Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dateline: The Last Day’ On Peacock, Which Examines How The Last Day Of A Murder Victim Can Give Law Enforcement Big Clues

Dateline: The Last Day is a spin-off of NBC’s venerable Dateline, this time examining the clues that law enforcement gather by looking at how a murder victim spent their last day. Correspondents Keith Morrison, Josh Mankiewicz, Stephanie Gosk and Andrea Canning  take on different murder cases, concentrating on what they did on that last day and how that helped solve their cases.

DATELINE: THE LAST DAY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A video of Mollie Tibbetts, with her cousin saying “Molly was just a ball of sunshine to be around. I love her so much.”

The Gist: In the first episode, Mankiewicz examines Tibbetts’ case; she disappeared while going on a jog near her Brooklyn, Iowa home on July 18, 2018. Tibbetts was a university student and an overall kind, compassionate person. There didn’t seem to be any reason to believe that someone would be targeting her or that she might do harm to herself. But as Mankiewicz talks to the various members of law enforcement, as well as Tibbetts’ friends and family, her activities on her last day led officers to figure out just where to look for clues, which led to some big breaks in the case.

For instance, after cloning her phone from iCloud, no texts or any other info showed any conflicts, but they were able to find the speed at which her phone pinged nearby towers, and at some point, the jogging speed stopped and switched to car speed and in a different direction. Data from her Fitbit account led the cops to figure out what her usual routes were. Then CCTV footage from a local home showed a jogging dot in the background which matched the route Tibbetts took, and a black Chevy Malibu with custom mirrors stalking around. It all led to not only finding Tibbetts body a month after she disappeared, but her killer as well.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Given its Dateline roots, Dateline: The Last Day doesn’t stray all that much from the style that its parent show has been using for the last 30 years. As far as “the last day” format, it’s pretty similar to the Dick Wolf-produced docuseries Final Moments.

Our Take: While it may feel that the “last day” format of this new series is just a different way to package the same kinds of stories Dateline does on the regular, concentrating on the victim’s last day makes the show more about piecing together clues than about storytelling, which is what the parent show does so well. It makes for more of a whodunit format, and a fascinating look at a case that may have been played out in the media, like Tibbetts’ was, as well as really focusing in on the different tools law enforcement can use to help solve a case.

Your enjoyment of the show may come down to simply which of the longtime Dateline correspondents you favor. In this episode, it felt that field producers did the bulk of the work and Mankiewicz asked people questions via Zoom (with broadcast-ready cameras at both ends to make it look like the interviews are in person). In a lot of ways, his questions felt like they’re there simply to move the story along, because they seem very brief. Then again, Mankiewicz has been doing this for so long that it may be the way he does things. But in other episodes, we see Canning on location, for instance. And Morrison’s narration alone will make the episodes he does entertaining.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: We see a mobile dedicated to Tibbetts in a building at the University of Iowa, where she was a student.

Sleeper Star: None.

Most Pilot-y Line: There seemed to be a lot of scenes where we see an actor’s feet portraying the last jog Tibbetts went on before she was attacked.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you’re a Dateline addict, then Dateline: The Last Day will give you more to watch, with just a slightly different focus than its parent show.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.