In the deluge of recent documentaries made by streaming platforms, it appears that production timelines have sped up in an attempt to fuel the conversation surrounding the topics they portray. For example, we’ve been privy to two documentaries about Aaron Carter, the little brother of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter and a pop star in his own right, since his untimely death from accidental drowning in 2022: the first was ABC News Studio’s The Little Prince of Pop (streaming on Hulu) six months later, and Investigation Discovery’s 2024 docuseries Fallen Idols: Nick and Aaron Carter, which also capitalized on the resurfaced sexual assault allegations against the older Carter brother.
Then Netflix got in on the action, widening the scope from the Carters and the Backstreet Boys to focus on the exploitation of pop groups and boy bands in particular with Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam, which was released in July. Though the latter largely omits sexual assault allegations against its subject, boy band manager Lou Pearlman, its one redeeming feature is an inventive storytelling technique that’s often missing from these quick-turn docos. Filmmaker David Terry Fine employs an AI-generated hologram of Pearlman, who died serving a 25-year sentence for conspiracy, money laundering, and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding in 2016. This hologram is based on existing footage of Pearlman and reads from his 2003 memoir Bands, Brands and Billions: My Top 10 Rules for Success in Any Business. It’s a welcome alternative to hokey or distasteful (depending on the subject matter) techniques like reenactments, and the newsmagazine format that has dominated many of Dirty Pop’s ilk. Crucially, this formula leans on cultural commentators and others without a meaningful connection to the subject matter to rehash facts that could be gleaned from a Wikipedia entry rather than add any insight by virtue of their expertise.
Quick production timelines feed the lack of deep analysis, leading to unsatisfying films. “You need to provide full context, not just the people involved in the story, but the people who have studied these issues. When that’s not the case, you’re just zeroing in on a specific agenda,” says Candice Frederick, a senior culture reporter for HuffPost who has written extensively about the documentary industrial complex. “I leave the story with not enough information to make my own assessment.”
Fallen Idols relies heavily on Backstreet Boys stans that undercut the testimonials of those who were actually in the Carters’ lives, such as Nick’s bandmate AJ McLean; Aaron’s fiance and the mother of his child, Melanie Martin; and Melissa Schuman, a member of the girl group Dream who says Nick raped her in 2003.
There are other examples. The Emmy-nominated four-part docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV (2024), which aired on Max via its partnership with Investigation Discovery, examines toxic culture on the set of Dan Schneider’s iconic Nickelodeon shows, such as All That, The Amanda Show and Zoey 101. It’s now the most-watched Max series ever. The stuff that Schneider was able to get away with airing on children’s TV is truly mind-blowing, as is the revelation that former child star Drake Bell was the unidentified minor with whom Brian Peck, a dialogue coach on The Amanda Show, was convicted of engaging in lewd conduct in 2003.
But what Quiet on Set overlooked—even after a follow-up episode that aired two weeks after the original batch—was the allegations against Bell himself that he also engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a young girl. It was a missed opportunity to show how the cycle of abuse perpetuates. Instead Quiet on Set went for the clout chase and neglected its due diligence. In fact, some of its participants said they felt retraumatized by the way their stories were handled by the documentary, and wouldn’t have agreed to do it had they known it was for the notoriously sensationalized Investigation Discovery network.
“Getting a stranger to entrust you with a really painful story that has forever marked them privately and will now mark them publicly as well, that relationship building takes time, requires trust and an investment in each other’s humanity,” says documentarian Zackary Drucker, who has developed these very relationships with the subjects of her documentaries (The Stroll, Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl).
Quiet on Set was in production for two years, so it wasn’t made on quite the same rushed timeline as The Little Prince of Pop or Fallen Idols. But its failures illustrate how reactive streaming docuseries at the intersection of pop culture and true crime center themselves as a version of TikTok for a slightly longer attention span—but are equally as bingeable and forgettable. Other recent examples include 2022’s House of Hammer (about the sexual assault allegations against actor Armie Hammer and his cannibalism fetish) and Netflix’s Johnny Vs. Amber (2021). “There’s nothing bingeable about trauma,” Zoey 101 star Alexa Nikolas told IndieWire.
When it comes to Johnny Vs. Amber, along with the similarly-formatted (and titled) Kim Vs. Kanye: The Divorce (2023) and Taylor Swift Vs. Scoot Braun: Bad Blood (2024), the accelerated production timeline forces creators to split the storyline into two cursorily oppositional perspectives. In contrast, the best documentaries force us to examine our own biases while presenting the information on as even a keel as possible. Last year’s High & Low: John Galliano did this so effectively that it left me even more shocked about the fashion designer’s deplorable racism while feeling some type of way about admiring his skill.
Splitting real-life dramas into two sides also cheapens the story. “I don’t believe in these absolutes of everyone being either good or bad. That really robs the person of their humanity, especially if you’re talking about a celebrity subject or any public figure—they come off as inhuman,” says Frederick.
Not all omissions of perspective are due to shortened production timelines. In today’s age of celebrity-sanctioned documentary, talents are frequently producers of their own stories and often sway their portrayal. In Lifetime and A&E’s joint Janet Jackson (2022) venture, the megastar was reticent to talk about the pedophilia allegations against her late brother Michael or the Super Bowl incident which caused her blackballing from the industry while Justin Timberlake’s career soared. Andrew McCarthy’s Brats (2024, Hulu) was a truly self-indulgent therapy session in the form of a documentary that explored his obsession with being the least famous member of the titular Brat Pack. And then Jennifer Lopez’s catastrophic The Greatest Love Story Never Told (2024) aired earlier this year on Amazon as a companion to her audio and visual albums This is Me… Now and This is Me… Now: A Love Story, respectively, and sealed the coffin on her most recent exile from public favor and also her marriage to Ben Affleck.
“It raises questions about what truths they’re leaving out,” Frederick says. “Inevitably when we tell stories about ourselves, especially if you’re a celebrity, you’re guiding some of it.”
In the documentary industrial complex, sensational stories will often start out as articles, podcasts, or books, spin off into a docuseries, and then get the prestige limited series treatment, like Tiger King and the Elizabeth Holmes-Theranos saga. Like a slightly more intellectual version of comic book adaptations, it’s all one big cash grab for IP.
“I wish that there were more resources going towards more filmmakers, and there was a grassroots nurturance of filmmaking, instead of having all the resources at the top paying [different] levels of executives,” Drucker concludes. “Documentary filmmakers don’t ask for much; it doesn’t take much to tell a story.”
Scarlett Harris is a culture critic and author of A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler: An Abbreviated Herstory of World Wrestling Entertainment. You can read her previously published work on her website and through her Substack, The Scarlett Woman. Follow her on X @ScarlettEHarris.