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Wormwood
2017 · TV series · documentary · 1 season
Created by Errol Morris
In this genre-bending tale, Errol Morris explores the mysterious death of a U.S. scientist entangled in a secret Cold War program known as MK-Ultra.
8 positivefrom 8 commenters
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9 comments on Hacker News
There is a tv show about in-the-know government employees dying by suicide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormwood_%28miniseries%29
Errol Morris made a docu-drama series about those events. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormwood_(miniseries)
I recommend Errol Morris' docudrama involving MKULTRA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormwood_(miniseries).
It goes into some speculation tying events to the Korean war.
I highly recommend the 2017 Netflix documentary "Wormwood", which is a 6 hour interview with Eric Olson, the son of Frank Olson. In 1953 Frank Olson jumped out of a hospital window after he got secretly dosed with LSD by his CIA/DOD co-workers. That's how far back CIA and LSD and MKULTRA goes. We still don't know what really happened or why. It's classified top secret. But Frank Olson's son describes a pretty crazy scene in 1953, with spooks working for DoD secret chemical and biowar programs involving LSD for research on involuntary American test subjects. This was still the 50's era where the Pentagon tested A-bombs in the desert and invited crowds to watch from a distance, in order to test radiation exposure on live people. Then the CIA guys started tasting their own supply and partying with LSD. Then they gave LSD to Frank Olson in a drink. There is still a massive classified history of CIA using LSD as a bioweapon. I hope we get to see it someday.
I recommend the Netflix series Wormwood, a documentary about Frank Olson, a CIA agent who was "suicided" when he learned what the CIA was doing with MK Ultra, and started expressing his discomfort about it.
there are allegations that 731-style biological weapons were dropped by america during the korean war, carried by bugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_biological_warfare_in_the_Korean_War
covered in part by this errol morris(!) documentary miniseries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormwood_(miniseries)
It's also worth watching Wormwood [0], where Eric Olson investigates the death of his father, Frank Olson.
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7306056/
Interesting that it doesn't mention Errol Morris' Wormwood: https://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/wormwood-errol-morris-use-cinema-investigate-mystery-1201969590/
Mad Men didn't even have an audience when it aired (<2 million viewers most episodes), and airs on a network that likely won't exist in 5-6 years (or at least won't be producing new content), so it's not super clear to me what your point is about those shows as evidence of how a network grows. The way a network grows is by producing content people want to watch, whether that's disposable content made to last a minute or content made to last the test of time. HBO isn't growing because people are subscribing to watch Sopranos re-runs.
Past reporting suggests churn in most subscription content services is very low, so your Netflix cancellation may be unusual. I'd also add that exclusive content is one part of the story, but there's also a lot of licensed content that's very good on Netflix as on other services.
But for what it is worth, I would rank the following Netflix originals to be "top tier" within their genre -- some of these genres lend themselves more to rewatching than others, and some are closer to my taste than others, some held up in quality through their run more than others, so in a sense I am ranking shows based on their peak quality --
Orange is the New Black; Bloodline; Stranger Things; The Crown; Gilmore Girls AYITL; The OA; A Series of Unfortunate Events; Mindhunter; The Haunting of Hill House; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Master of None; Love; Lady Dynamite; Santa Clarita Diet; GLOW; American Vandal; Maniac; Bojack Horseman; F is for Family; Disenchantment; Hilda; Dark; The Rain; Elite; Chef's Table; Making a Murderer; Shot in the Dark; Wormwood; Wild Wild Country; Salt Fat Acid Heat; Queer Eye; The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell; My Next Guest Needs No Introduction; Lilyhammer; Terrace House; Alias Grace; The End of the Fucking World; Collateral; Wanderlust; Longmire; Black Mirror; Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
In addition to these, the following shows are Netflix originals in my region, indicating that although someone else initially funded them, Netflix bought them for exclusive distribution here, and also meet the above requirements:
Babylon Berlin; Bodyguard; Casé; Crashing; Cuckoo; Derry Girls; The Great British Baking Show; Happy!; Happy Valley; The Investigator; Peaky Blinders; River.
I have pretty broad taste in TV and watch a lot of TV while I am programming or running data analysis, so maybe the breadth of stuff I include here is surprising to most. But to the extent your post is a useful anecdote about how Netflix has no great shows, I'm responding to your challenge to "Name one show" that would meet that criteria.
(These are TV shows only, not films. I haven't really liked many Netflix original films although there are a few I would say are great, like Okja and Roma)