Best Netflix documentaries to watch right now

Archive footage is combined with Albert Einstein’s own words, including scenes of dramatic reconstruction, in a feature-length documentary exploring the decision that defined the final decade of the great scientist’s life. Having fled from the Nazis, Einstein joined a group of physicists who warned the US about the potential threat from a German nuclear bomb.

When the Americans then created and used such a weapon but the Germans failed to, Einstein was left analysing his own actions and trying to deal with insurmountable guilt.

Jack Seale

France, the 1970s: a man called Claude Vorilhon rebrands as “Raël”, claims to have received deep wisdom from aliens and starts a cult, a way for him to overcome his eccentric hairdo and convince vulnerable women to devote themselves to him.

Up to that point, this documentary series tells a familiar, if still disturbing tale of hysteria and deception, with some cracking archive footage of furious arguments on French TV talk shows. Once “Raëlism” takes off it arrives in unexpected places and propels its leader to global notoriety.

The series interviews the mercurial man himself.

Jack Seale

The makers of The Tinder Swindler are behind this docuseries that takes us back to 2015 in Vallejo, California. Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn were disturbed in the night by home invaders, who then kidnapped Huskins. She was returned after a hellish two-day ordeal, but the situation almost got worse for the couple from then on, because the police thought their story didn’t add up.

As the papers get hold of a story they dubbed “the real Gone Girl”, a twisted tale develops about what happens when the truth is too implausible to believe.

Jack Seale

European rugby’s annual international competition is captured in an intense, Drive to Survive-style documentary, charting the ups and downs of the 2023 Six Nations championship. Interviewees including Scotland’s Finn Russell and Ireland’s Andrew Porter discuss the business of technique and tactics and also the mental and physical strains of playing rugby union at the highest level.

It shows just how brutal — and majestic — the game can be when it’s played properly.

Jack Seale

Netflix evidently likes this particular documentary format, which jazzes up a regular collection of archive footage and eyewitness interviews by packaging them into a sardonic how-to guide, slyly narrated by Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage.

Having previously affected to teach viewers how to be a cult leader and how to be a tyrant, now it offers guidance on emulating Al Capone, Pablo Escobar, John Gotti and more, by laying out the key characteristics of a properly scary gangster. Many of the stories told are classics.

Jack Seale

Leaving aside the choice of host country, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was an undeniably fantastic tournament, culminating in a historic triumph for Lionel Messi and Argentina. Here’s the Fifa-sanctioned documentary re-living all the action, with the games filmed by ground-level cameras in that nicely intense way these programmes tend to have — and interviews with Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappé, Kane and many more of the tournament’s stars.

Sadly, Harry Kane’s second penalty attempt against France still doesn’t go in.

Jack Seale

Very old film that has been digitally restored and colourised always has an eerie, unreal feel to it, and this documentary admits it combines footage from different events to create a cohesive whole. But take all that on board and this is a stunningly immersive revisiting of World War Two, pitching us right into armed combat and the chaos of civilians trying to survive the Nazis.

From being able to count individual bullets inside a Luftwaffe cockpit in episode one, to hiding out with the resurgent French resistance in episode five, the immediacy of the images is breathtaking.

Jack Seale

The Catholic Church loves a holy relic. This four-part documentary series gains access to hallowed sites across the world, to look at or go on the hunt for some of the faith’s most sought-after treasures, from the Crown of Thorns to the Holy Grail. Do they really have the power to create miracles?

As it looks at the powerful emotional effect the chattels of Christianity can have on believers, the series also explores the ability of faith itself to transport and inspire the faithful.

Jack Seale

When New York mob boss Paul Castellano was gunned down in December 1985, everyone in the Mafia and the police knew who was responsible: rival gangster and the new head of the Gambino family, John Gotti. He had taken a risk by having his superior killed, and law enforcement saw a chance to bring him down. But could they prove it in court?

A colourful documentary takes us back to the Big Apple in the mid-80s, a somewhat benighted, crime-ridden place that came alive when a media circus developed around the case — mainly because Gotti was so visibly enjoying every second of it.

Jack Seale

The animal world of today is just a brief snapshot of an endless epic story; these are the survivors of evolutionary battles and natural disasters that have been raging for millennia. Using the latest CGI, the freshest scientific breakthroughs and the epic, gravelly tones of Morgan Freeman as narrator, a new natural history series revitalises the stories of dinosaurs and other ancient creatures who ruled the earth, until one day they were lost for ever.

Jack Seale

Vjeran Tomic’s most famous Paris heist was on the Musée d’Art Moderne in 2010, when he half-inched a Matisse, a Picasso, a Braque, a Léger and a Modigliani from under the guards’ noses — but that was a regular theft, achieved by cutting through a padlock and breaking a window. The Parisian criminal community has greater respect for his earlier work, when he would break into top-floor luxury flats by climbing up freestyle and leaping from roof to roof.

This film combines head-camera re-enactments with the words of Tomic himself.

Jack Seale

Many fictional horror stories have been inspired by it, but factual telly hasn’t examined the 1981 murder of Alan Bono in Brookfield, Connecticut, in much depth until now. Many of those involved tell their stories for the first time in this documentary, as it revisits the “Devil Made Me Do It” case — the killer claimed that he was not guilty on grounds of demonic possession.

As the case became the focus of “demonologists” and paranormal investigators as well as reporters, a disturbing backstory emerged. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, a horror movie based on the case, is also on Netflix.

