I, you, and all the people you know, love a good true-crime documentary - I can say this with water-tight confidence, it’s just ‘a thing’, a thing that everybody knows. So, after Making A Murderer, Strong Island, The Keepers et al, you’ll be looking for another one to watch, because why not?
But what if you’re short on time? What if you can’t quite be bothered to set aside 13 hours to get involved in a series? What if you want to maintain an active social life for the next couple of weeks?
Well, I have a suggestion for you: I reckon you should watch Long Shot. Because it is only 40 minutes long.
Long Shot tells the swift, race-against-time story of Juan Catalan, a man who was arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. Back in 2003, a 16-year-old girl called Martha Puebla was shot dead on her doorstep in Los Angeles, and somehow Catalan was caught up in the furore and blamed for the killing.
Only thing was, he was at a baseball game, watching the LA Dodgers play when the crime was committed. Essentially, the doc follows his one shot at staying out of jail: proving that he was one of the 56,000 punters at the game.
Boiled down, this involves his frantic attorney embarking on a breakneck chase to confirm his alibi, somehow. How do you get in contact with someone that can confirm his story, when there were thousands of people in the stadium at the time? How on earth do you find the golden person?
Well, over the course of the brief 40 minutes, we attempt to find out, as the show leads us across various locations, including, weirdly, Larry David’s office. Yeah, that Larry David; the one from Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Obviously I won’t go into any other details because I’m not in the business of spoiling things, but let me just say this: come on mate it’s 40 minutes what the hell better things have you got to do with an evening?
Also, everybody is saying it’s well good:
And here’s one of those ‘trailer’ things for it, if you like that sort of thing:
You can watch it now, so, erm, do.
(Image: Netflix)
