Best Series About Cults Worth Watching
TL;DR — For true stories, watch Wild Wild Country (Rajneeshpuram), The Vow (NXIVM) or Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (the FLDS). For dramas based on real events, Waco or Under the Banner of Heaven. For fiction, The Path or Midnight Mass. For laughs, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Most are under eight episodes.
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Wild Wild Country (Netflix, 2018, 6 episodes). In the early 1980s, followers of the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh built a city in rural Oregon, then clashed with their neighbours, leading to a mass poisoning plot. Told largely through archive footage and interviews with both sides. Emmy winner.
The Vow (HBO, 2020-2022, 2 seasons). Former members of NXIVM, a self-help group that hid a secret sex-trafficking hierarchy, tell how they got in and how they helped bring down Keith Raniere.
Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (Netflix, 2022, 4 episodes). Women who grew up in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints describe life under Warren Jeffs. Hard to watch, and important.
Dramas based on real events
Waco (Paramount Network, 2018, 6 episodes). Taylor Kitsch plays David Koresh and Michael Shannon the FBI negotiator in the 1993 siege. It tries to show both sides, which drew some criticism. A sequel, Waco: The Aftermath, followed in 2023.
Under the Banner of Heaven (FX on Hulu, 2022, 7 episodes). Andrew Garfield plays a Mormon detective investigating the 1984 murders of Brenda Lafferty and her baby, adapted from Jon Krakauer's book.
Fiction
The Path (Hulu, 2016-2018, 3 seasons). Aaron Paul and Michelle Monaghan as a married couple in Meyerism, a fictional movement, as he starts to doubt it. A slow, serious look at faith from the inside.
Midnight Mass (Netflix, 2021, 7 episodes). Mike Flanagan's horror series about a magnetic young priest whose arrival brings apparent miracles to a dying island community, and what fervour does to people.
Comedy
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix, 2015-2019, 4 seasons). Ellie Kemper plays a relentlessly upbeat woman rescued from a doomsday cult bunker who starts again in New York. From Tina Fey and Robert Carlock.
Our verdict
Start with Wild Wild Country: it's as gripping as any drama and only six episodes. Then Under the Banner of Heaven for a fictionalised take.
Frequently asked questions
Is Waco based on a true story? Yes. It dramatises the 1993 standoff between the FBI and David Koresh's Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, drawing on books by survivor David Thibodeau and FBI negotiator Gary Noesner.
What's a funny show about a cult? Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, about a woman rescued after 15 years in an underground bunker cult who moves to New York.
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