I really didn’t want to watch Tiger King, and only agreed to because I had FOMO and it was my husband’s turn to choose. If it were up to me, we’d have gone for another ep of This Country, and inhaled a Cadbury’s Daim bar while bathing in its loving, delicate mix of straight LOLS and thorny ennui. But Tiger King it was, viewed with a cushion on my lap, in case I needed to use it as an eye shield.

If you’re one of the few people in the country who haven’t caught this hit Netflix doc yet, let me fill you in. It’s actually two docs: one is basically Blackfish for tigers, exposing the disturbing industry of private big cat ownership in the US. But it becomes something else when the star of the series, the deeply odd zoo-owner Joe Exotic, is charged with murder. So, a kind of redneck Serial, five years in the making, with a cast of ghouls who like big talk, big guns, and big cats, but aren’t equipped to deal with any of those things. And then there are the background extras – the glorious, restless animals who pace and snap in front of gawping tourists, and the cute-but-could-flay-you cubs manhandled for selfies. I needed that cushion, and longed for This Country’s gentle, mundane GVs of moggies and pigeons.

Joe’s nemesis, Carole Baskin, runs Big Cat Rescue, and initially she appears as a beacon in the black. She likes wearing leopard print, even decorated her house in it, so she must really love tigers, right? Passionate about the cause, this is the ‘one thing’ she can do to change the world - and it’s working, since Joe hates her guts, waving snakes on his reality TV show while making unveiled threats in her direction. Committed lobbyist and saviour, Carole looks like the hero of this saga, until you realise her ‘sanctuary’ seems remarkably similar Joe’s caged compound with its hordes of visitors. Oh, and she might have killed her husband too – Joe claims she minced the body and fed it to her rescued tigers. But I guess he ruined any moral high ground he might have had, when he tried to have Carole killed in a murder-for-hire plot.

It’s juicy as hell, but hellish – the tiger king and queen mauling each other until they both bleed out. Watching it, you feel a sense of despair, as they all seem as bad as each other, and there are no proper grownups to explain what should be happening here. My non-expert take was that someone should let all the cats out to run amok until none of us are left, and the world can be reclaimed by the animals, like those goats taking over Llandudno.

These two shows - one a shocking polemic and one an equally disturbing murder mystery – are rats in a sack, so which – if either - emerges victorious? Perhaps making a series this electrifying is a canny way of drawing viewers in to a wider debate about animal welfare, but there’s the danger the message could get lost in the mire of Joe and Carole’s bitter feud. We shouldn’t forget what’s at the dark heart of this - the real stars of the show: poor beasts, paraded and prodded for public entertainment when they should be roaming free on a savanna.

I don’t want to watch any more of Tiger King, as it’s such uncomfortable viewing, but now we’re locked in, because my husband wants to, and he controls the Daim bar supply. So I’m trapped, like Joe is trapped in jail, like Kerry and Kurtan are trapped in This Country, like we’re all trapped in this weird, frightening Corona bubble, goggling at each other on Zoom. It’s our taste of what’s being done to the tigers.

• Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, Netflix, 7 episodes