Netflix’s Tiger King: Review

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness is a true-crime documentary miniseries that follows the hectic life of exotic animal zookeeper Joe Exotic. The series covers all aspects of his life, his park, his financial problems, and his crazy rivalry with Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue. With only seven episodes, the miniseries is an easy binge, and well worth your time considering all the twists the show throws are you. As you watch more episodes the show sucks you in with eccentric characters that you can hardly believe are real people and interesting commentary on the use of exotic animals for commercial gain.

The rest of the article is going to be a review on the miniseries and will contain some spoilers so if you want to avoid spoilers we suggest you go watch Tiger King on Netflix.

The early episodes of the show focus heavily on the main character Joe Exotic and his small empire of big cats. Taking a look at the lives of not only Joe and his workers but other proprietors of big cat zoos across the country, Doc Antle and Tim Stark just to name a couple. The series sheds a light on both sides to the argument about privately owning big cats. Also showing the lives of Carole Baskin and her husband. 

From the first episode, Joe’s disdain for Carole is made quite apparent. Willing to do anything and everything to get under her skin, the zookeeper is willing to risk his life and livelihood to make a point. This causes him to push away the people closest to him later on in the series eventually leading to his incarceration once it becomes clear he hired a hitman to try to kill his rival. 

As more and more people are dragged into the conflict we are introduced to spies and FBI agents alike, all who have it out for the tiger king.

Whether you believe Joe’s claims that he was set up or not, we can all agree that Netflix’s Tiger King is a series that is well worth the hype it is receiving.

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