Paramount+ has a solid lineup of new movies and shows on the way for the month of May (and Battlestar Galactica has found a new home there, too). But as we transition into all that new stuff, there’s plenty to watch on the documentary side of things, if you’re into riveting real-life stories that are stranger than fiction could ever be.
As we kick off the first weekend and week of the month, I’ve pulled a mix of new and old, including a brand new true crime series about a family patriarch with a lifetime’s worth of depravity kept from his daughters; a new season of a long-time series that gets up close with America’s most notorious female crime bosses; and a nearly perfect rated documentary film about a journalist’s unflinching fight against a broken legal system.
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My Killer Father: The Green Hollow Murders
Short dek goes here
My daughter and I like a lot of the same things—we listen to music, play a little guitar, and like a good game of Uno. You know what we haven’t done together? Drag dead bodies across a field and dispose of them down a well. Father of the year, right here. All kidding aside, Paramount+’s newest true-crime docuseries, My Killer Father: The Green Hollow Murders, is a dark and polarizing look at a notorious and grisly criminal investigation that will have you questioning both sides of this twisted cold case.
Director Aengus James’ (American Harmony) three-part series investigates the stunning accusations made by Lucy Studey McKiddy, an Iowa woman who claimed that her late father, Donald Dean Studey, known as the “Monster of Green Hollow,” had killed dozens of women, including two of his own wives and a girlfriend, when she was growing up, disposing of them down a 90-foot well on their property in the remote rural area of Green Hollow, Iowa. What’s more, McKiddy claims that her and her siblings were often forced to help move the bodies when they were children. Lucy’s sister, Susan, however, says the whole story is a lie.
Filmed over a three-year investigation that even saw the filmmakers help fund a private exhumation and excavations to unearth human remains, all of which turned up empty, My Killer Father weaves together archival footage, forensic examinations, interviews with surviving family members, and heated confrontations between the sisters. Despite three of Studey’s wives having died in officially ruled suicides, no bodies or remains were ever found, and he was never charged. Don died in 2013.
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American Gangster: Trap Queens
America’s most notorious queenpins tell their own stories
All four seasons of this BET+ favorite true-crime/profile docuseries—seasons 3 and 4 were recently added—are now available on Paramount+, and they are wild. I’ve only started to scratch the surface of American Gangster: Trap Queens‘ 40 episodes, but it’s a fascinating and refreshing look at some of America’s most notorious, ruthless, stylish, and over-the-top female crime bosses who have commanded the fear and respect of their male counterparts, as well as the ire of law enforcement across the country.
Each 45-minute episode covers a different “queenpin,” with some of the four seasons’ standouts including Detroit’s druglord Big Fifty, Delrhonda Hood, and Tampa, Florida’s “Queen of Tax Fraud,” Rashia Wilson, who famously tanked her own tax fraud empire by bragging about it on Facebook. Season four continues with fresh faces like Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, whose tough life and incarceration for murder informed her breakout character on The Wire.
What I like most about the women featured in American Gangster is that they all tell their own stories, into the camera, with supplemental and supporting interviews from friends, family, law enforcement officials, and even celebrities like Mike Tyson, Dennis Rodman, and the crews who often experienced the lavish and sometimes deadly lifestyles of these women. This is your new guilty pleasure.
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Black Box Diaries
An Oscar-nominated fight for survival and justice
This intense and chilling documentary, created by, directed by, and starring Japanese journalist Shiori Itō, is about as important a use of documentary filmmaking as it gets. 2024’s Black Box Diaries was created out of necessity by Itō, who chronicles her five-year fight to bring to justice Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a powerful Japanese TV journalist, with ties to the Japanese Prime Minister, whom Itō accused of sexually assaulting her in 2015, when she was a 26-year-old Reuters intern.
Itō’s battle is arduous, as she contends with Japan’s 110-year-old rape laws, the police initially refusing to accept her report and later telling her that “There is no evidence,” not to mention the public and political scrutiny she endured. The film is a heartbreaking and frustrating testament to the devastating effects of a failed justice system on an individual. But Itō wouldn’t be silenced, and her film uses everything at her disposal—iPhone video diaries, audio recordings of the police shutting her down, courtroom video, and, most importantly, the grainy CCTV footage that shows Itō being dragged by Yamaguchi from a taxi to the lobby of the hotel where the rape took place. It was the only visual evidence of the assault in the case, but it still wasn’t enough to convict Yamaguchi.
If there’s a silver lining at all, it’s that Itō’s 2017 bestselling novel Black Box and this Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated documentary had a direct impact on the historical changes made to Japan’s rape laws in 2023. It also won the 2025 Peabody Award for Documentaries and the Human Rights Award at CPH:DOX (the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival). It has a near-perfect 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Paramount+ has it all when it comes to documentaries—fascinating character studies, biopics, and gut-wrenching true-crime explorations. We scour the streaming service regularly for the best docs and other content to watch, so check back each week for more recommendations.
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Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
