Commentary: True crime can be sensationalist. ‘The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez’ is no different
Born from the serial nature of contemporary television and brought to maturity by the binge model of streaming TV, which has created new appetites among viewers and plays merrily upon them, the long-form true crime series has become a genre unto itself. Netflix didn’t invent it, but, as with every other sort of television show, it seems intent on owning the field, globally — to be there algorithmically to provide you with another thing quite like the last thing you watched.
The sheer size of “Gabriel Fernandez” would seem to matter, to proportionately reflect the importance of his case. Though the series aims for complexity, even as regards its villains , its length oddly fights its subtlety. Nods are made to the dangers of outsourcing social services to for-profit corporations — which was the case here — and to the need for strong local journalism. We are shown an efficient and sympathetic social worker making a house call.
Indeed, the aim of these series, from a formal standpoint, is to give the factual the electric charge of the fictional. It’s a thin line to begin with: We’re familiar, from the news and scripted stories alike, with the person who has escaped justice, or the person who has wrongly been accused. We are thoroughly schooled in the literature of cold cases, of heroic courtroom reversals, of lying police officers, and prosecutors more concerned with protecting a verdict than finding the truth.
Netflix documentaries have acquired a look of their own, creamy and cinematic, with flashy credit sequences, dramatic scores and museum-quality photography associated with big-budget dramatic series. Indeed, for a documentary to look anything less than visually polished nowadays is to seem somehow unprofessional and possibly untrustworthy.
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