What’s it called?
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem And Madness
What’s it about?
It’s a seven-part Netflix documentary series about the bizarre case of uber-eccentric Joe Exotic. The gay, mullet-wearing, country music singing owner of an animal park in Oklahoma which specialised in big cats, he has long been the bête noire of Carol Baskin, head of Florida-based animal charity Big Cat Rescue, a strident campaigner against the breeding for profit of lions and tigers.
What’s so good about it?
The synopsis above doesn’t tell the half of it because, as the lurid title suggests, the story film-makers Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin thought they were following when they started out turned into something entirely different over the course of five years of filming. Initially a documentary about Joe Exotic and the gang of weirdos and misfits he gathered around him at his Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, it turned into a true-crime drama when Joe was charged with taking out a contract on Baskin and subsequently jailed.
Who’s in it?
As well as Joe Exotic and Carol Baskin, there are such colourful characters are potty-mouthed Rick Kirkham, producer of Joe Exotic TV, and Bhagavan ‘Doc’ Antle, pony-tailed owner of The Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S, geddit?), a rival of Joe’s. You really couldn’t make it up. Thanks to Netflix, you don’t have to try.
Best bits?
Joe Exotic’s haircut and clobber generally steal whichever scene he or anyone else is in, particularly when they feature in the many music videos he has shot to accompany his albums. Old Town Road, they ain't.
For fans of ...
Making A Murderer, Jackass, Siegfried & Roy: Masters Of The Impossible.
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