''Mind Over Murder'' is a 2022 American documentary television miniseries revolving around the

Beatrice Six The Beatrice Six are Joseph White, Thomas Winslow, Ada JoAnn Taylor, Debra Shelden, James Dean and Kathy Gonzalez, who were falsely found guilty in 1989 of the 1985 rape and murder of Helen Wilson in Beatrice, Nebraska and served prison terms befo ...

, directed by

Nanfu Wang Nanfu Wang (born 1985) is a Chinese-born American filmmaker. Her debut film ''Hooligan Sparrow'' premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2017. Her second film, ''I Am ...

. It consists of 6 episodes and premiered on June 20, 2022, on

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

Plot

The series follows the complex story of the

, who were convicted in 1989 of the 1985 rape and murder of Helen Wilson. In 2009, the six were exonerated by DNA evidence, despite five of them originally confessing to the crime when a police psychologist convinced them that they were experiencing

repressed memory Repressed memory is an inability to recall autobiographical information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature. The concept originated in psychoanalytic theory where repression is defined as a protective mechanism that excludes memory of ...

Episodes

Production

After

completed her first film ''

Hooligan Sparrow ''Hooligan Sparrow'' is a 2016 documentary film about Ye Haiyan and other Chinese activists written and produced by Nanfu Wang. Synopsis The documentary is about a child rape case in China (involving a government official) and the protests again ...

'', Wang showed the film to the main subject. Realizing some of the subject's memories were not true, Wang found this fascinating. In 2017, Wang read an article about the

, and was intrigued by their story, and wanted to explore it as a filmmaker. Previously the six were approached by other filmmakers to make films or television series, but declined. Wang first traveled to Beatrice in 2019, taking time to build trust within the community, and consulting with the defense attorney who represented the six, once they began to know Wang's intentions, she gained access to those close to the story. In June 2022, it was announced Wang had directed a documentary series revolving around the Beatrice Six, which HBO Documentary Films and

Vox Media Studios Vox Media, Inc. is an American mass media company based in Washington, D.C., and New York City. The company was established in November 2011 by Jim Bankoff and Trei Brundrett to encompass ''SB Nation'' (a sports blog network founded in 2005 by ...

produced, and distributed by

Reception

On the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the series holds an approval rating of 100%, based on 5 reviews with an average rating of 9.40/10. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, it has a score of 88 out of 100, based on 6 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

References

External links

* * {{HBO documentaries 2022 American television series debuts 2020s American documentary television series 2020s American television miniseries HBO documentary films HBO original programming