The Murder of John Lennon Haunts the Trailer of the Week

Is good TV worth waiting for? That's what the producers behind some of the shows featured in this week's biggest trailers are banking on. Peacock's Dr. Death premiered over two years ago, and we're finally getting a second season, with a new story and some hot new stars to boot. But when it comes to the week's best trailer, that's a story people have been waiting even longer to hear.

Best trailer for the week of November 27: John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial, premieres December 6, 2023 on Apple TV+

The 1980 murder of John Lennon — shot to death by assassin Mark David Chapman in front of his New York City apartment building — was a crushing blow to the culture. For everything that the Beatles meant to pop music and that Lennon meant to the counterculture and anti-war movement, to have it end so violently and suddenly makes this one of the most infamous killings of the 20th century.

The trailer for Apple's new documentary promises to tell the story of Lennon's murder "for the first time from the people who were there." That is, eyewitness accounts from passers-by, the clerk at the Dakota apartment building where Lennon lived, et cetera. The film also, by its title, seeks to delve into Chapman's story and his reasons for killing Lennon, which were never examined in a public forum because he pleaded guilty. Whether this documentary will provide valuable insight or amount to little more than rubbernecking at one of pop culture's most tragic moments remains to be seen, but it is undoubtedly an intriguing pitch.

Honorable mention: Dr. Death, premieres December 21 on Peacock

Based on the Wondery podcast of the same name, Dr. Death premiered in the summer of 2021 with Joshua Jackson playing the real-life Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon convicted of murdering his patients. After such a long wait for Season 2, at least you won't have to remember what already happened, since we're getting a new story with a new cast. Edgar Ramirez stars as another real-life surgeon, Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, whose attempts to create a breakthrough synthetic trachea were done by illegally experimenting on his patients.

This Is Us star Mandy Moore plays Benita Alexander, the reporter doing a story on Macchiarini who gets too close to him, and features prominently in the Netflix docuseries Bad Surgeon. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel's Luke Kirby plays the colleague who begins to suspect something terrible is happening. The trailer breaks out a choral rendition of a Radiohead song, so you know Peacock means business with this one.

Honorable mention: The Billion Dollar Goal, premieres December 11 on Paramount+

When it comes to men's soccer in the United States, stories of triumph aren't that easy to come by. There's no tradition of championships like there has been lately with the women's national team. Still, in the realm of small victories, the U.S. men's team's quest to break their 40-year drought and qualify for the 1990 World Cup is a story of trying to turn a nation's sports culture around and bring soccer to the more elevated place it is here today.

The trailer touts the participation of Grant Wahl, the great soccer journalist who died one year ago while covering the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. While for some that could be a dark cloud over this project, others may find it a balm to hear Wahl speak from his place of great expertise on the sport he covered so well.