Category: Shows

Show: Snapped

Killer women are the focus of this long-running true crime series

About Snapped

Thought women don’t kill? Snapped proves otherwise. Snapped is a long-running true crime show featuring 31 seasons of murders perpetrated by women through various means, from poisoning, to stabbing, to gunshots, to murder-for-hire. It balances narration, re-creations, and the victim’s and suspect’s background and relationship with interviews with detectives, prosecutors, and victims’ families and friends, sprinkling police interviews and trial clips into the story.

The draw of the show is its ability to show how a relationship can devolve and how detectives discover that it isn’t what it first appears to be. Episodes in Seasons 1-23 detail the suspect’s background first; recent seasons tell the victim’s life story first.

True crime shows

The Show Elements

Seasons: 35 (2004-)

Where to stream: Peacock, Hulu

More shows like Snapped: Snapped: Killer Couples, Deadly Women, Deadly Wives, Wives with Knives, Meet, Marry, Murder, Black Widow Murders

See also this list of true crime shows

✓ Police interviews
✓ Trial clips
✓ Narration
✓ Re-creations
✘ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

Latest Posts

Show: Deadly Women

Women murderers take center stage in these homicide cases

(Note: This site contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.)

About Deadly Women

Deadly Women answers the question: Do women kill? Yes, they most certainly do. It tells stories (usually three per episode) of female murderers using all sorts of methods, from poisoning, to stabbing, to guns, just as well as men, if not as prolifically.

Deadly Women groups episodes by theme, such as greed, jealousy, forbidden love, obsession, revenge, and the like, even historical murders, which are not usually covered in other true crime series, and those from countries outside the US. Some of the cases are detailed elsewhere (see Snapped, for example), but Deadly Women presents them using dramatized re-creations with dialogue that emphasize the murders themselves, rather than the subsequent investigations.

Along with detectives from some of the cases, a stock group of experts provides insights, primarily former FBI profiler Candice DeLong and forensic pathologist Janis Amatuzio. DeLong analyzes the murderer’s behavior and the pathology behind it, while Amatuzio discusses the effects of certain homicide methods on the body. They are joined by a variety of historians, who detail the stories of the older cases, sometimes centuries-old.

True crime shows

The Show Elements

Seasons: 14 (2008-2021)

Where to stream: Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Discovery+

More shows like Deadly Women: Snapped, Deadly Wives, Wives with Knives, Meet, Marry, Murder, Black Widow Murders

See also this list of true crime shows

✘ Police interviews
✘ Trial clips
✓ Narration
✓ Re-creations
✓ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

Latest Posts

Show: City Confidential

A look inside murders and other crimes in cities and towns across the US

About City Confidential

City Confidential looks at murders from a different angle: the cities or towns in which they occurred and the high-profile people involved.

Narrated by actors Paul Winfield and Keith David (top-notch among true crime show narrators), City Confidential recounts stories about murder, sex scandals, extortion, and other crimes, detailing cases filled with people in the public eye, such as police officers, mayors and other politicians, doctors, pastors, millionaires, and judges.

The episodes feature cities from Seattle, Washington, to Atlantic City, New Jersey, and towns from Virginia City, Nevada, to Ruthton, Minnesota. Each episode begins with a 10-15 minute segment that gives an educational tour of the history and culture of the city first, then gets into the details of the crimes and their investigations through interviews with detectives, colorful locals, and sometimes the convicted killers themselves.

Episodes pepper the story with lines like “The New Orleans police force was as rotten as an old Mississippi River pier,” or “Today, Youngstown’s mafia machine is as wicked and ruined as the abandoned steel mills.” The episodes show how the cases reflect or dismantle the city’s reputation and atmosphere, and change the community and its people for the long term.

A&E revived City Confidential in 2021, with narration by actor Mike Colter, but the new episodes provide very little background on the history and culture of the city or town and do not focus on high-profile people. Much of the character of the original series is lost.

True crime shows

The Show Elements

Seasons: 12 (1998-2005, 2021-)

Where to stream: Discovery+, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Roku Channel

More shows like City Confidential: Heartland Homicide, Murder Comes to Town, Murder in the Heartland, Hometown Homicide

See also this list of true crime shows

✓ Police interviews
✓ Trial clips
✓ Narration
✘ Re-creations
✘ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

Latest Posts

Show: Deadly Wives

Marriages turn deadly in this show about killer wives

About Deadly Wives

At first, Deadly Wives might come across as just another murder show about women who kill, but its draw is the sarcastic narration actress Christine Estabrook, who delivers the writing with disbelief and an almost audible rolling of her eyes. She comments on trial testimony with asides like “Wait, you’re gonna love this one.”

This short-lived true crime show has episodes with one to two stories each that scrutinize the lies, alibis, and excuses of wives involved in killing their husbands. The police interview these deadly wives, and prosecutors cross-examine the ones brazen enough to take the witness stand.

