10 Times Pop Culture Solved Real Life Crimes

No, not the extricable Rowan Atkinson comedy from the early nineties. Errol Morris's ground breaking 1988 documentary shares a name, but his Thin Blue Line doesn't treat the incompetence of the police as a means for a sitcom. Rather, he managed to uncover some gross misconduct, racism and the false imprisonment of a man for a crime he didn't commit.

Using reconstructions which would become a staple of the true crime drama, but had never been used before, and interviews with all the major players involved, Morris created a narrative. That narrative was all about Randall Dale Adams, an Ohio native who wound up on death row, wrongly convicted of murdering police officer Robert W Wood.

As it turns out, Adams was convicted because the actual killer - David Harris - was under-age, and thus wouldn't receive the highest penalty of execution. Profiling Adams, uncovering this corruption and perjury, The Thin Blue Line managed not only to revolutionise the documentary drama but got the wrongfully accused out of prison.