New documentaries and true crime you need to watch this month

True crime and documentary fans, listen up: April 2026 is packed with new documentaries across Netflix, BBC, Channel 4, Disney+, and more.

Netflix has been on a serious run lately. The Investigation of Lucy Letby arrived earlier this year, while March delivered Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere, which quickly became one of the month’s most talked-about releases.

Elsewhere, Channel 5 gave us the breathtaking The Surgeon, and Channel 4 had Molly vs the Machines.

It’s time to sort your watchlist. Whether you’re after true crime, cult exposés, sports scandals, or real-life survival stories, these are the new documentaries worth watching in April.

The 8 best new documentaries to stream in April

The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson

• Release date: April 3
• Channel/platform: Netflix
• Length: 1 hour 35 minutes

In May 2022, cyclist Moriah Wilson was murdered. She was shot and killed by Kaitlin Marie Armstrong, the jealous partner of Mo’s ex-boyfriend, Colin Strickland.

This Netflix documentary goes beyond the headlines, focusing on Mo’s family, friends, and colleagues as they reckon with the aftermath of her death.

The film climbed into Netflix’s top 10, with viewers saying it left them in tears.

Untold: Chess Mates

• Release date: April 7
• Channel/platform: Netflix
• Length: TBC, approx. 1 hour 20 minutes

“How did a match between chess grandmasters devolve into a bizarre scandal about anal beads?”

That’s the hook for Netflix’s latest Untold documentary, which dives into the controversy involving Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann.

For anyone who fell down a Queen’s Gambit rabbit hole, this is the next obvious watch.

Trust Me: The False Prophet

• Release date: April 8
• Channel/platform: Netflix
• Length: 1 season, 4 episodes

After Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, director Rachel Dretzin returns with another disturbing look inside a closed religious world.

Trust Me: The False Prophet follows the inner circle of Samuel Bateman, Warren Jeffs’ self-proclaimed successor.

“Trust Me offers intimate access to a normally closed world — and in doing so, I hope it exposes both the violence that enforced secrecy enables and what it takes to tell the truth when everything is at stake,” Dretzin told Netflix.

“What these women did matters far beyond their community. It is a blueprint for how to dismantle even the most entrenched systems of abuse.”

Inside Barlinnie series 2

• Release date: April 9, 9pm
• Channel/platform: BBC Two and iPlayer
• Length: 5 episodes

Inside Barlinnie returns for a second series, once again taking viewers inside Scotland’s most infamous prison.

This time, the series follows prisoners and staff as they deal with violence, drugs, release, rehabilitation, and the grim reality that many inmates will end up back behind bars.

24 Hours in Police Custody

• Release date: April 13, 9pm
• Channel/platform: Channel 4
• Length: 2 episodes

24 Hours in Police Custody returns with one of its most chilling cases yet: the murder of Una Crown, an 86-year-old woman who was stabbed and set on fire in her own home.

The two-part documentary follows Detective Superintendent Iain Moor and the Major Crime Unit as they reopen the case and finally close in on David Newton.

“For more than a decade David Newton thought he had gotten away with this most horrendous crime. He was hiding in plain sight, but jurors saw through his lies and as this programme highlights, you cannot hide forever,” Moor said.

Should I Marry a Murderer?

• Release date: April 29
• Channel/platform: Netflix
• Length: TBC

In 2017, a charity cyclist was killed by a drunk driver.

Three years later, forensic psychologist Caroline Muirhead meets a man on Tinder and falls quickly in love. Their romance moves fast, but her fiancé is hiding a horrific secret.

When he finally tells her about a brutal killing and a missing body, Caroline is forced into an impossible position.

Murder In Shetland: Trial By Jury

• Release date: April 27 and 28
• Channel/platform: Channel 5
• Length: 1 season, 2 episodes

When 24-year-old Canadian Claire Leveque travelled to Scotland’s Shetland Islands to be with her boyfriend, she thought she was starting a new chapter. Within months, she was dead.

Murder In Shetland: Trial By Jury takes viewers inside the courtroom, following the eight-day proceedings into her death.

With rare in-court access, archive material, and family testimony, it’s a harrowing account of love, control, and isolation.

SkyKing: Panic in the Sky

• Release date: April 14
• Channel/platform: Disney+
• Length: 1 hour 31 minutes

In August 2018, 28-year-old Richard Russell stole a plane from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

For 70 minutes, he flew through the skies, even performing a barrel roll, while air traffic control tried to talk him down.

Director Patricia E. Gillespie described the film as “both personal and political, an urgent attempt to reclaim working class humanity from caricature, to restore complexity to those left behind and to bridge the empathy gap between how we live, how we are seen and who we truly are”.

New documentaries on Netflix UK this month

New documentaries on Prime Video this month

New documentaries on BBC iPlayer this month

New documentaries on ITV this month

New documentaries on Channel 4 this month

New documentaries on Channel 5 this month

New documentaries on Disney+ this month

Read more: The best Netflix series you should watch this month

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