The show provides a lighter take on intimate partner homicide and trades suspense and cliffhangers for barbs that might shock some viewers and delight others.

True crime shows

The Show Elements

Seasons: 2 (2013-2014)

Where to stream: Amazon Prime Video

More shows like Deadly Wives: Snapped, Deadly Women, Bizarre Murders, Wives with Knives, Meet, Marry, Murder

See also this list of true crime shows

✓ Police interviews
✓ Trial clips
✓ Narration
✓ Re-creations
✘ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

Latest Posts

Show: Murder She Solved

Watch out Angela Lansbury, these real-life women are on the case

About Murder She Solved

Some true crime shows focus on the victim, murderer, or their relationship and the psychology behind it. Murder She Solved: True Crime is a meat-and-potatoes show squarely emphasizing investigations involving female detectives, pathologists, and others like private investigators, forensic scientists, criminal profilers, and even the wife of a wrongfully convicted man. They share their experiences solving homicides in the United States and Canada.

Murder She Solved rejects fancy prose and cliffhangers and gets right down to business with the details of investigative techniques for each case, from forensics to undercover operations. Hit men, friends, spouses, and strangers kill, and female detectives solve the case.

True crime shows

The Show Elements

Seasons: 3 (2010-2013)

Where to stream: Amazon Prime Video, True Crime Network, Roku Channel

More shows like Murder She Solved: Homicide Hunter, The Killer Closer

See also this list of true crime shows

✓ Police interviews
✓ Trial clips
✓ Narration
✓ Re-creations
✘ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

Latest Posts

Show: Dateline NBC

A true crime classic for junkies and newbies alike

About Dateline

Dateline is the type of show that, back in the days of channel-surfing, would suck you in because you just had to know who the murderer was.

This long-running NBC show focuses mostly on murders (and murders of romantic partners), with other investigative pieces thrown in here and there. Dateline previously included other series like To Catch a Predator, but now concentrates on true crime.

Although it can sometimes be predictable, the show pulls the audience into the investigation through correspondents’ interviews with witnesses and suspects, leading the viewers through the case to the end of the trial in a more intimate way than most shows. Not to mention Keith Morrison‘s chilling, yet compelling, narrations.

Dateline’s storytelling, and the correspondents’ empathy for victims’ families and friends, makes it a standout. Morrison, Andrea Canning, Dennis Murphy, and Josh Mankiewicz often interview suspects before or after their conviction—a rarity in the genre—and their hard-nosed questioning is a highlight. When there is a trial, the show gives it ample attention, often with trial clips. Recommended.

True crime shows

The Show Elements

Seasons: 33 (1992-)

Where to stream: Peacock, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video

More shows like Dateline: 20/20, 48 Hours, Dateline: The Last Day

✓ Police interviews
✓ Trial clips
✓ Narration
✘ Re-creations
✘ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

See also this list of true crime shows

Latest Posts

Show: Meet, Marry, Murder

The name says it all: two people meet and marry each other, then one of them murders the other

About Meet, Marry, Murder

Meet, Marry, Murder features disturbing homicide cases committed by one spouse against the other, often in relationships involving domestic abuse or coercive control. Episodes concentrate on couples from the US and UK and rely on detectives recounting their investigations, along with outside experts like psychologists, former detectives, journalists, criminologists, attorneys, and domestic abuse specialists, who succeed at emphasizing the seriousness of the situation and the dangers of domestic abuse. They not only detail the story, but also the psychology behind the murder, suspect, victim, and their relationship.

Some of the cases also appear on Dateline and other true crime shows, with different details (such as the Hall, Novak, McDowell, and Cochran cases). A standout is the dual coverage of the Kathy Augustine murder by her husband Chaz Higgs in one episode and the murder-suicide involving Dallas Augustine (her daughter) and her wife in another.

Will Hanrahan narrates the original series, and an abridged version appears on Tubi as an “original,” but it is really a repackaged version of the first series. It consists of some of the American cases from the first series and is hosted by Michelle Trachtenberg, with new titles and narration. Trachtenberg’s narration attempts at salaciousness, but comes across as slow and forced, and she fails to match Hanrahan’s ease of narration and fluid style.

Helen Hunt hosts a new series on Lifetime with the same name, with actual new cases this time, also produced by Hanrahan.

True crime shows

The Show Elements

Seasons: 2 (2020-)

Where to stream: Tubi, True Crime Network, Roku Channel, Peacock

More shows like Meet, Marry Murder: Snapped, Dateline, Deadly Wives, Deadly Women, Wives with Knives, Fatal Vows

See also this list of true crime shows

✓ Police interviews
✘ Trial clips
✓ Narration
✓ Re-creations
✓ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

Latest Posts