The Daily – Sunday Special: A Sea of Streaming Docs

Date: November 16, 2025
Host: Gilbert Cruz
Guests: Alyssa Wilkinson (NYT Movie Critic, Documentary Lens Columnist), James Poniewozik (NYT Chief TV Critic)

Episode Overview

This episode dives into the explosion of documentaries on streaming platforms, examining the many forms and surging popularity of nonfiction filmmaking. From the enduring influence of Ken Burns and public television traditions, through today’s true crime, sports and “poop cruise” docs, the hosts and critics discuss what’s changed, what stays essential, and which new and classic titles are worth your time.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ken Burns and “The American Revolution” (00:37–12:13)

• Ken Burns’s Impact: Gilbert Cruz opens with how Ken Burns is synonymous with the classic American documentary tradition, with more than 40 films tackling sprawling subjects (baseball, jazz, war, the Shakers, etc.).

• New Release: Burns’s latest work, The American Revolution, is a 6-part, 12-hour epic expanding America’s origin story well beyond textbook fare.

  • James Poniewozik:
    “It is also…not just the version of the American Revolution you learned in grade school…The narrative also turns to the Iroquois Confederacy… Colonists, loyalists, yes, but also Native Americans, also enslaved Americans.” (03:33)

    “It is a broadening of the story. And at 12 hours, he’s got a lot of…space to broaden the story.”

  • Burns’s work is self-consciously canon-building—but also often more radical and idea-driven than he’s given credit for in public imagination (10:16).

• Personal relationships to Burns: Alyssa’s “documentary education” came via pledge drives and PBS as a homeschooler; she describes Burns’s style as establishing the template for “what a documentary should be.” (05:09–07:09)

• Doc as Living History:

  “Wonderful stone arch that says, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. It doesn’t say for some of the people…for me, that meant democracy.” (10:54, Poniewozik, re: National Parks)

2. The Booming (and Complicated) Doc Landscape (12:13–14:33)

• Massive Expansion: Alyssa now writes a “Documentary Lens” column largely because of the overwhelming number of streaming docs, aided by festivals, shifting tastes, and the up-and-down flow of documentary funding.

• Trends and Struggles: The current market favors certain subgenres—cults, true crime, celebrity docs—pushed by streaming algorithm logic.

  • “If you want to make something else—something that takes years, changes society—there’s barely any funding.” (14:07, Alyssa)

• Examples:

  • The Alabama Solution: A doc relying on years of footage secretly filmed by prisoners.
  • The high threshold for “important” docs to get green-lit.

3. Doc Subgenres—True Crime, Nature, Sports, and More (14:33–24:38)

a. True Crime Explosion

• 2015 marked a boom: The Jinx (HBO) and Making a Murderer set off a “docu-pocalypse.”

• James: “Am I into true crime documentary? That’s like asking, do I like cop shows?...I like something that has a voice and ideas and is, you know, saying something beyond what happened...” (15:27)

• Alyssa highlights the “meta-commentary” cycle; now we have docs about docs, examining true crime itself (e.g., The Perfect Neighbor, Zodiac Killer Project).

b. Nature Docs

• The advent of “the sickest cameras ever invented” has elevated the nature doc to new heights—sometimes “screensavery in the best way.” (18:31, Poniewozik)
  • “Can one be voyeuristic toward, like, penguins? I guess you can.” (19:15)

c. Sports Docs

• Documentaries such as ESPN’s 30 for 30, The Last Dance (about Michael Jordan), and Tiger King dominated the early pandemic.
  • “It’s kind of, you know, is it partly that this is one of our few remaining areas of mass culture?” (21:35)
  • Olympic docs, Copa 71, and more illustrate how sports can be entry points to bigger themes (politics, gender, social change).
• Jim: “Why do I like watching Friday Night Lights?…It’s about people and wanting things and, you know, a certain culture. And it’s about what people will do to get the things that they want.” (24:04)

d. Other Genres Noted

• Concert/music docs, political docs, even oddities (the poop cruise phenomenon).

