I’m a sucker for documentaries. There seems to be nothing more I love to do with my time than watching random Louis Theroux or Stacey Dooley documentaries on BBC iPlayer, about anything and everything in the world. It’s one of my favourite past times, and admittedly, it probably makes me feel a little bit better about myself when I spend my time procrastinating from uni work watching an informative documentary, than watching some trashy teen TV like Gossip Girl or Vampire Diaries (I still watch these two shows far too much in exam season though).
When I found the Netflix documentary series Explained last year, I totally loved it. The show has mini episodes, around 15-20 minutes long, explaining the widest variety of topics: Cults; the Stock Market; The Female Pay Gap; The Global Water Crisis; the Female Orgasm… the list is literally endless.
I did spend a small part of my summer last year binge-watching the first season; however, new episodes are being released every week at the moment, which is why I’ve entirely fell back in love with the show. My housemates and I have made it an accidental watch every time we have dinner together in the evening.
The episodes are very informative, revealing any and every aspect of the set topic you could think of: the history, the contemporary, the impact and its importance, and it’s combined together in such an easy-to-watch way. Also, the imagery used is so creative and there is a wide variety of experts included in each episode too. I sometimes find myself surprised that I have only spent 20 minutes of my time watching the show, when all of a sudden I know everything about a topic I hadn’t thought about twice before.
The beauty of the show is that you don’t have to watch every single episode. Admittedly, I haven’t watched a few episodes because some of them just aren’t my thing, but the variety that the show provides allows something for every type of person, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s one of my favourite documentary shows/series around at the moment.
Alongside this, as Netflix saw the love the original series got last year, they also released a limited series, Explained: The Mind. There are only 6 episodes in this series, however, some of the episodes in this series are some of my favourite episodes from both the main and limited series combined. The series includes an episode of anxiety, mindfulness and admittedly, my favourite, dreams.
The docuseries is personally something I couldn’t recommend more. The short episodes make you feel like you haven’t wasted anytime from other things which may seem of more importance right now (damn exam season!), and like I said earlier, me and my housemates have made it a habit to throw it on in the background as we eat dinner because we just love the show so much. The variety of subjects available provides something for everyone, and therefore makes it a good recommendation to stop the 40-minute-long ‘what should we watch?’ browse every evening.
Rating: 4.5