Thursday, March 28, 2024
For men, women, and teens


How to find the best documentaries on Hulu

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Written by Vera C. Last updated on .

living room with television screen

At first glance, it looks like Hulu has barely any good documentaries. But actually, they have a ton of awesome documentaries - they're just hard to find. It's almost like they're hidden. But don't worry, here's how you can find them.

Soon enough you'll have plenty of great viewing options lined up and ready to go! Let's move on so you can find the best documentaries quickly.

Navigate to the Documentary section

Once you've logged into your Hulu account and you're in the home page where you can select shows, go all the way to the bottom to search by genre. Sadly, they do not put Documentary as an earlier category on the screen. So scroll all the way down there to the genres, which will look something like this:

Screenshot of Hulu genres

See the bottom row, Genres? That's where you want to be. They're in alphabetical order, so you'll need to scroll to the right a bit to get to Documentary. You should now see something like this:

A second screenshot of Hulu genres

OK, so choose Documentary, and you'll see a bunch of titles there. You now you have 2 options for how to proceed from here. I'll cover both.

  • If you're a little bit picky and want to find the right documentary for you based on likes and dislikes, then you'll want option A.
  • If you just want to see all the documentaries on Hulu and pick one from there, then you'll want option B

Option A - The fastest path to the right documentary for you

In front of you, there will be a choice of different titles. Don't overthink this - just go for the one that's closest to what you might want even if you don't want to watch it (don't worry you don't need to watch it!) When you click on that title, it will look something like this. In this example I picked the WeWork documentary, but the same general look applies for any title:

Screenshot of Hulu documentary title

Now you want to scroll down to the "You may also like" section. Go to that, and it'll bring up a selection of documentaries that Hulu thinks might appeal to you if you liked that one. In this WeWork example, these titles look like this:

Screenshot of similar documentary titles on Hulu

There may be plenty more as you scroll down further. Don't worry if none of these appeal to you! Simply get the closest one you like from there, and repeat going to "You may also like". It should not take too many cycles of this before the choices refine far enough that you start getting titles that sound really awesome to you. At this point, you should have a title, or titles, that you are excited about and want to watch, so go ahead and sit back and enjoy.

Warning: While most titles they show here under "you may also like" will be documentaries, not all are - some are drama shows (i.e. fiction). This is because "you may also like" compares on similarity of topic (e.g. crime shows vs nature shows) as opposed to genre (e.g. Documentary vs Comedy). So be careful here when you find something you like - check the info and trailer carefully to see if it is in fact a documentary, or just a regular show on a similar topic.

If you didn't find anything great using this method, or if you want to try option B to see if you get anything extra, let's move on.

Option B - Browse all documentaries on Hulu

Rest assured that the documentaries in the Documentary genre that you saw in the first step are just the tip of the iceberg of all the documentaries on Hulu. Here is how to browse all documentaries. In the Documentary genre, there is an A-Z category and a "View All" button. You may have to scroll quite a bit to the right to get to the "View All" button.

Screen shot of all viewing all documentaries on Hulu

After you click "View All" you will be able to see all the documentary titles on Hulu in alphabetical order. This can take quite a bit longer to scroll through than Option A, but you'll be assured of not missing any.

Warning: Although virtually all the titles here will be documentaries, be aware that Hulu uses the term "documentary" rather loosely when it comes to categorization. Therefore, movies based on a true event may be included here too, even though strictly speaking it's not a documentary as there are no interviews or narrator. So again, be careful to check the title screen and take a look at the trailer to get more information.

Conclusion

Yes, Hulu has plenty of awesome documentaries, and what they show you at first glance when you sign up is just a tiny subset of what they actually have available. Above I described all the steps for how you can find the best documentaries on Hulu. Sit back with your popcorn and enjoy!


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