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In Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman’s account of his movie-writing career in Hollywood, Goldman remembers hearing a true story about a firefighter who went back in to save a baby he heard crying just as he was about to leave a burning building, escaping with the infant as it all started collapsing behind him. It was, Goldman says, an unbeatable tale of real-life heroism and someone, of course, tells him he should make a movie about it. The problem, Goldman notes, is that what this man did, in its astonishing entirety, is what the hero of a movie is expected to do before the opening credits even roll.

The same principle is true on the small screen. What is a legitimately huge, intensely dramatic and traumatic life-defining event for the people involved is easily flattened almost to nothingness by the demands of the medium. Such is the fatal flaw of second-tier true-life crime documentaries such as Worst Neighbor Ever. This four-part US-based addition to the genre tells four stories about ordinary people who had the terrible luck of finding themselves living alongside … well, the clue is in the title. And, in a country with questionable attitudes to gun control, it often ended in tragedy.

The first episode traces the story of Shawna and David Scott who suffered years of persecution by Frances Zaayer, a woman the family had first known as a youngster, who later moved in with Shawna as an adult after a divorce. When her behaviour became too unreasonable for any house guest (demanding Shawna not clean too early, shouting at the Scotts’ beloved grandson, proudly showing them videos of her taking part in protests against Islam and so on), they asked her to leave. Frances bought the house across the street and an escalating campaign of harassment against the couple began. Despite taking Shawna to court on trumped-up charges of assault and the police attending every time she called them out – virtually daily – Frances remained convinced that the Scotts were never going to be punished for the crimes she (one would have to say) imagined they had committed against her because David worked for the local prison. Eventually, she approached the house with a gun, shot Shawna in the face and killed David. We hear the 911 call from another neighbour – “It’s this crazy motherfucker they’ve been dealing with for years.” Frances was sentenced to 35 years for murder, second-degree assault and wanton endangerment and is eligible for parole in 2038.

A similar tale is told in the third instalment, this time with drug addiction playing a prominent role in the killer’s actions. Jamal Thomas was squatting in the property next to Miles and Melina Armstead’s when they moved in. After five months of having their windows smashed and other threats from Thomas, the Armsteads moved out. Miles was tidying the garden in preparation for putting the house on the market when Thomas shot him.

Another episode deals with an explosion caused deliberately by Mark Leonard and his girlfriend Monserrate Shirley (three others were also convicted of involvement) to collect the insurance money on a property, which ending up killing Shirley’s neighbours Dion and Jennifer Longworth. And another looks at a woman who dismembered and disposed of the body of a man named Charles Wilding (who had died of natural causes) to carry out an elaborate fraud.

These are all terrible stories, some involving unfathomable grief. A line from one of the letters that Miles’s beautiful, dignified mother still writes to him every Tuesday – “My son, my one and only … I long for you and I always will” will surely undo any sentient viewer. But in the absence of anything else – apart from a suggestion in the Armsteads’ episode that the police should have done more to protect the family and that race may have played a part in their lack of interest in the case – it feels exploitative. This is filler television, doing nothing more than reminding us that bad people exist and that they can cross our paths at any time. It doesn’t interrogate the possible roles played by extraneous factors, just invites us to goggle and point and whisper “there but for the grace of God …” The best true-crime documentaries probe weaknesses in institutions and systems, ask questions about motivations and childhood traumas, and ask what we can do to protect victims and prevent perpetrators from becoming perpetrators. At their very best, they probe the question of whether anyone is born evil or whether we are all capable of becoming it. Worst Neighbor Ever is far from the best of anything.

• Worst Neighbor Ever is on Netflix now.