Netflix will showcase plenty of big-name stars in the weeks ahead as the streaming service begins its buildup toward awards season. But its current leading man, its MVP for the month, is Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious serial killer who died in 1994.
“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” is currently Netflix’s most-watched title, according to its self-reported data released September 27, amassing more than 196 million viewing hours in the past week. And in case that hasn’t satisfied interest in all things Dahmer, that will be followed Oct. 7 by “Conversations With a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes,” the latest installment in that docuseries franchise, which in the past has featured Ted Bundy and most recently John Wayne Gacy.
Nevertheless, there’s an unsettling quality to the way the program – with the benefit of 10 episodes to tell the story – prolongs some of those encounters and depicts the grisly evidence of Dahmer’s crimes. Netflix opted not to make the series available for review in advance of its debut, which didn’t harm a commercial performance that ranks among the top tier of its dramas, such as “Stranger Things” and “Bridgerton.