4. Recommendations: Essential Documentaries

(Some key picks, with memorable commentary and relevant timestamps)

• Pee Wee as Himself (27:06, Jim)

  • “Not just a fascinating portrait… but also about the effects of creating and living under a Persona.”
  • “Very much about the documentary process itself and what it can tell you and what it can’t tell you.” (28:19)

• The Remarkable Life of Ebelin (28:55, Alyssa)

  • “A good example of how documentaries can be totally unlike anything that you think a documentary can be…they went and got hundreds of thousands of pages of logs from World of Warcraft and got animators and recreated basically all of these scenarios.”
  • “It’s really quite moving… about how we connect with one another.” (30:31)

• Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music (31:05, Jim)

  • “They turned over SNL’s… entire library of musical guests to Questlove, and now here’s Prince. He is an excellent documentarian and musician, obviously. And his filmmaking is so musical. It’s just…percussive.” (31:49)

• Cameraperson (2016) (32:54, Alyssa)

  • “There’s kind of before Cameraperson and after Cameraperson in documentary world… what you end up getting is a film about the ethics of seeing and the act of seeing, what it means to look at people, what it means to look through a camera at people… It was a game changer.” (34:00)

• An American Family (1973) (35:11, Jim)

  • “The ur- television documentary… just mainly this aching, I hate doctors… It ended up capturing a great deal of dysfunction… and is just a landmark of television… It was a big influence… on the Real World, which in turn influenced 50% of the reality TV that you’re watching today.” (37:44)

• Look Into My Eyes (2024) (38:04, Alyssa)

  • “It’s about psychics, sort of… the movie is not there to credit or discredit them… it’s very emotionally intimate. It’s actually quite beautiful.” (39:03, 40:12)

• When We Were Kings (1996) (40:12, Gilbert Cruz)

  • “One of my favorite movies of all time… documentaries from 1996… about the Rumble in the Jungle, the 1974 fight in Zaire between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali...” (40:38)
  • “It is fascinating. I’ve watched it several times…It’s fantastic.” (41:46)
  • Notable quote: “Muhammad Ali is one of the greatest shit talkers of all time.” (41:23, Cruz)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the "Doc Boom":
  Alyssa: “It’s really interesting because there’s been a lot of ebbs and flows even over the last 10 years…Right now the industry is really struggling. There’s not a lot of money for documentaries unless they fall into a couple of different categories…” (12:45)

• Doc as Idea Vehicle:
  James: “To me, this is the thing that I come to documentaries for…I’m not just trying to get a Wikipedia download of information. I want there to be a…take, an idea.” (10:54)

• On Streaming Glut/Taxonomy of Docs:
  Jim: “You can’t just say, you know, a bunch of cool nature crap, volume 50… there needs to be some sort of taxonomic principle.” (19:57)

• “Screensavery” Nature Docs:
  Jim: “They can be sort of screensavery for me in the best way and voyeuristic too.” (19:15)

• Range of Documentaries:
  Gilbert: “The world of documentary and of nonfiction filmmaking is so vast and there’s so many things, obviously, listeners, that we have not had time to mention. Concert documentaries as a genre. The seven up films, political documentaries…” (42:32)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Ken Burns & The American Revolution: 02:11–12:13
• Changing Idea of a Documentary: 05:09–07:55
• PBS’s Role, Public TV: 11:10–12:13
• State of the Streaming Documentary: 12:13–14:33
• True Crime Boom: 14:33–17:54
• Nature Docs: 17:54–20:15
• Sports Docs: 20:15–24:38
• Staff Doc Recommendations: 26:47–41:22
• Final Reflection on the Doc World’s Immensity: 42:32
• Documentary Trivia Game: 45:11–52:56

Memorable Moments

• The “Poop Cruise” Callback:
  Gilbert, joking about the proliferation of even the most niche documentaries: “Poop Cruise documentaries. Maybe there’s just the one Poop Cruise documentary.” (00:37)
• Game Show Segment:
  Fun, fast-paced trivia rounds about Ken Burns, Netflix true crime, and doc narrators (e.g., “March of the Penguins”—Morgan Freeman, “Grizzly Man”—Werner Herzog). (45:11–52:56)
• Friendly Banter:
  The rapport between Jim and Alyssa, from PBS tote bags to discussing radicalism in public television.

Closing Thoughts

The episode frames documentaries as vibrant and essential, both reflecting and shaping how we understand history, ourselves, and each other. Whether you’re a doc newbie or obsessive, the conversation urges you to explore beyond the Netflix homepage—and gives you a packed list of where to start.

Documentaries Recommended in the Episode

(with platforms where mentioned)

• Pee Wee as Himself (Max)
• The Remarkable Life of Ebelin (Netflix)
• Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music (Peacock)
• Cameraperson (Max)
• An American Family (YouTube – partial uploads)
• Look Into My Eyes (Max)
• When We Were Kings (platform not specified)

(Reference show notes for the full list as promised by the hosts.)