The Oklahoman zookeeper is a deliberately larger-than-life figure who's extremely self-aware about the character he's building.

He is, as he says in a commercial for his failed 2016 presidential campaign (yes), "gay...broke as hell...[and has] a judgment against me from some bitch down in Florida."

Over seven episodes, Netflix's Tiger King digs into all the above, most notably his relationship with the "bitch" in question: Carol Baskin, the animal activist owner of Big Cat Rescue and Joe Exotic's longtime object of disdain.

Though the story begins with their respective love for their animals, Tiger King quickly devolves into the complex and downright bizarre tale of the rivalry between Joe Exotic and Baskin, the outsize characters of the big cat collecting world, and the dangerous cults of personality that fuel all of the above.

Oh, and did I mention that Joe Exotic was arrested last year for attempted murder-for-hire? Because yes, yes he was.

These are the kinds of "wait, what?!" twists that await you in Tiger King, which has so much material it barely knows what to do with it all.

As the series progresses, you can practically feel the filmmakers' astonishment at all the strange stories they're uncovering every time Joe Exotic or one of his equally wild zookeeping peers opens their mouth.

Every episode - whether about Joe Exotic's political aspirations or the suspicions that Baskin fed a husband to her tigers (really!) - has more than enough material to fuel its own entire miniseries.

By and large, Tiger King depends on Joe Exotic's own entertaining philosophy: come for the big animals, stay for the personalities wrangling them.

For those who love Netflix's particular flavor of true crime and docuseries, which depend heavily on wild characters and addictive pacing in order to keep a couch-bound audience entertained, Tiger King will undoubtedly scratch a particular itch.