Murder 101
Courtesy of Prime
There are a large number of true crime shows on TV across the entire streaming space, so many that it’s hard to stand out. However, there’s a new show on Amazon Prime Video that appears to be doing just that, and it currently has a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score from critics.
The show is Murder 101, about the most basic title you can have for a series like this, but it makes more sense in context. It’s about a cold case that Tennessee detectives could not solve, but ultimately, there is a big breakthrough when…a high school sociology class gets involved.
The case in question is the Redhead murders, which targeted a number of redheaded women between 1978 and 1992. The total number of victims ranges in estimates from 5 to 14. In 2018, a sociology class at Elizabethton High School in Tennessee was tasked by their teacher with examining the case. The class reportedly identified three new victims and developed a profile of the killer.
The limited series has three hour-long episodes that are now airing on Amazon Prime Video, focused on the case. All the students appear as themselves rather than as some sort of dramatic recreation. As it stands, Murder 101 is in third place on Amazon’s Top 10 list, behind only the hits Elle and the ever-present Off Campus.
There is no hard conclusion to the case, no smoking gun to connect the murders to a man accused of them, Jerry Leon Johns, or the identification of a new killer. But critics love the series, and it also has a 7.8/10 audience score on IMDB, high for the context of that site. Here’s what a few critics are saying:
- Decider – “Murder 101 is a fascinating look at how a sociology teacher gets his class to learn via one of the most interesting projects we’ve ever seen a class take on. But it’s also a treatise on why cases like the Redhead Murders go cold for decades.”
- Wall Street Journal – “A series that is as much fun and smart as anything on right now.”
We simply do not see series like this on TV with such a unique setting and story. Most are murder investigations that feature solely the police and those related to the victims, and while Crime 101 has that as well, the focus on the class isn’t something we’ve seen with any other cases. It appears to prove a fascinating watch, and it’s certainly next on my list.
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