The Jinx

After twelve years on the air, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia knows how to play its well-honed characterizations with a little topical flair. And if we’re going to look into the whole “Dennis Reynolds is a murderer” thing, you can bet that the resurgence of true crime documentaries was the way to go, as seen in Season 12's “Making Dennis Reynolds a Murderer” trailer.

HBO’s The Jinx enraptured viewers not just by the brutal nature and winding mystery of its central crimes, but also the sinister mannerisms of its prime suspect, Robert Durst. The real estate heir famously even implicated himself in the final episode, though Durst now claims he was using meth “the whole time.”

The jinxed story of Robert Durst doesn’t lend itself to a second season the way Netflix’s Making a Murderer or even Serial might, but Durst himself has been grounds for belching parody for decades. Now, Lifetime will take The Jinx story in a semi-serious route, developing an original movie based on the decades-long saga of Durst’s mysterious deaths.

Pop icon Lady Gaga’s American Horror Story: Hotel role as “The Countess” seemed pretty … well, gaga from the start (nevermind her Golden Globe for it), but we’ll give the “Bad Romance” singer this - she certainly did her murderous homework. A new interview reveals that Gaga based the character on none other than burping creepo and The Jinx subject Robert Durst.

This past weekend saw Netflix jumping into the true crime racket with ten-part documentary series Making a Murderer, a heartland mystery of Steven Avery’s decades-long charges under suspicious circumstances, in the vein of The Jinx or Serial. Now, you don’t even need a Netflix account to make it your next obsession, as the streaming service releases its premiere free of charge online.

Peak TV is the name of the game for 2015, with hundreds of scripted series crowding the landscape from the Marvel empire, to the Scottish countryside, and a galaxy far, far away. Join ScreenCrush TV critic Kevin Fitzpatrick to cut through all the clutter, and rank the very Best TV Shows of 2015!

After blowing up the “true crime” craze by its first season, the second season of Serial has finally made its way to air, and so too follows the next wave of investigative documentaries. Enter Netflix’s new Making a Murderer, the full trailer of which dives deep into a heartland murder-mystery for accused criminal Steven Avery.

You’ve likely heard one person or another recommending HBO’s The Jinx as a followup to Serial, and Netflix hopes Making a Murderer might serve as the next link in our “true crime” chain. The streaming service has announced its own heartland murder-mystery with all the real-life twists you can handle, streaming this December.

Emboldened by many recent successes, HBO has a reputation for buying and developing a great deal more programs than other networks, two of which may now include follow-ups to some of HBO’s most iconic shows. Not only is The Wire creator David Simon developing a ‘70s set porn drama centered in Times Square, but so too is HBO considering further seasons of docu-drama The Jinx.

When I first wrote about the true-crime documentary series The Jinx a couple of weeks ago, I was the only person I knew who was watching it. A few weeks later, it’s all anyone is talking about. It’s been one of the top trending topics on Twitter for three days straight, and my personal feed is clogged with debates about the case and the ethics of the filmmakers’ behavior. As I left my hotel in Austin yesterday morning, pundits were discussing the show on CNN; as I wrote most of this piece at the Austin airport, two men at the table next to me in the food court were talking about it as well. I spent a month recommending the show to people who looked at me like I was crazy (“The Jinx? Like the kid’s game?”). The show went from total obscurity to inescapable pop-cultural phenomenon in a matter of hours.