Credit: Netflix

Netflix seems to have found, nay, renewed a forgotten source of jaw-dropping material that kicks dramas to the back, and it’s the documentary.

Once real life starts delivering eccentric or, at times, downright deranged material, a screenwriter can only take inspiration, and September, by the looks of it, is having a field day with that.

Turning Point: Generation 9/11 goes back to one of the defining events of the century, Folktales, on the other hand, sends teenagers into the Arctic and strips away the comforts they are used to.

Tribeca 25 goes behind the festival that Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal built after 9/11, which should give the month plenty to chew on. And that is before we get to the five below, where things become a little too spicy.

Five Netflix documentaries to keep an eye out for:

Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly (September 1st)

Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn became the face of the Paris Olympics after her breaking routine scored zero and spread across social media at frightening speed. Memes followed, and people even started asking about how she even qualified, and this Australian academic and athlete just became an internet punchline.

Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly goes back to the woman who had to stand in the middle of that circus and asks what happened after the world was done laughing. Gunn has said one of her fears before Paris was becoming a global joke, which makes the aftermath rather brutal to revisit. Talk about a nightmare coming true; this documentary wants you to meet the person who had to live with it.

I Survived a Serial Killer (September 15th)

Now, if Raygun is about surviving public humiliation, this A&E docuseries makes the word survival feel almost indecently literal. I Survived a Serial Killer hands the microphone to people who escaped notorious murderers, and thank heavens for that, because true crime has spent far too long making the killer the most fascinating person in the room. Isn’t that right, Netflix?

The 16-episode A&E series includes survivors such as Lisa McVey Noland, who was abducted while cycling home from work, and Cynthia Vigil, who escaped the man known as the Toy Box Killer. You know the names of some of these criminals already, but here the focus is on what it took to get away and then keep living afterwards. And be warned, this is going to be a very dark watch, but for once, it’s nice to hear the story from the person who made it out.

Teenage Wasteland (September 4th)

Sounds like a bunch of stern adults made this doc about their neighbourhood kids, but it’s in fact about a group of teenagers who ended up exposing a toxic-waste scandal. Back in 1991, a school video project in Middletown, New York, went rather off-script when students started uncovering toxic dumping in their own community.

Teacher Fred Isseks had introduced video work through his Electronic English class, but the students kept digging into the assignment, and soon enough, it turned into an investigation far beyond anything they had been set for homework.

Directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine return to those students decades later, using the old footage to show just how far the whole thing went. There is no ‘Caped Crusader’ nonsense here; these were kids doing coursework who started asking awkward questions adults had learnt to bury. If only every school project had this much bite!

The Widower: ’Til Death Do Us Part (September 30th)

Then we get to The Widower: ’Til Death Do Us Part, and it is going to flip your mood. The documentary follows the case of Thomas Randolph, a Nevada man who married six times and became known as the ‘Black Widower’ after four of his wives died. Yes, you read that correctly: four.

The case that pulled everything into focus was the 2008 death of his sixth wife, Sharon Causse, during what Randolph said was a home invasion, but investigators did not buy the story. From there, the documentary traces a journalist and detective working through decades of suspicious deaths while old relationships come under fresh scrutiny.

Randolph’s first murder conviction was overturned before a retrial ended with another guilty verdict and a 60-year sentence. Fasten your seatbelts because the Netflix documentary will only show you more horrible truths about this man.

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist (September 15th)

After serial killers and toxic waste, perhaps artificial intelligence will calm things down. That was obviously a joke because come on, AI is hardly the calming option these days. The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist comes from Daniel Roher, the Oscar-winning director of Navalny, who started asking bigger questions about AI while preparing to become a father.

Roher and co-director Charlie Tyrell spent years speaking to people shaping the technology, including Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis, while also hearing from those warning that we may be charging into something we do not understand.

Oh, but the film does not treat AI as either miracle or monster; Roher is stuck somewhere between dread and hope, hence that wonderfully odd word “apocaloptimist”. And really, aren’t we all somewhere around there now? Fascinated enough to use AI, nervous enough to wonder what on earth we have unleashed.