Jack Seale

A gentle, intimate half-hour documentary follows Milana, a Ukrainian girl, as she arrives in the Austrian Alps and — accompanied by her grandmother, Olga — enrols in a week-long summer camp. They have fled the war with Russia and now young Milana faces an uncertain future. The resilience and bravery she’ll need in life are about to be tested as she attempts some vertiginous climbing activities, with the trauma of what she’s already experienced still raw.

It’s a simple but stirring metaphor for the struggles of kids displaced by conflict, and an inspiring story in its own right.

Jack Seale

It remains one of the oddest cases in British criminal history. In April 1999, Jill Dando — not just a BBC presenter and newsreader but the highest-profile TV personality in the country, widely admired for her easy relatability and Princess Diana-esque air of elegant glamour — was shot dead in broad daylight on her own doorstep, and we still have no idea who did it or why.

This three-part documentary sifts through every element of the mystery, from the initial shock and the multiple theories on who might have been responsible, to the fraught murder trial two years later that proved to be a miscarriage of justice. It’s one of those true-crime docs that, at every turn, unleashes an interviewee whose insight or unusual demeanour adds another layer of intrigue.

Jack Seale

New Netflix docuseries Encounters explores four true stories of human contact with otherworldly phenomena, featuring revelations from military whistleblowers of alien encounters, UFOs and clandestine Pentagon programmes, as well as coverage from major news corporations.

Each episode dives into a different encounter, whether it be with a submersible spacecraft off the coast of a Welsh village or an alien encounter experienced by a group of children in Zimbabwe.

Katelyn Mensah

The accident during Stage 8 of this year’s Tour de France, which broke Mark Cavendish’s collarbone and put him out of the race, isn’t the news background this documentary’s producers would have chosen. Then again, it is a story of struggle and bad luck as well as great triumph: with intimate access to Mark Cavendish himself as well as his family and his colleagues, it charts how Cavendish’s comeback performance in the 2021 Tour de France ended five years of injury, illness and depression.

Like Netflix’s recent documentary Tour de France: Unchained, it brings home the sheer intensity of elite cycling

Jack Seale

A stylishly filmed documentary remembers a serial-killer case that terrified and enthralled Mexico City at the turn of the millennium. With several elderly women dead by strangulation or bludgeoning, the police came up with an extraordinary profile of the likely killer: a man, dressed as a nurse, probably with a background in wrestling. Some of those descriptors proved to be accurate when the culprit was eventually found, but that came after a lot of media hype, some suspected copycat murders – and many more victims, who are commemorated here along with an analysis of a unique cultural phenomenon.

Jack Seale

Netflix’s excellent series of one-off sports documentaries focuses on the quirky or controversial edges of the sporting world – such as the fact that some of the most anticipated and analysed boxing bouts of the past couple of years have featured a YouTuber, Jake Paul, whom many connoisseurs of pugilism think is making a mockery of their beloved discipline. But is the prankster-turned-fighter really trashing a noble art, or is he correct in his assertion that boxing is just showbiz? Interviews and training footage try to get behind the phenomenon.

Jack Seale

Peter Dinklage narrates a wry documentary that mixes animation with archive footage to build a “playbook” for anyone wanting to found their own sinister cult. From mass weddings and free love to psychological control methods and simple weaponry, the tools and techniques required are set out by observers of breakaway communities, spotting patterns in the behaviour of people who have become gurus. Lesson number one: never tell potential recruits up front what your organisation is really about.

Jack Seale

Lucie Blackman, a 21-year-old woman from Kent, was working as a bar hostess in Tokyo in 2000 when she suddenly vanished. Her father Tim is interviewed in this documentary about the case and recalls the sheer panic caused by attempting to search for a loved one in an unfamiliar metropolis. The hunt for Lucie, which featured calls for help from senior British politicians that fuelled high media interest in both Japan and the UK, raised difficult questions about how seriously law enforcement agencies in Japan had been taking reports of women in danger.

Jack Seale

Completing a four-part documentary series about quests to expand human knowledge – previous episodes have covered the mysteries of the Ancient Egyptians, the prospect of artificial intelligence being used in military contexts, and an archaeological discovery shedding new light on humans’ evolutionary ancestors – is a film about Nasa’s mission to launch the James Webb Space Telescope. The work of engineers and scientists is followed as a billion-dollar piece of kit is created – since its launch it’s provided stunning images telling us more about black holes, galaxies, planets outside our solar system and how the universe looked soon after the Big Bang.

Jack Seale

This truly immersive documentary explores the competitive and dangerous world of free-diving, where a person dives under water on a single breath of air. Italian Alessia Zecchini has set national and world records, and we follow her journey alongside Irish safety support diver Stephen Keenan. Laura McGann’s documentary uses a narrative device that suggests a tragedy will take place, but it’s not immediately clear when it will strike, and to whom. But once the events do unfold, you will be both moved and horrified.

Laura Rutkowski

The brief lifespan of 1980s pop pin-ups Wham! is revisited through a mix of archive footage and interviews in this slight but upbeat documentary. The story begins as one of boyhood high jinks, following Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael as they bond at school and form a band. As fame beckons, Michael’s talents outstrip those of his bandmate — but director Chris Smith downplays any hints of tension. The buoyant snapshots of Wham! in concert prove most engaging, and the film works best as a nostalgic celebration of fleeting youth and friendship.

Kevin Harley