Netflix will never run out of juicy material for its “Untold” sports documentary series, which over the years has tackled scandals and controversies such as the “Malice at the Palace” brawl between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons; the Manti Te’o catfishing saga; the rise and crash of Johnny Manziel; and the Michigan football sign-stealing debacle. Think of the possibilities for future episodes! “Lost in Translation: Shohei Ohtani and the Interpreter’s Big Bet.” Or how about, “Losing Parlays: The NBA Betting Scandal.” I know I’d tune in for “Power Couple: Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson,” or “Riley Gaines by Losing.” Volume 6 of “Untold” isn’t an outright whiff, but it’s hardly one of the compelling seasons in the series to date.
In order of release dates, my ratings for all four eps: “The Death & Life of Lamar Odom” — 2.5 stars In the opener of this well-made but frustratingly incomplete episode, we learn the Haunted Museum in Las Vegas features an exhibit consisting of the bed, the nightstand, and the mirrors from the room at the Nevada brothel where former NBA player Lamar Odom overdosed in 2015. Really? People want to see that?
“I was dead for three days,” says Odom in the present day, having survived something like a dozen strokes and six heart attacks. “The Death & Life…” chronicles Odom’s life, his basketball career, his controversies—and, of course, his marriage to Khloé Kardashian, who is also featured in the doc and delivers foul-mouthed yet strong and insightful commentary on this chapter in her life. It’s a shame Odom and Kardashian appear separately, as it could have made for great television to hear their respective sides of the story, particularly Odom’s drug-fueled and horrific behavior, while they were in the same room.
Not that we don’t have sympathy for Odom and his struggles with the disease of addiction, especially when we learn details of his upbringing. Odom’s mother died when he was 12, and his father was never there. (When an unconscious Odom was near death in a hospital following the 2015 overdose, his father showed up in some half-assed plan to establish guardianship, he’s bought off with a pair of Nikes and $100, and disappeared.) The final moments feel just…off. With the anthemic “Do Your Best” by John Maus on the soundtrack, we see what appears to be the final moment of shooting the doc, with Odom then cracking, “I’m a Netflix baby now.
Does this make me an A-lister? I’m with it. I’m ready to go to Vegas, bro…I’m gonna marry somebody in Vegas. F— it.
I’m joking.” That note rings particularly false given that just three months ago, Odom was arrested in Las Vegas and faces charges of DUI and traffic violations. All right, so they finished filming this “Untold” ep before that incident. Surely there was enough time to at least include an end title card detailing that very sad and alarming update to this story.
Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026 “The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill” — 2 stars “The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill” sounds like the title of a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle or Flannery O’Connor, but it’s actually a twisted and sad and yet not particularly involving story about two people who ruined each other’s lives over a horse.
We are taken inside the niche sport of dressage—horse ballet rooted in the training of cavalry horses for the battlefield—and the 2019 shooting of dressage competitor Lauren Kanarek by her trainer, former Olympian Michael Barisone. The dispute started after Barisone allowed Kanarek, who was more of a hobbyist than an elite equestrian, to ride a promising horse named Jay-T. (Barisone describes it as letting a novice drive a Corvette.) Lauren eventually buys Jay-T for $20,000, with Barisone claiming he was “extorted” into selling the horse. That’s the launching point for an escalating war involving Facebook posts, threats, allegations of stalking, psychological warfare, and 911 calls.
The madness turns into violence, with Barisone shooting Kanarek, charged with attempted murder, and being found not guilty. That might sound juicy and lurid, but it’s mostly a flat portrait of two lost people who dragged each other down a horrific rabbit hole for no earthly good reason. Untold: Chess Mates.
Danny Rensch and Erik Allbest in Untold: Chess Mates. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026 “Chess Mates” — 3 stars Near the top of this episode, we see a clip of Piers Morgan asking an interviewee subject: “Have you ever used anal beads while playing chess?” Ah, that old gambit.
“Chess Mates” is a well-paced documentary that knows it has two fantastically brilliant, charismatic, and, yes, at times insufferable “characters” in the generationally great Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen and the upstart American prodigy Hans Niemann. Director Thomas Tancred lays the groundwork by walking us through the explosion of online chess in 2020, due to the pandemic and the popularity of “The Queen’s Gambit.” Niemann becomes a streaming star while