I'll Be Gone in the Dark tries to figure out why women are drawn to the true-crime genre

Vulture

"I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, based on the best-selling book by the late Michelle McNamara, isn’t like most true-crime series," says Jen Chaney. "It’s true that it focuses on the decades-long search for a man who terrorized many and managed to avoid capture, something many similar series have done. But it’s also the story of McNamara’s obsessive interest in solving the case and the degree to which it consumed her mental and emotional energy, indirectly leading to her sudden death in 2016...In I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, the protagonist is McNamara, and she serves a multilayered, simultaneous role as detective, victim, and, as a self-declared true-crime aficionado, a proxy for everyone watching this show and others like it. That last factor enables I’ll Be Gone in the Dark to interrogate the reasons why this genre is so enticing, especially to women, something that other TV true crime has rarely, if ever, done." ALSO: How I'll Be Gone in the Dark filmed its toughest interviews.