partridge worth spending time with, but this mental-health mockumentary leans too heavily on familiar mistakes. The supporting cast and a few sharply observed digressions keep an uneven series going. - [*The Rehearsal*](https://film.one/tv/the-rehearsal.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 84 · TV-MA · Comedy/Documentary · on HBO Max Nathan Fielder’s series about rehearsing life is funny, meticulous and more unsettling than anything else on television, and the copies of rooms are only the start of it. Its one real weakness is that it slowly stops being about anyone but him. - [*Wild Wild Country*](https://film.one/tv/wild-wild-country.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 78 · TV-MA · 1h 07m · Documentary/Crime · on Netflix Chapman and Maclain Way have an archive most documentary makers would kill for and the patience to let it play. Six hours of fair, absorbing television about a commune and the town that hated it, one hour too long, and strangely shy of the man at its centre. - [*Planet Earth II*](https://film.one/tv/planet-earth-ii.md) — 2016 · Fi1m 86 · TV-G · Documentary/Family · on Discovery+, HBO Max Ten years on from the first series, this follow-up has cameras that can go where the animals go, and the result is the best-looking television we have seen. It is also scored as if we could not be trusted to feel anything unaided. - [*Making a Murderer*](https://film.one/tv/making-a-murderer.md) — 2015 · Fi1m 78 · TV-14 · 1h 00m · Documentary/Crime · on Netflix Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi spent a decade on Steven Avery, and Part 1 is patient, plainly made and hard to stop watching. It is also a defence brief that never admits to being one, and Part 2 spends the patience Part 1 earned. - [*The Jinx*](https://film.one/tv/the-jinx.md) — 2015 · Fi1m 77 · TV-MA · Documentary/Crime · on HBO Max Andrew Jarecki’s six-part documentary is superbly cut and hard to stop watching, and it is uncomfortable to enjoy. Robert Durst talks and the editors let him; only the slow-motion reenactments and a swelling score stand between it and something remarkable. - [*Nathan for You*](https://film.one/tv/nathan-for-you.md) — 2013 · Fi1m 87 · TV-14 · 21m · Comedy/Documentary · on HBO Max, Paramount+, The Roku Channel Nathan Fielder’s consultant with really good grades takes real schemes to real shopkeepers, and the results are funnier than a prank show has any business being. Stick with it past a patchy first season: the last episode is the strangest and saddest thing here. - [*Life on Earth*](https://film.one/tv/life-on-earth.md) — 1979 · Fi1m 88 · 55m · Documentary · on BritBox David Attenborough’s history of life is absorbing, clear and often moving. The teaching occasionally hurries past an animal we would like to watch longer, but the series rewards the concentration it asks for. - [*The World at War*](https://film.one/tv/the-world-at-war.md) — 1973 · Fi1m 90 · TV-PG · 1h 00m · Documentary/War & Politics *The World at War* is absorbing, distressing television that deserves the time it asks for. Its archive footage and eyewitness accounts make the Second World War difficult to regard as a safely distant subject. - [*The Ascent of Man*](https://film.one/tv/the-ascent-of-man.md) — 1973 · Fi1m 86 · 50m · Documentary Jacob Bronowski makes human discovery worth listening to, with clear sentences and an enthusiasm we found moving. Its information needs checking against later work, but the programme remains a rewarding introduction to why science matters. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/genre/documentary