Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action (2025) review

Dir. Luke Sewell

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

A documentary examining the innerworkings of the controversial, reviled, yet wildly successful cultural touchstone that was The Jerry Springer Show is long overdue, but probably was never going to be made in its titular host’s lifetime. I’ve been a fan of Jerry Springer (the person) since I was a kid. The show was entertaining in the worst possible way, but it also afforded an opportunity for the consistently affable, amiable Springer to flex his dead-pan humor and good-hearted nature.

Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action — a new two-episode miniseries that just dropped on Netflix — pulls back the curtain on what exactly transpired behind-the-scenes of America’s trashiest talk show. The show was actually billed as the “worst television show of all-time” by TV Guide. It’s hard to argue against it. When a show resorts to full-length episodes revolving around everything from “My wife’s sleeping with my aunt” and “I’m pregnant by my brother,” to “Stripper Wars” (and who could forget “Diaper Bob?”), it’s going to attract attention and not the good kind.

Fights, Camera, Action has a surprisingly small focus when it comes to the parties it profiles. Most of them are former producers on the show, including Richard Dominick, the diabolical executive producer, who took the show from a stale piece of human interest to a ribald display of American depravity. Dominick was brought in to increase ratings for NBCUniversal, and that’s exactly what he did. “If I could execute someone on TV, I would,” he bluntly states at one point.

Prior to Dominick’s arrival, Springer’s show was more like the man himself: humble, laidback, and inoffensive, debating social issues and reuniting long-lost family members. Dominick was the man who took it the extreme. Springer even noted in his memoir that it was Dominick’s idea to put the episode titles on the screen for the entirety of the program. The goal in mind was to get people casually flipping channels to “stop” on The Jerry Springer Show and not change the channel. Another steadfast producer was Toby Yoshimura, one of the doc’s most engaging personalities, who worked all hours of the day to secure guests, burning himself out and drinking and snorting his way into insanity.

The spontaneous fighting amongst the guests was integral to the show’s formula of “success.” The producers admit to riling up their guests backstage, working them into a fury before putting them in front of the bright-lights coupled with the individuals with whom they have beef. It’s no secret that most of the guests were in poverty; disenfranchised afterthoughts in society, who were wined and dined with limos, hotels, and comped meals in exchange for airing their dirty laundry on TV. Even years removed from the show, which was cancelled in 2018 after 27 years, no one seems to take any accountability for their actions. They were simply in a tireless pursuit of ratings, which exploded to the point where the show bested Oprah as the most-watched talk show in America.

The guests that Yoshimura tabbed that he claims were the reason for his abrupt decision to quit the show cold turkey is one liable to make your jaw hit the floor as he recounts it in explicit detail. And yet, he went back to work under Dominick two years later.

Retired Chicago journalist Robert Feder provides overarching context and more-or-less serves as the documentary’s de facto narrator. He’s always been one of the best at what he does. His moral grandstanding in Fights, Camera, Action does get to be a bit much at times, but one cannot deny his genuine disgust for The Jerry Springer Show and its perceived affected on shock television. He asserts that Springer himself “knew every day of his life that was he was doing was beneath him and beneath his dignity,” adding that everyone involved “had to know that when guests went home they could have changed their lives for the worse, forever.”

Springer’s belief was that all aspects of American life have a place on television. His family survived the Holocaust and immigrated to America, and he had no problem having devout Ku Klux Klan members and proud neo-Nazis on the show to highlight their closeminded hate. Moreover, Fights, Camera, Action spends most of its second and final episode covering the story of Nancy Campbell-Panitz, who was brutally murdered by her ex-husband the day he watched the episode that revolved around both of them and his new wife. Nancy’s adult son claims that the two duped her into going on the show. Nancy left in the middle of filming, not willing to go fisticuffs with her ex-husband’s new woman, and the producers refused to pay for her airfare home.

As the two episodes combine for not even 100 minutes, it’s a curious decision as to why this documentary was split into parts. While effectively tackling the big scandals of The Jerry Springer Show, Fights, Camera, Action does feel featherweight in an era where streaming docuseries are nothing if not comprehensive and detailed. The small circle of interviewees might play a role in this, but it’s liable to leave you wanting, even if that want combines for a desire to double-back to watch some episodes of Springer’s shows just to remember what captivated audiences long before viral videos of fighting and public displays of outrage were readily available at your fingertips.

NOTE: Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action is available to stream exclusively on Netflix.

My review of Ringmaster (1998)

Directed by: Luke Sewell.