How the 1990s network true-crime TV movie trend influenced today's docuseries

The Ringer

The true-crime network TV movie genre peeked in 1993 when NBC, ABC and CBS all made Amy Fisher movies, featuring big-name stars such as Alyssa Milano and Drew Barrymore playing the "Long Island Lolita." "By the turn of the ’90s, cable television had become commonplace, and Court TV, CNN, and their kin could cover titillating criminality with unprecedented persistence," says Kenny Herzog. "The collective appetite for picking the bones of unbelievable felonies and follies had made itself plain. If development executives were to stay relevant, they’d need a crime so captivating that no round-the-clock news cycle could contain it—even if some of the details were embellished or the point of view skewed. And in the spring of 1992, they found their subject" in Fisher, who shot and nearly killed the wife (Mary Jo Buttafuoco) of the much-older man (Joey Buttafuoco) she was having an affair with.