Buried in the Backyard

Bad narration & ridiculous depictions of supposedly real crimes/ real peoole. People who, in real life are morbidly obese & ugly are played by attractive models. After watching 6 or 7 very badly directed episodes, I stopped taping & deleted all unwatched episodes from my DVR list. Don't waste your time on this series., it's a loser.

It's obvious these are slightly smaller budgeted shows, but the interviews are well done and the editing is high level. My biggest gripes are the robotic, canned female narrator and the cheesy music over the "happy times" segments. Seems like the producers at Oxygen think their audience can't stomach darker music and darker imagery. But the true crime fans are much savvier now and used to dark content on HBO, Netflix etc. The reenactments are poorly directed, but they're well edited. The stories are generally good, but you can tell they're really pushing the "buried in the backyard" theme to crimes where nobody was buried in the backyard at all. The series has potential. Some episodes are better than others, definitely a much watch for true crime fans.

There's a really creepy vibe I got after a few episodes that I've never felt while watching any other real-life crime-solving tv show, and/or years of UNSOLVED MYSTERIES, and that's that there could be a body buried in MY back yard.

I appreciate the interviewing of the family, friends, law enforcement and others involved, including detailed photos and histories. This show is well-done, respectful, and I hope has many more seasons ahead.

Now, what button do I need to push to change the narrator from "computer voice" to "human being"?

I just watched an episode of this totally far fetched show. A white woman goes missing....within minutes police were on the case, searching everywhere. Apparently the police found the partner to be "Believable", so, because they found him to be believable, there was then "no need to investigate him." Until a psychic made this amazing prediction that she was suffocated with a plastic bag. NOW CHECK THIS : The coroner examines skeletal remains several years old (like very little tissue, if any at all remaining). But they are magically able to determine the cause of death to be asphyxia. And the police said they were pretty sure it was a plastic bag over the head ??? WTF ??? How can you tell the difference between how someones nose and mouth have been denied oxygen from a corpse several years old ??? OK If a neck bone is broken, it signifies strangulation, but this is just too far beyond belief.

It hardly qualifies as So Nearly Perfect but, the narrative oddments aside - & where are these people on the subject of those crappy nbc/cbs/abc programs & the now-ruined Snapped in that regard? - BITB does air crimes that, lucky for them, escaped the clutches of that metastatic "dateline" or are not so well-known, given its focused subject. Several episodes are even eyepopping gasp-inducing terrors. My chief gripe with this production, which has become a staple of this now nbc dump site Oxygen - touting itself as "true crime 24/7" while farting out marathon hours of scripted network junk e.g. "Chicago PD - is its upper-lefthand corner information "banner" displays such as ACTUAL POLICE PHOTO/VIDEO or showing date/place, that get run over by that channel's idiotically oversized "tv 14" blocks that linger like anchovy breath (too long). The strange (& thankfully unique) asynchronicity of, e.g., SOMEONE'S NAME sliding in followed by "who they are" below it half a second later is an extremely annoying visual, but there's worse to beat crime documentary followers' eyes across the spectrum. But the pros of BITB outweigh its cons - something that cannot be said about the nbc/cbs/abc programs - & Miss Sadie is not so repulsive to the ear as for example that N. Morales; her hollering I can't tolerate for more than a few seconds! When it comes to delivering the goods (so to speak) on its dedicated subject, BITB holds its own - just like right now in this ACTUAL POLICE PHOTO of a recovered skull in a gloved hand. Chilling as an old icebox every time. When Oxygen dumps ALL that scripted trash & lives up literally to that self labeled "24/7" regarding the crime documentary genre, they'll be all the better for it - & its audience, the boobirds included, greater in numbers. "(T)hat's the kind of program I like!"