Netflix has a tiger tale that has punched into the zeitgeist with “Tiger King,” stocked with a cast of real-life bizarre personalities and sinister plot twists.
“Tiger Tale,” a true-crime-style docuseries that debuted March 20 on Netflix, ranks as the most popular current TV show, according to Rotten Tomatoes. It has a 97% critic’s rating and a 96% audience score — putting it at the top of the site’s most-popular TV shows list, ahead of Netflix’s “Ozark” Season 3; USA Network’s “Queen of the South” Season 4; and USA’s “The Sinner” Season 3.
And according to Netflix’s own daily rankings, “Tiger King” is the No. 1 most-watched title in the U.S. for March 29 on the service overall and has been in the top-ranked TV show for the past seven days.
The show, to be sure, is not everyone’s cup of tea. Note that the picture for “Tiger King” is very different over at Amazon’s IMDb. The series currently has a respectable average 8.1 (out of 10) rating from nearly 5,300 users — but that means it’s not even in the top 250 TV shows on the site by that metric.
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In “Tiger King,” filmmakers Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin explore the world of big cat owners — centering on Joe Exotic, proprietor of an Oklahoma roadside zoo, who is a “mulleted, gun-toting polygamist and country western singer,” per Netflix’s description of the docuseries. Things turn dark after animal activist Carole Baskin, owner of a big cat sanctuary, tries to shut down the big-cat breeders, leading to Joe Exotic’s arrest in connection with a murder-for-hire plot.
In her review of “Tiger King,” Variety critic Caroline Framke called the seven-episode limited series “messy yet compelling.”
“For those who love Netflix’s particular flavor of true crime and docuseries, which depend heavily on wild characters and addictive pacing in order to keep a couchbound audience entertained, ‘Tiger King’ will undoubtedly scratch a particular itch,” Framke wrote.
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