Best UFO Documentaries and Series: What to Watch, and What to Watch Skeptically

UFO television is a genre with its own conventions: dramatic re-enactments, a narrator who asks questions nobody answers, and experts who are experts in being on television. The list below separates the films made by journalists who checked their facts from the series that exist to fill a schedule, and says which is which. Both can be worth watching; only one kind should change what you believe.

The Phenomenon (2020, James Fox) is the best single overview: Roswell to the 2017 Pentagon revelations, built on interviews with senators, pilots, and the Ariel School witnesses, with unusual archival footage. Fox's earlier Out of the Blue (2002) and I Know What I Saw (2009) cover the classic military and pilot cases with the same restraint.

UFO (Showtime, 2021), a four-part series from J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot, examines the phenomenon through its cultural and political moments, with George Knapp, Leslie Kean, and Diana Walsh Pasulka. UFOs: Investigating the Unknown (National Geographic, 2023) follows the government's decades of investigation over five episodes with Kean and Christopher Mellon. Encounters (Netflix, 2023, from Amblin) devotes an episode each to a mass sighting, including Ariel School and the Japanese fishing-village orbs.

Ariel Phenomenon (2022, Randall Nickerson) took fifteen years and returns to the 1994 Zimbabwe schoolchildren as adults, with John Mack's original footage. Moment of Contact (2022, James Fox) does the same for Varginha, Brazil. Westall '66: A Suburban UFO Mystery (2010) gathers the Melbourne school witnesses. Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers (2018, Jeremy Corbell) is a sympathetic portrait rather than an investigation, and useful for exactly that reason. Mirage Men (2013) tells the Paul Bennewitz story, in which Air Force counterintelligence fed a believer disinformation until it broke him, and is the essential film on how the mythology gets manufactured.

Investigation Alien (Netflix, 2024) follows George Knapp's thirty-year investigation with new witnesses and is the most current of the big series. Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified (Netflix, 2021) is a fast tour of the government programs with Richard Dolan; enjoyable, not rigorous. Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation (History, 2019–2020) put Luis Elizondo and Tom DeLonge's To The Stars group on screen as they pushed the Pentagon story; it is a primary document of that campaign more than a neutral account of it.

Ancient Aliens (History, 2009–) is the most-watched program in the genre and the least reliable: every monument was built by visitors, and Giorgio Tsoukalos is a meme for a reason. Watch it as anthropology of belief. The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch (2020–) is a reality show with instruments. UFO Hunters (2008–2009), Hangar 1: The UFO Files (2014–2015, from MUFON's case archive), Unsealed: Alien Files (2012–2015), NASA's Unexplained Files (2012–), UFO Witness (2021–), and UFOs: The Lost Evidence (2017–2019) are the case-of-the-week format at various levels of care, and Zachary Quinto's In Search of... (2018–2019) revives the 1970s original. They are where most people first meet the classic cases, which is fine as long as the next stop is a book.

Start with The Phenomenon, then Encounters or UFOs: Investigating the Unknown for the current picture. Add Mirage Men before you watch anything about Area 51, and Ariel Phenomenon or Moment of Contact if a single case grips you. Save Ancient Aliens for when you want to see how the other half thinks. For the same journey in print, see our best UFO books and the skeptical reading list.