Tiger King 2, Netflix — the improbably successful documentary is back

“We’ve only scratched the surface,” runs the tagline for this second series about the wacky world of Joe Exotic, aka Tiger King, and his nemesis, the animal rescue campaigner Carole Baskin. This is technically true, though only if we accept that what lies beneath the surface is the most unholy parade of fame-hungry chancers, nitwits and ne’er-do-wells, all of them desperate to get their faces on one of the most improbably successful documentaries of recent times.

First, though, a recap. Last year, as the world went into lockdown, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness arrived on Netflix: a series about a mullet-haired, heavily tattooed, gun-toting owner of a big cat park. At first, Joe Exotic seemed merely eccentric, a loudmouth exhibitionist with a taste for publicity stunts (in 2016 he launched a presidential bid and later ran for governor of Oklahoma). But then a darker side to the story emerged that took in alleged suicide, animal abuse and a murder plot involving two hired hitmen. In 2019, Exotic was found guilty of animal cruelty and of plotting to kill Baskin, who for years had been trying to shut down his zoo. The series was a runaway hit, watched in 64m households within a month of release.

Since then, as revealed in this fitfully watchable but entirely surplus-to-requirements sequel, Baskin has appeared on the reality series Dancing With the Stars (big cat costumes all the way) and Exotic and his supporters have mobilised a campaign for a presidential pardon. Their bid came to nothing, with President Trump presumably deciding that exonerating a peculiarly-coiffed, orange-hued, publicity-seeking TV star would be a step too far. Meanwhile, assorted individuals with often tenuous connections to our protagonists, from zoo volunteers and neighbours to ­— hey, why not? — Baskin’s ex-husband’s handyman, have come out of the woodwork to solemnly share their insights.

The series ostensibly poses two questions: was Exotic’s conviction a stitch-up masterminded by his enemies, and did Baskin, as posited by some in the first season, kill her first husband, Don Lewis, and feed him to the tigers? (Baskin has denied this wild accusation.) Among the principal players in the latter inquiry is a YouTuber and self-proclaimed “armchair detective” known as Ripper Jack. There’s also a psychic investigator named Troy Griffin, hired by Lewis’s daughters in an attempt to find out what happened to their dad following his disappearance in 1997. After visiting a house in Florida, Lewis’s last known location, it takes Griffin roughly 20 seconds to alight on the supposed site of the alleged murder. “There’s some bad juju here,” he says darkly, before throwing up in the bushes and bursting into tears.

What we are witnessing here is a streaming network cynically squeezing every drop out of a once grimly fascinating but now spent story. Mercifully, the proposed Amazon movie with Nicolas Cage has been canned, though you can bet on more content coming down the pipe. There is no more apt commentary on this series than when Exotic, broadcasting from prison in the opening episode, announces: “Welcome to my world of bullshit.”

★★☆☆☆

On Netflix now