‘The Jerry Springer Show’ Documentary Set At Netflix

The Jerry Springer Show, the long-running daytime talk show that was synonymous with brawls, strippers and all sorts of other crazy situations, is getting the documentary treatment.

Netflix has ordered Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, which will go behind the scenes of the syndicated show and explore how it became one of the most outrageous hits of the 90s.

The two-part series, which will be released on January 7, comes from Minnow Films, which was behind Netflix’s Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies and Scandal and Fox’s Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test. It is directed by Luke Sewell, who previously directed Netflix’s Trust No One: The Hunt For The Crypto King.

Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action will feature first-hand testimony from show insiders, including producers and former guests and will reveal the murkier picture behind the entertainment façade of the destruction it caused, raising renewed questions about who was responsible, and how far things should go in the name of entertainment.

The Jerry Springer Show ran for 3,891 episodes across 27 seasons. It was first produced by Multimedia before NBCUniversal took over. It featured controversial episodes such as High Class Hookers Tell All and I Married A Horse, many of which descended into violence.

The series ran through 2018. Springer, who died in 2023 and also hosted three seasons of Judge Jerry, previously said that he never watched his own show and called it “silly” but believed that criticism of the “trash” was elitist.

In 2019, he told Deadline, “The Jerry Springer Show never raised my blood pressure because it was obviously a circus. I never went home [with stress]. I knew it would be crazy but I never knew what the subjects were. I didn’t produce the show and because I’m not an actor, I wanted my responses to be legitimate so we decided early on that I wouldn’t know what was going on, I’d just be handed a card with the names of the guests. That’s why every segment, my first question was ‘What’s going on?’.”

Sophie Jones, Alicia Kerr and Sophie Leonard are exec producers and Catherine Murnane produces.