True Crime News

New TV show with Dallas ties tracks Texas Ranger solving crimes

Killer Confessions star Texas Ranger James B. Holland

ID Channel

A new true-crime series with Texas ties is set to premiere on the Investigation Discovery channel and HBO Max. Called Killer Confessions: Case Files of a Texas Ranger, the show stars James B. Holland, a retired Texas Ranger who solved a series of "unsolvable" crimes during his storied career.

The eight-episode series will run on Tuesday nights at 9 pm, covering murder cases that remained confounding until Holland stepped into the room.

The season will debut on January 13 with a two-hour premiere, Pathologically Evil, covering a series of kidnappings and murders that Holland solved in the interrogation room.

Each case has a Texas nexus, which allowed Holland a way into the investigation.

The show also has CultureMap ties: One of its executive producers is Claire St. Amant, a North Texas-based investigative journalist who worked the crime beat for CBS News for nearly a decade. St. Amant, who wrote a memoir called Killer Story about her days as an investigative crime reporter and producer on shows such as 48 Hours and 60 Minutes, was a founding editor of CultureMap Dallas.

Holland got his start in TV with a 2019 profile on 60 Minutes titled "The Ranger and the Serial Killer," which introduced audiences to his unique brand of interrogation tactics.

"When I met James Holland, I realized he was a walking, talking, television show. I wanted to bring his story to the screen," St. Amant says. "The stories that Holland can tell are unlike any others I’ve worked on in my career in true crime television. The way he gets into the minds of murderers and convinces them to talk is unbelievable."

With more than 25 years in law enforcement, Holland has worked on hundreds of murder cases, including serial killers, psychopathic criminals, and ritualistic dismemberments.

“I worked on the really messed up cases,” Holland says. “If they had DNA or fingerprints or anything tangible, they didn’t call me. I was the one who came in when they had nothing.”

Holland’s reputation as a serial killer whisperer brought him into investigations around the country.

“Ranger Holland had the ability to establish a rapport with suspects,” Galveston County DA Jack Roady says. “It’s not something you find in just anybody.”

Using his wits and charm, Holland convinced suspected killers to confess to their crimes and in many cases, leading him to the remains of their victims.

“I’ve spent a career hunting killers. Whatever the case, I’m not going anywhere until I get to the truth,” Holland says.

Upcoming episodes include:

"Lie, Cheat, Kill Evil." The disappearance of realtor and mother Crystal McDowell just as Hurricane Harvey hits Houston. January 20.
"Obstacles to Justice." A 20-year-old father Joseph Douglas is shot execution-style in Texas. February 10.
"A Devil Always Lies." Samantha Norton, a 28-year-old mother, vanishes without a trace in Wise County, Texas. March 10.

Killer Confessions is produced for Investigation Discovery by Bungalow Media + Entertainment and See it Now Studios. Executive producers are Bob Friedman, Alexis Robie, Claire St. Amant, Ron Simon, Terry Wrong, and Susan Zirinsky.

celebrities television

Movie Review

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson face pre-marriage jitters in The Drama

Photo courtesy of A24

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in The Drama.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya will be seen together a lot at the movies in 2026, with mega-films like The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three coming out later in the year. But fans can get a much more intimate look at the two stars in a film that offers a unique take on relationship struggles, The Drama.

Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) are a New York couple who are engaged to be married. After a quick-but-effective montage of their courtship, the story joins them as they are just days away from their wedding. As they get all the details like music, flowers, and food finalized, a visit to the caterer with married friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie) proves fateful.

A few too many drinks leads to each member of the group deciding to divulge the worst thing they’ve ever done. While each story is slightly shocking, Emma’s takes the cake, so much so that Charlie starts to question their relationship. As they get closer to the wedding date, Charlie finds it increasingly difficult to get beyond Emma’s revelation, with each real or imagined conversation threatening to derail their previously tight bond.

Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, the film is provocative, funny, and cringey as it tries to get to the center of human dynamics. Charlie, Rachel, and Mike have starkly different reactions to Emma’s story, and the way those play out over the course of the film provides, well, the drama. The harder Charlie tries to justify Emma’s past, the more his underlying feelings start to eat at him, causing friction not just between him and Emma, but in other parts of his life, as well.

Strangely, especially for a character played by Zendaya, Emma recedes more than expected. Her explanations for her previous actions are timid at best, and she mostly seems to be waiting for Charlie to forgive her instead of questioning why she needs forgiveness. Borgli favors the male side of the equation, and in so doing he doesn’t dig as deep into the root of the issue as he could have.

Still, the downward spiral at the center of the story has a propulsive nature to it, and each successive step proves to be both hard to watch and impossible to turn away from. It also helps that Borgli manages the tone well, keeping interactions between characters relatively light so that the film doesn’t turn into one like Marriage Story.

Pattinson, who gets to use his own British accent for once, put on an interesting performance that is much better than his last two roles in Mickey 17 and Die My Love. He has good chemistry with Zendaya, who manages to shine despite being laden with a role that doesn’t play entirely to her strengths. Haim and Athie do good work in small roles, while Hailey Grace and Hannah Gross make an impact in brief appearances.

The situation in which Emma and Charlie find themselves in The Drama is not one to be wished on anyone, but it’s presented well by Borgli, keeping tensions high for the bulk of the film. Despite the two main characters not given completely equal footing, the story finds a way to get to a satisfactory ending.

---

The Drama opens in theaters on April 3.

movies film