“The Jinx,” the HBO true-crime series that ended March 15, engendered a wave of intense attention and discussion as it rolled through its six-episode season. The finale was almost upstaged by the arrest of the documentary series' subject, real estate heir Robert Durst, and since it ended, there's been something of a backlash regarding its narrative techniques. I caught up on the show in recent two-day binge and had a few thoughts about what worked, what didn't and what will haunt me until the Durst saga takes its next turn.
- Canny recycling. Nothing about “The Jinx” is new, and I don’t intend that to be a dig at the show at all. But if you’ve ever watched a “Dateline” or a “20/20” that focused on an unsolved case, you’ve seen many of the elements that made “The Jinx” addictive: murder, money, marital discord, newspaper clippings, archival footage, swanky and tawdry real estate, re-enactments, dynastic squabbles, grieving friends and family, trial scenes and unexpected revelations. There are dozens of TV shows that traffic in this sort of thing, but “The Jinx” did what so many HBO programs do: It took a sturdy, reliable TV premise and it polished it up to a high, glossy shine. Just as “True Detective” is a really expensive, well-acted buddy-cop drama and “Game of Thrones” is a very pricey, often thoughtful take on fantasy epics, “The Jinx” took the kind of fare you often see on Discovery ID and in middlebrow TV news magazines and made that format seem fresh and compelling. Once you began watching “The Jinx,” it was hard to stop, and that’s what any network wants, no matter how fancy it is.
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Ryan McGee and I discussed “The Jinx” and “Bloodline” in the most recent Talking TV podcast, which is here, on iTunes and below.
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