I need to preface this article by admitting that I’m one of those sickos who reads Ted Bundy books for fun and once said loudly on a bus: “Aww I love Ivan Milat!”, mortifying my boyfriend in the process. (Shameless plug: I also have an unsolved mysteries podcast called All Aussie Mystery Hour with my colleague and fellow true crime weirdo, Mel. Check it out here or below!)
But I know you are also a sicko like me, because you damn well clicked on this true crime-themed story, didn’t you? So I feel like I’m in a safe space here and can tell you about my current Netflix obsession: Forensic Files.
This show is an absolute treat for the soul and literally I just want this day to be over so I can go home and binge 16 episodes of it without a break. It’s a classic, and it deserves your attention if you haven’t watched it already.
Think about those compelling true crime documentaries you couldn’t stop watching, like Making A Murderer, The Staircase, and The Jinx, with their exhaustive research, high production quality and incredible long-form storytelling. Well, Forensic Files has none of this.
It’s glaringly low-budget, formulaic and, dare I say it, completely cheesy. But that’s precisely what makes it beautiful.
Narrated by the iconic / almost robotic tones of Peter Thomas (who a colleague just told me passed away a few years ago. RIP, Peter), each episode opens with him giving a tantalising teaser of the case which almost always goes like this:
In Buttfuque, Idaho, a quadruple homicide had local police baffled as to who committed such an unthinkable crime. But… a stray hair, a Golden Retriever named Bebo and forensic science provided the final piece of the puzzle that helped catch a madman.
And just like that, you are hooked. Though you know the end result, you can’t help but watch to see just how ~science~ cracked the case.
Basically, the series is like the real-life CSI in that each episode explores how different avenues of forensics helped authorities to solve a particularly baffling case.
But where CSI has sexy scientists with long flowing hair that often comes perilously close to trailing onto the bloated bodies of dead Floridians, Forensic Files ranks at a firm zero on the sexy scale.
Unlike CSI which has versions set in glam major cities like Las Vegas and Miami and New York, the baffling crime in Forensic Files almost always takes place in some US locale completely devoid of zest like Madison, Wisconsin or Benton County, Tennessee.
Because of the down-home nature of the show, the witnesses, law enforcement officials and experts featured in the to-camera are all your average, salt of the earth people with names like Doneene M. Dresback and Bruce Bartlett and facial expressions like this:
Or this:
The forensic experts are my favourite, because they all have frankly insane-sounding jobs that I didn’t even know existed before watching this gift of a show.
Cop these gems:
They may look ordinary (even with their extraordinary job titles), but these guys are the undisputed heroes of Forensic Files.
Each baffling case seems to be hopeless — dragging on for years, unsolved and forgotten, until you’re almost convinced that Peter Thomas is going to wrap things up and say it was forever a mystery. But then, some obscure form of forensic evidence, be it handwriting analysis, groundbreaking 1990s DNA technology, a minuscule fibre, or a small grain of sand, helps law enforcement nab the bad guy.
And justice, my friends, is served.
Perhaps because each 20-minute episode does follow the exact same formula, it’s incredibly easy — almost too easy — to binge. Before you know it, you’ve watched 45 cases being solved and you have nothing to show for it except a suddenly extensive and deep knowledge of forensic podiatry. And Netflix currently has 376 episodes in its database, so the bingeing doesn’t need to stop.
Bless you Netflix, bless you Peter Thomas, and bless the unsung heroes of the US forensic science community for this truly perfect show.
Did I mention Pedestrian has its own true crime podcast?! Check it out on Spotify, subscribe on iTunes, or listen below:
