It’s been a good year for documentaries, but there has not been one that really jumped out as the best of the year. In past years, there have been some apparent choices.

Best Documentary

Previous Winners:  Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, My Scientology Movie, Tickled, Finding Neverland, Tiger King, The Beatles: Get Back, Lights & Magic, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

Many of these were so obvious that you could just pencil it in and plan the rest. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was as good as it got. The Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve movies brought so many feels to my tum-tum that they were clear choices.

This year, I have a bunch of good ones, but none that really demands to be the winner.

Runners-Up: I have not seen the John Candy doc, which I think will be pushed to the June Swoon at this point. I watched the Wick is Pain doc this year prior to Ballerina, and it was an enjoyable time. Being Eddie was funny, but not incredibly deep. Unknown Number: The High School Catfish was an improbable story, and those always make an enjoyable doc. Peacock had the Wrestlemania IX: Becoming a Spectacle, which had a lot of background info on one of the worst Wrestlemanias of all time. A doc on the artist behind Maus, Art Spiegelman, was a nice doc. Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse goes into detail of the iconic cartoonist. My most recent doc was The Secrets We Bury on HBO Max, about a man who found his father’s bones buried beneath his house. I just finished Billy Joel: And So It Goes as part of the Sunday Morning Sidewalk. Becoming Led Zeppelin was a rocking good time. The Perfect Neighbor was another story of a Karen-gone-wrong and almost got this win. The actual second place doc this year went to Titan: The Oceangate Disaster.

Documentary of the Year

WWE Unreal

I know there were a lot of people trashing this as being set up, that the backstage stuff was scripted more than it professed. I don’t care. I found this to be utterly fascinating and engaging. When the agent Chris Park was upset because the Punk-Rollins match was going too long and he kept apologizing to Bruce Pritchard, who sure seemed to be one big jerk about it. Park was consoled by William Regal. That scene was absolutely not scripted and it showed the amount of pressure the backstage agents can feel.

This was four episodes on Netflix and is leading to a second season in January.