Waco (Season 1)

Waco (2018) is a six-part Paramount Network miniseries you can watch online on iFILM, built around the 51-day standoff that ended with 76 people dead on a Texas ranch in April 1993. Taylor Kitsch plays Branch Davidian leader David Koresh; Michael Shannon is FBI negotiator Gary Noesner — the two anchors of a story that refuses to pick a simple villain.

Koresh had built an isolated community at Mount Carmel on the conviction that he alone could interpret the Book of Revelation. When ATF agents arrived with a search warrant in February 1993, the raid collapsed into a gunfight, and from there came weeks of generators cut off at night, loudspeakers blaring recordings of children crying, and federal officials arguing over whether to wait or force the issue. Rory Culkin, Julia Garner and Andrea Riseborough round out the cast on both sides of the perimeter fence.

The writers drew on memoirs by Noesner and by surviving member David Thibodeau, which is why the series carries weight that most cult narratives don't — the people inside aren't ciphers. Stream all episodes of Waco online on iFILM.