TIGER KING, Joe Exotic, (Season 1, aired March 20, 2020). photo: ©Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

There is the most excellent little thought-bubble floating about the internet at the moment. It reads:

Imagine if 10 years ago you were approached by a time traveller and he was like, ‘Look, I don’t have much time to explain, all I can tell you is that the year 2020 is going to be an absolute circus. You know Donald Trump, the star of The Apprentice? Well he’s the President of the United States and at the beginning of 2020, he gets into a Twitter beef with Iran that almost starts World War 3. Australia catches on fire and a woman tries to save it by selling pictures of her boobs. Kobe Bryant passes away in a helicopter crash. Half the world is devastated, the other half just makes messed-up memes. A little time passes and just when the world starts recovering from the loss of Kobe, some dude in China eats a raw bat and starts a global pandemic that specifically kills maw’s and paw paws. Everyone loses their minds. 40 percent of the population thinks it’s the end of the world, another 40 percent thinks it’s all fake and 20 percent blame the whole thing on cell phone towers and Tom Hanks’ kids. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that the only way to survive is by hoarding toilet paper. Grocery stores are ransacked and Charmin Ultra-Soft essentially replaces the dollar as the United States’ official currency. Eventually as hysteria grows, the only person that can keep the people from completely flipping out and starting a huge riot is a gun toting, mullet-sporting, Oklahoma man with a meth addiction and 180 pet tigers.

It’s shockingly accurate. Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness has provided millions of Netflix viewers the escapism they need during this period of self-isolation. Whether the sequinned-cloaked, big cat enthusiast Joe Exotic has shocked us to the core or simply steered our anxious minds away from our stale existences, pop culture’s obsession with this man has spanned so wide that even Kim Kardashian West has reportedly vowed to free him from prison.

But what do you watch once you’ve streamed the entire season of Tiger King? Here’s three true-crime suggestions to numb the comedown – or at least bide you time til the next rumoured episode drops next week. All streaming now in Netflix.

Don’t Fuck With Cats

From big cats to actual small domestic cats, this series is about hunting a kitten killer. The most gripping part of it, though, is watching regular Joe’s become the world’s greatest internet sleuths.

Mommy Dead And Dearest

I was fascinated by this article in 2016. Journalist Michelle Dean wrote a gripping report exploring the unbelievably extraordinary lives of Dee Dee Blanchard and her daughter Gypsy Rose. The bizarre case follows the extreme lengths Dee Dee goes to to convince her community that Gypsy is sick with cancer. She’s not and it ends in murder.

Dream/Killer

In the American judicial system, wealth and race – and not culpability – dictate whether a person is guilty or innocent. But Ryan Ferguson, a white American man (who was actually born in Australia), becomes the exception to this rule when he is wrongfully imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit. This story follows his father who works tirelessly to free his son.