'First Person' Is One of TIME's 50 Most Underappreciated TV Shows
Time · LC · trust 23/100
No documentarian has a better eye for intriguing oddballs than Errol Morris , who built his feature film career on drawing them out in conversation, from pet-cemetery owners in Gates of Heaven to small-town eccentrics in Vernon, Florida . Morris brought his profiling skills to a pre- Housewives Bravo with First Person , released at the turn of the millennium and difficult to find in the streaming era before the filmmaker uploaded it to his YouTube page during the pandemic. Each half-hour episode consists of a single, wide-ranging interview with someone whose name viewers probably didn’t recognize, but whose story was gripping—a Unabomber confidant, a CIA alum who specialized in disguises, a bouncer who claims to have a higher IQ than Einstein. The show’s best-known subject is probably its first, Temple Grandin , whose devotion to making livestock slaughter humane leads to an insightful discussion of mortality. But, as always, Morris finds profundity in unexpected places. “When I was growing up, I was very comfortable in my absolutes,” mob lawyer Murray Richman reflects, by way of explaining how he became an extreme moral relativist. “I believed in God, I believed in my country, I believed in my parents.” Now? “My parents are dead, God doesn’t exist, and the country’s full of crap. What’s left?” In 2026, First Person would likely have been a TikTok account or a podcast . There’s value, though, in the visual elements of Morris’s interviews as well as their extended length. Both help make the case that unfamous people, in all their honesty and complexity, are as worthy of our attention as celebrities.
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