At this time of year, thoughts turn to family...unfortunately. Kevin Flynn of Crime Writers On... and Law & Order pod These Are Their Stories joins Sarah D. Bunting for a discussion of the spare, bleak, thought-provoking documentary The Family I Had, a stripped-down look at the family destroyed, then rebuilt, by and around Charity Bennett after her 13-year-old son murdered her 4-year-old daughter. True, there's no mystery here, no whodunnit, but the ellipses left by the filmmakers, and by the fundamental unknowability of human beings at times (even to themselves), makes this a very good sit.

Not good, at all, but still entertaining: Killer Kids S01.E05, whose committed re-enactments and oddly affectless narration make the episode inadvertently hilarious -- and quite possibly offensive. Strange pronunciations, inappropriate adverbs, and the implication that nagging teenagers to do chores or observe curfew could lead to parental figures' untimely deaths had Sarah and Kevin scratching their heads. And giggling, because settle down, Strings Of Imminent Doom.

SHOW NOTES

• Kevin Flynn's Amazon author page
• Watch Killer Kids
• The "Amaro-sode" that caused such resentment