DUMB AND DUMBER (TIGER KING, SEASON 2)

Looking back on it, 'Tiger King' really lucked out when it was released last year.

As the world retreated following the emergence of Covid-19 and governments confined their citizens to their homes, many of us desperately needed a diversion.

'Tiger King' fitted the bill.

A show focusing on eccentric, very dodgy real life big cat owners in the US seemed like the perfect escape from the grim news of mounting death tolls in China, Italy, the UK and around the world.

At its heart was the flamboyant Joe Exotic - a gay, self-styled country music star and zoo owner who had, prior to the documentary, built up a following with his own reality TV show on the Internet.

His nemesis was Carole Baskin, another big cat reserve owner in Florida who accused him of maltreating his animals.

Baskin also had an air of mystery around her.

Her first husband Don mysteriously vanished either in Florida or Costa Rica.

Such was the grudge Joe harboured that he ended up behind bars, accused of plotting to have her murdered.

Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin's seven episode Netflix show was an early lockdown sensation, triggering fevered debate on mainstream and social media.

Like Netflix's true crime hit 'Making A Murderer', it was clear there was an appetite for a follow-up and Goode and Chaiklin have duly obliged with a five episode series that has surfaced a lot quicker than many had anticipated.

Episode one of season two focuses on the initial aftermath of 'Tiger King'.

A cult following has developed around Joe Exotic, with fans campaigning to have his imprisonment overturned, sending hate messages to Carole Baskin and even going to Washington during the infamous January 6 'Stop the Steal' rally and assault on Congress to get him a Presidential Pardon.

The opening episode shows how Baskin also cashed in on her fame, landing a spot on ABC's 'Dancing with the Stars'.

However the high profile of 'Tiger King' and of Baskin prompted a lot of outrage, with social media influencers and lawyers demanding a fresh investigation into the mysterious disappearance of her first husband, Don Lewis.

The next two episodes are driven by social media sleuth Ripper Jack, lawyer John Phillips and investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell's investigations into whether Baskin had any hand in her first husband's disappearance and into Don's dodgy dealings in Costa Rica.

The final two episodes switches attention back to Joe Exotic's predicament and particularly Phillips' probe into whether rival zoo owner Jeff Lowe and businessman Jeff Garretson engineered his imprisonment by cooking up claims about him plotting to have Carole Baskin killed.

The overall result is a deeply unpleasant watch that is akin to swimming in a sewer.

It is also hugely frustrating as Goode and Chaiklin hop around, chasing storylines that insinuate plenty of wrongdoing but often send the audience down rabbit holes.

What once seemed like a bizarrely comic true crime show is now just a grotesque mess, full of creepy, loathsome characters.

Goode and Chaiklin run around, trying to work out if Baskin knows more about the disappearance of her husband or whether Joe Exotic was framed by his business rivals.

Lip service is paid occasionally to the horrendous treatment of animals in the nature reserves and to the exploitation of vulnerable young men and women who work in them.

Mostly it's a relentless parade of narcissists and it is all the more dispiriting because it is not just the principal characters who are guilty of this but also the peripheral ones.

Nearly everyone who appears onscreen seems intoxicated by being on camera and so there's a lot of reality TV play acting.

A chunk of the fourth episode concentrates on the fall of Tim Stark, another nature reserve owner but it is particularly hard watch because of his boorish, attention seeking behaviour.

And if your heart doesn't sink reading a caption that describes another contributor as an "armchair detective", then I give up.

The second season of 'Tiger King' is a lesson in why true life documentary makers should never get too mesmerised by their own success.

In the rush to cash in on the 'Tiger King' phenomenon, its lack of focus and its reliance on unpleasant people doing unpleasant things just leaves a sour taste.

It's a real struggle to care about any of these characters and it is boring.

The show should serve as a warning to many countries about what happens when a society becomes too hooked on the lure of instant fame, reality TV, blowhard Trump or WWE style rhetoric, big government conspiracy theories, the right to bear arms and the elevation of the desires of one individual over the needs of everything else.

The US is a country I have a deep affection for and it is much more than this.

But if you ever want to dissuade someone from moving there, show them season two of 'Tiger King'. That should do the trick.

(Season two of 'Tiger King' was made available for streaming on Netflix on November 17, 2021)

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