When The Jinx originally aired on HBO (and Sky in the UK) in 2015, it opened the gates for a deluge of true-crime dramas designed to bait the audience with twisting tales of human depravity. Each one is released in delicious, bingeable portions for eager viewers to demolish in a weekend, the juice running down their chins. Real atrocities, stylishly repackaged as entertainment, a puzzle to be solved, cliffhangers and twists deployed brilliantly to encourage chain-watching.
The Jinx described how US property heir Robert Durst spent years slipping through the judicial net despite growing evidence that three people had died at his hands: his first wife Kathie, neighbour Morris Black, and Durst’s best friend, Susan Berman. That series was based around interviews between the suspect and director Andrew Jarecki, instigated by Durst, where he controlled the narrative, steadfastly avoided admitting any guilt and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the attention.
In the closing minutes of the final episode, Durst famously went to the bathroom with his mic still active and proceeded to confess to the killings with five words: “Killed them all, of course.”
During a screening of that famous finale for friends and relatives of the victims, cameras for this new series captured the jaw-dropping moment they all heard Durst’s confession. The day before it aired, police closed in and arrested him, having used evidence provided by the film-makers to reopen the case. He was convicted of murdering Berman in 2021, he died in jail the following year, and The Jinx became a genre-defining sensation: a documentary that became a catalyst for the drama it was depicting. Many would follow.
This follow-up charts the murder trial, and examines the film-makers’ role in Durst’s downfall. As a piece of entertainment, the new series works almost as well as its predecessor: Jarecki and his team pace the new interviews nicely with a visual blend of mute re-enactment and close-up shots of voice recorders, ensuring every episode ends with a compelling prompt to keep watching.
But their packaging and tonal decisions sometimes strike a bum note. The dead bodies of Black and Berman are featured occasionally in grisly close-up – a shrivelled hand, a foot – but the headline is still the bad man and his wily attempts to dodge justice.
A pair of identical twin brothers, employed as law clerks by the prosecution, giggle like Beavis and Butthead as they listened to Durst’s prison phone calls, mocking his voice. As the show goes on, they pop up at odd moments, snickering about confusing him with Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit. I guess the joke is on Durst here, but it still feels inordinately disrespectful when the victims’ families are grieving the real people Durst killed and, in at least one case, dismembered.
And some of the music cues are particularly crass. Episode four ends with Durst announcing confidently that he intends to testify. The credits roll to the jaunty bass stylings of “Testify” by George Clinton.
The main thing this new series adds is an exploration of the enablers, focusing in on friends and associates who initially refused to rat him out, so keen were they to stay in his orbit and benefit from his wealth.
At time of writing, four of the six episodes were available to review, the final two kept under wraps perhaps in a bid to encourage us to think another big reveal is on the way in a mirror to series one. But they can’t hope to match that unguarded moment from the original finale.
As a genre, true crime has always been problematic. The juiciness of the stories is such that some of us would rather not know where our meat comes from. On the evidence of The Jinx – Part Two, the genre still pulls hard towards the spicier story of the crazed killer and leaves the victims as mere flesh, conduits for our disgust.
Monday 9pm, Sky Documentaries and streaming on NOW