The BEST episodes directed by Ezra Edelman
#1 - Part Five - The Verdict
O.J.: Made in America - Season 1 - Episode 5
In the years following his murder acquittal, O.J. Simpson's life takes strange turns, culminating in a new arrest and, this time, a conviction.
#2 - Part Four - Trial of the Century
O.J.: Made in America - Season 1 - Episode 4
O.J. Simpson's 1995 "trial of the century" unfolds in downtown Los Angeles, riveting the country for months and reshaping the media and cultural landscape.
Watch Now:Amazon
#3 - Part Three - The Murder
O.J.: Made in America - Season 1 - Episode 3
O.J. Simpson is arrested and charged with the murders of his estranged wife and an acquaintance, setting off a saga unlike any in American history.
#4 - Part Two - The Split America
O.J.: Made in America - Season 1 - Episode 2
While racial tension boils over in early-'90s Los Angeles, O.J. Simpson remains a world apart in exclusive Brentwood, cultivating a perfect image atop a life of secrets.
#5 - Part One - Obsessed with Fame
O.J.: Made in America - Season 1 - Episode 1
The origin of O.J. Simpson's football stardom in the '60s, as America combusted with racial upheaval, and an examination into why the country fell in love with him off the field.
Watch Now:Apple TV
#7 - Requiem for the Big East
30 for 30 - Season 2 - Episode 17
"Requiem For The Big East" explores the meteoric ascension of the Big East Conference and how, in less than a decade under the innovative leadership of founder and commissioner Dave Gavitt, it became the most successful college sports league in America. Told primarily through the lens of famed Big East coaches such as Jim Boeheim, Lou Carnesecca and John Thompson as well as some of its most iconic players such as Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin and Ed Pinckney, the film chronicles the story of an extraordinary group who rode the rivalries and successes of their teams to become household names. The Big East was a groundbreaking athletic and business creation that encapsulated the era and region in which it was born -- from the toughness of the players and coaches hailing from some of the Northeast's most storied cities, to the executives and Wall Street brokers who thrived because of it. Launched in 1979 -- the same year that ESPN was born -- the Big East used the burgeoning cable TV channel and the media as a whole to help spread its gospel and product to fans and future players across the country. But "Requiem For The Big East" is also a tale of change as the super conference eventually found itself in a new era fighting for survival.
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
#8 - Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals
HBO Documentary Film Series - Season 2010 - Episode 3
The special traces the history of the competition between Los Angeles Lakers immortal "Magic" Johnson and Boston Celtics great Larry Bird, which began 30 years ago when they led their midwest universities to the 1979 NCAA Championship game, through a decade of dominance, when the two won three NBA MVP awards apiece and a combined eight NBA titles. Debuting on the eve of March Madness, the exclusive HBO presentation also examines the different cultures that helped shape them and contributed to their unique styles, as well as exploring their unlikely friendship. "Larry Bird and 'Magic' Johnson are basketball royalty," says Ross Greenburg, president, HBO Sports. "Their accomplishments speak for themselves at every level, but their intersecting back stories are just as rich and compelling as their championship performances. We will tell their full life stories and provide an in-depth portrait of their complicated and historic bond." Though sharing Midwestern roots and following the same team-oriented philosophy, the introverted Bird (from the small town of French Lick, Ind.) and the extroverted Johnson (from the industrial state capital of Lansing, Mich.) couldn't be more different in personality. The two superstars talk about each other at length in the film and provide intimate insights into their remarkable lives. The special's high-profile list of interviewees also includes: Hall of Famer Pat Riley, who coached Johnson on the great Lakers teams of the 1980s; teammates Kevin McHale, Cedric Maxwell and Michael Cooper; George Fox, Johnson's high school coach; siblings Evelyn Johnson and Mark Bird; entertainer Arsenio Hall; former CBS Sports executive Ted Shaker; and sports journalists Bryant Gumbel, Jackie MacMullan, Charles Pierce and Steve Springer.
