Netflix has a tiger tale that has punched into the zeitgeist with “Tiger King,” stocked with a cast of real-life bizarre personalities and sinister plot twists.
“Tiger Tale,” a true-crime-style docuseries that debuted March 20 on Netflix, ranks as the most popular current TV show, according to Rotten Tomatoes. It has a 97% critic’s rating and a 96% audience score — putting it at the top of the site’s most-popular TV shows list, ahead of Netflix’s “Ozark” Season 3; USA Network’s “Queen of the South” Season 4; and USA’s “The Sinner” Season 3.
And according to Netflix’s own daily rankings, “Tiger King” is the No. 1 most-watched title in the U.S. for March 29 on the service — both overall and among TV shows — and has been in the top 10 for the past week.
The show, to be sure, is not everyone’s cup of tea. Note that the picture for “Tiger King” is very different over at Amazon’s IMDb. The series currently has a respectable average 8.1 (out of 10) rating from nearly 5,300 users — but that means it’s not even in the top 250 TV shows on the site by that metric.
Related: ‘Tiger King’: What Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin and Doc Antle Are Doing Now
In “Tiger King,” filmmakers Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin explore the world of big cat owners — centering on Joe Exotic, proprietor of an Oklahoma roadside zoo, who is a “mulleted, gun-toting polygamist and country western singer,” per Netflix’s description of the docuseries. Things turn dark after animal activist Carole Baskin, owner of a big cat sanctuary, tries to shut down the big-cat breeders, leading to Joe Exotic’s arrest in connection with murder-for-hire plot.
In her review of “Tiger King,” Variety critic Caroline Framke called the seven-episode limited series “messy yet compelling.”
“For those who love Netflix’s particular flavor of true crime and docuseries, which depend heavily on wild characters and addictive pacing in order to keep a couchbound audience entertained, ‘Tiger King’ will undoubtedly scratch a particular itch,” Framke wrote.
jakelig on March 29th, 2020 at 16:55 UTC »
No ones really mentioning how awful Jeff Lowe is. I mean, at least some of the other people had charisma. Every time Jeff was on the screen he became more of an asshole and hard to watch.
t94afc on March 29th, 2020 at 16:34 UTC »
Imagine talking about being teabagged by your late husband at his wake & his mother is sat in the front row, yep not the craziest thing about this show
Chief7064 on March 29th, 2020 at 14:04 UTC »
It certainly ranks as one of the weirdest true stories ever...