3 Classic Kids TV Shows That Subtly Predicted The Modern True Crime Boom (Including 1 Iconic Franchise)

The entertainment industry is in a constant state of evolution, with each and every new release carefully considered to ensure it will find its audience. This has seen certain genres that were once decidedly niche actually come to the fore. The most obvious example of this is the surge in superhero cinema: where once movies based on these colorful characters were looked down on, comic book movies have since grown into one of the most consistently successful in the industry. Another genre that has seen a massive surge in popularity over the past 10 to 15 years is true crime, with documentaries and adaptations of real-life crime stories and mysteries thoroughly gripping audiences around the world.

Our collective fascination with morbid true stories hasn’t simply sprung from nowhere, though. Many of the TV shows we watched when we were kids actually subtly laid the groundwork for the modern true crime boom, and we didn’t even realize it was happening. With their crime-based, mystery, or downright dark subject matter, the following classic kids’ shows might just have affected us far more than we know, and looking back now, they might have actually contributed to our love of true crime.

3) The Adventures of Tintin

When we talk about nostalgic comic book shows, The Adventures of Tintin might not come immediately to mind, but that’s precisely what it is. Based on the beloved comics by Hergé, the early 1990s saw the adventures of the titular Belgian reporter adapted into an animated series. Each story followed Tintin as he encountered and investigated a crime or other mysterious circumstance, taking him on adventures around — and occasionally even off — the planet.

By giving us a taste for the mysterious, Tintin helped instill a little of the reporter inside his audience, paving the way for our later true crime obsession. The majority of Tintin’s stories were pretty down to Earth, featuring plausible villains with equally plausible motivations, also adding a veneer of swashbuckling adventure and puzzle-solving to each chapter. While The Adventures of Tintin were far from gritty, they gave us a taste of investigative journalism that helped ignite a spark of fascination for the genre that, for many, still burns today.

2) Goosebumps

If you ask the kids of the ’80s and ’90s which terrifying horror TV shows have haunted them for years, odds are they all give you one name: Goosebumps. Based on R. L. Stine’s series of children’s horror stories, the 1995 show adapted the majority of the books into episodes, with some of the longer stories receiving two- or even three-part adaptations. With subject matter that featured ghosts, mutants, magic, and more, Goosebumps served as a clear entry point to the horror genre for many of its young viewers.

Goosebumps‘ influence on our current true crime obsession might not be as obvious, but it’s still there. By delivering us darker, episodic subject matter, Goosebumps helped create a pattern of behavior that many of us still fall into today. Even when its episodes were unsettling or unnerving, we kept coming back for more, desperate to replicate the thrill of revulsion or horror that came with it. That’s the exact same impulse that drives us to keep consuming true crime, which often takes the form of real-life horror stories, minus just the assorted ghosts and ghouls of Goosebumps.

1) Scooby-Doo

There are few cartoons as legendary as Scooby-Doo, and the success of the original show, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, in 1969, saw the birth of an iconic franchise. In the years since, the many stories of Scooby and his four human companions travelling around the world investigating crimes and supernatural occurrences have entertained fans for generations. However, the modern true crime boom might actually be an interesting side-effect of Scooby-Doo‘s success.

The format of almost every Scooby-Doo story is fairly simple: we meet a cast of characters suffering from some paranormal issue, and eventually, one of them is revealed as the culprit. That winning formula led us to try to work out in each episode who was guilty and what their motives might be, turning each of us into budding detectives as we happily watched along. As adults, that impulse shines through in our consumption of true crime shows and movies, meaning that the iconic cartoon adventures of Mystery Inc. actually helped to bring about the modern growth of the true crime genre.

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