Watch Now:Amazon
#9 - OJ: Made in America (1)
Storyville - Season 2017 - Episode 9
Five-part series and winner of the 2017 Academy Award for Best Documentary chronicling the rise and fall of OJ Simpson. To many observers, the story of the crime of the century is a story that began the night Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally murdered outside her Brentwood condominium. But as the first episode lays bare, to truly grasp the significance of what happened not just that night, but the epic chronicle to follow, one has to travel back to points in time long before that. To generations prior, when African-Americans began migrating to California en masse, trying desperately - and fruitlessly - to outrun the racism that had defined their lives. To the late 1960s, when in the heart of Los Angeles, OJ Simpson rose to instant fame as an unstoppable running back for the USC Trojans. To the early 1970s, when he expanded that fame in the NFL, becoming the first player ever to rush for 2,000 yards in a season, and emerging as one of the most visible faces in sports. And to a few years after that, when with his celebrity transcending the game, Simpson retired from American football and returned to Los Angeles - his acting, advertising, and broadcasting careers in ascendance. It was also then that he fell madly in love - with a young, beautiful woman named Nicole Brown.
#10 - OJ: Made in America (2)
Storyville - Season 2017 - Episode 10
There was never one Los Angeles, California. There were always two. One was the world inhabited by OJ Simpson - wealthy, privileged, and predominantly white. A world where celebrity was power, and where OJ - race be damned - was one of the most popular figures around, cultivating the perfect image, even if it hardly lined up with what lay beneath. Then there was the other LA, just a few miles away from Brentwood and his Rockingham estate, a place where millions of other black people lived an entirely different reality at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department. It was in that 'other' Los Angeles where riots erupted in 1992, and more than 50 people died with thousands more injured. The city burned for nearly a week that spring, laying bare all the anger, and all the alienation, that black people in Los Angeles felt towards the police. For his part, back in Brentwood, OJ Simpson had other concerns.
#11 - OJ: Made in America (3)
Storyville - Season 2017 - Episode 11
The police arrived at the condo on Bundy Drive at 4:25 a.m. on June 13th, 1994. It was a gruesome murder scene, clearly the result of a violent confrontation that had left two people dead - one of whom, they'd quickly discover, was the estranged wife of OJ Simpson. It was just the start of a chapter of American history like none other, one that would lay bare the realities of race, power, the legal system, the media, and so much more in Los Angeles, California and far beyond. Two decades later, the disagreements between the figures at the centre of investigating the case are still palpable. The events of June 17th 1994 are nearly as unfathomable as they were as they unfolded. And the beginnings of the battle in the courtroom are just as fascinating - the defence's strategy, just as unambiguous. OJ Simpson had spent his entire life running from the colour of his skin. Now, in so many ways, he was going to depend on it to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison.
#12 - OJ: Made in America (4)
Storyville - Season 2017 - Episode 12
In January 1995, the crime of the century gave way to the trial of the century. It would be like nothing before it, nor anything that's come since, and reshape the landscape of the media, and, truly, American culture along the way. Over the better part of ten months, there would be dozens of dramatic twists and turns, revelations and surprises, accusations and betrayals. The recollections of so many of the case's protagonists make for section after section of riveting film, all bringing back to life a trial that somehow evolved into a phenomenon that left the brutal murders of two people deep in forgotten shadows. Nothing, though, proved larger than the context - of everything that came before in the Los Angeles that OJ Simpson never knew. And in the trial's closing arguments, the dividing line of race - in Los Angeles, and America - was never starker.
#13 - OJ: Made in America (5)
Storyville - Season 2017 - Episode 13
On the morning of October 3rd 1995, it was announced that OJ Simpson had been found not guilty of all charges. To many Americans, it was a stunning, almost explicable miscarriage of justice; a tragedy; a disturbing example of what money and power could buy in America. But to another group, it was an historic victory - payback for all the losses and all the injustice that they'd incurred over generations of history. As black America rejoiced, OJ went home, beginning what would become the strange, next phase of his life, a life lived in a form of celebratory purgatory - in many quarters shunned, scorned, and mocked, but in others, welcomed as a character in the circus that his saga had undeniably helped to create. From running from a guilty verdict in a wrongful death suit to working on a book that was a 'hypothetical conviction', his existence became more and more outlandish, until it all came crashing down on a night in 2007 in Las Vegas, a night that left Simpson where he is today, in prison for perhaps the rest of his life.