What to stream this week: A deeply moving true-crime documentary and five more shows

This week’s picks include the devastating true-crime documentary The Yogurt Shop Murders, a slick international spy thriller, an Australian micro-comedy and the return of Bob’s Burgers.

The Yogurt Shop Murders ★★★★½ HBO Max

The case remains unsolved and there is often little but anguish for anyone seen on screen in this true-crime series about the 1991 murder of four teenage girls in the Texan city of Austin.

But The Yogurt Shop Murders may well be the most profound documentary this misshapen genre has ever produced. Scene by scene, year by year, it tells a story that is not only heartbreaking, but also deeply illustrative. Loss and regret are the story’s bedrock and one way or another, everyone involved is a survivor.

The victims were four teenage girls: 17-year-olds Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison; Jennifer’s 15-year-old sister, Sarah; and 13-year-old Amy Ayers. The oldest two were employees of a yoghurt shop in North Austin, where after closing time on Friday, December 6, 1991, all four were bound, gagged and shot dead in the shop’s kitchen, before the outlet was set on fire. The first episode makes clear who they were as people, and how their loss was incomprehensible to those who loved them.

Director Margaret Brown is not interested in manufacturing a mystery; there’s no gotcha moment. There are shots of faces here, whether in archival or contemporary footage, where the pain is indelibly etched.

The four episodes are concerned with the cruelty of memory – the girls’ families, across multiple generations, cannot forget what happened to them, while simultaneously four teenage boys, who became the investigation’s focus, were made to believe through coercive interviews they had committed the crimes and sign confessions.

The series understands true crime’s contradictions. Crucial footage comes from Austin filmmaker Claire Huie, who started making a documentary about the case in 2009 but never finished.

In one scene, Huie watches her younger self ask a horrifyingly insensitive question to Amy’s mother, Barbara Ayers-Wilson, about how the girls were murdered. Huie is rightly mortified, but then we see Ayers-Wilson’s answer. She speaks for just under eight minutes, beginning with a narrative of the day and moving to the deepest contemplation of anguish.

It is an unforgettable scene. The Yogurt Shop Murders has several more. One of the original detectives reads out his diagnosis of PTSD; Eliza’s younger sister, Sonora, explains how she not only lost her sibling, but ultimately, her grieving parents; police footage shows the terrified suspects being coaxed into finding false memories of how the murders occurred.

That the series concludes on a note of shared compassion feels like the hardest won relief, and even then, it doesn’t occur for more than 30 years. This is what the unthinkable looks like.

Butterfly ★★½ Amazon Prime Video

Born in South Korea and raised in America, actor Daniel Dae Kim has spent the last two decades cross-pollinating screen cultures. After his breakthrough role as Jin on Lost, Kim produced Hollywood remakes of South Korean hits, notably The Good Doctor. His latest starring role tries to combine everything in one show. Set in South Korea, Butterfly is a slick international spy thriller with K-drama family stakes. Apparently, even assassins yearn for their loved ones.

Kim plays Daniel Jung, a former US intelligence operative trying to corner the younger spy, Rebecca (Reina Hardesty). She’s his daughter, who hasn’t seen or heard from Daniel in years, but has nonetheless followed him into the family trade. The action sequences that connect them soon give way to a personal reckoning – the two generations struggle to connect, even as they go on the run to survive. The family tree soon expands.

Rebecca’s employer, Juno (Piper Perabo), doesn’t take kindly to Daniel’s reappearance, and the story, with its echoes of Alias and The Night Agent, goes from one near-miss to another. Unfortunately, the emotional connection also goes from one near-miss to another. It’s a concise watch at six episodes, but ultimately this is a workmanlike addition to Amazon Prime Video’s suite of action-thrillers. Little here genuinely knocks you off balance.

Children Ruin Everything ★★★½ Netflix

Netflix has a solid track record of signal boosting enjoyable Canadian comedies – see Workin’ Moms and Kim’s Convenience – and that continues with this sitcom about a married couple gamely trying to keep it together while raising two young children. The chaos never stops for Astrid (Meaghan Rath) and James (Aaron Abrams), who are alternately exhausted, elated and somehow weighing up a third child. Over the three seasons available, the show finds a thoughtful balance in its various relationships, delving into ideas about marital identity and emotional growth, even as the duo’s offspring unleash comic havoc.

Fear ★★½ BritBox

One-upping the real estate horror of the 1990 Hollywood thriller Pacific Heights, this Glasgow-set thriller stars Martin Compston and Anjli Mohindra as a married couple, Martyn and Rebecca, whose spiffy new home comes with a basement flat and a solitary tenant, Jan (Solly McLeod), who quickly goes from irritant to threat as he claims his upstairs neighbours are abusing their children. Soon the police are involved and Martyn’s estranged father is counselling violence, with the plot escalating faster than logic or the barely aired themes will allow for. This limited series is shorn of subtlety.

Not Russian Anywhere ★★★ Instagram

This Australian micro-comedy – eight three-minute episodes from the Instagram account @notrussiananywhere – is a welcome reminder of the scripted creativity bubbling away on social media platforms. Creator Annisa Belonogoff plays Natalya, whose two unresolved issues are chronic pain and her eccentric Russian immigrant family. Returning to the family home in Queensland sets off family quirks, childhood bedroom embarrassment, cultural memories, and quick-witted farce that allows for some deeper realisations about just what you can and cannot live without. Shout-out to Aimée-Lee Xu Hsien’s deft vertical direction.

Bob’s Burgers (season 15) ★★★★ Disney+

It sounds odd to describe a show that’s just concluded its 15th season as underrated, but this US animation about a family that runs a burger joint in their seaside home town still doesn’t get the kudos and attention that the likes of Family Guy or Rick and Morty have received. Devotees of the Belcher family’s adventures will tell you that seasons three through five were the show’s peak, but even now, the average episode has hilarious mishaps, genuine setbacks, and wholly relatable relationships. Thankfully, it’s not going anywhere: Disney just commissioned four more seasons.

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