@joelkeller Published Feb. 19, 2026, 7:30 p.m. ET More On: Docuseries Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Being Gordon Ramsay’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About The Celebrity Chef’s Family Life And The Scramble To Get An Ambitious Project To The Finish Line The Top 10 Shows On Netflix That Are Most Popular Right Now Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model’ on Netflix, A Retrospective Docuseries That Celebrates—And Questions—The Hit Reality Show Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Neighbors’ On HBO, An A24-Produced Docuseries About Insane Neighbor Disputes Across The U.S. Wild Boys: Strangers In Town is a two-part docuseries about how, in 2003, two young men came out of the wilderness around the town of Vernon, British Columbia, saying their names were Tom and Will Green and that they were raised off-the-grid by their parents.
Opening Shot: The camera pushes in on some windows in the woods. Then we hear someone talking about Brendan Fraser’s film Encino Man.
The Gist: When 23-year-old Tom and 16-year old Will came out of the woods, Will was emaciated, and the boys were seeking shelter and food. Tami Ryder, who is interviewed for the docuseries along with Tom, Will, law enforcement officials and journalists, took them in. They got to know her family and she found a hostel where they could stay.
Local newspapers promoted their story, calling them the “Bush Boys”, and reporters from TV stations based in B.C. came to the town to report on it. During this entire time, though, the boys would not appear on camera. And when Henry Proce, an RCMP officer assigned to the case, questioned them about their claimed upbringing, Tom was especially evasive.
It was after a Toronto-based CBC film crew came to Vernon and, after months of negotiation, got the boys on camera and Tom to sit down for an interview, did the truth come out. The boys were from California, were named Kyle and Roen Horn, and they had run away from home a year earlier.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Wild Boys: Strangers In Town, directed by Jeremiah Hammerling and Rita Baghdadi, is like an extended episode of Worst Roommate Ever.
Our Take: Let’s get this out of the way: We’re not sure why Wild Boys: Strangers In Town, with a total runtime of about 90 minutes, was split into two parts instead of being presented as a single documentary. Yes, there’s a natural breaking point when the boys’ deception is revealed, but the series would have worked equally well as a single entity instead of a two-episode series.
That being said, the second half of this story might actually be crazier than the first. The reason why the Kyle and Roen Horn ran away from their family isn’t because of anything having to do with their parents, who are also interviewed for the show. It has to do with Roen and his unorthodox “Fruitarian” diet, and the fact that child protective services was about to involuntarily institutionalize him because of it. Kyle chose to protect his younger brother and the two of them went to Vernon together; heck, Kyle even told his parents, Rodger and Diane, that he was going to Canada, but just didn’t tell them he had his brother with him.
In fact, the longer the directors talked to every member of the Horn family, the weirder things get. The second episode shows the boys in both 2016 and 2020, with Roen physically healthier but having mental health struggles, but no one in their family seems to address any of that with any depth.
It turns out that the Horns, both the brothers and the parents, are flat-earth types, skeptical of vaccines or anything they’re told by mainstream media. For Roen’s part, he got himself involved in the “live forever” movement and his fruitarian diet after a bike accident during his childhood led to his getting his spleen removed. It got so extreme that he developed a real eating disorder. But it’s not like he or Kyle are part of mainstream society even now. It would have been interesting to see more about how their beliefs led them to the point where they decided to hide in the British Columbian wilderness.
Still, the story is pretty compelling, and we were fascinated with the portion where the “Green” boys claimed they grew up in the wilderness and the the community in Vernon rallied around them. The extensive documentary and news footage from the local media and the CBC brought filled in a lot of the blanks that otherwise would have been taken up by reenactments (though there was still a fair amount of those).
Performance Worth Watching: We felt for Tami Ryder, who so generously took the boys into her family’s life and helped them out, only to find out that not only did the boys lie about everything, they didn’t even seem to feel that bad about doing so.
Parting Shot: People discuss what happened after the CBC story about the boys ran, when Diane got in touch with the CBC producers, saying she recognized her sons on the show.
Most Pilot-y Line: Some of the reenactments were annoying, especially ones where the the Horn boys — now middle-aged men — played themselves.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Like we said, the story behind Wild Boys: Strangers In Town is pretty compelling, even if you have much less sympathy for those “wild boys” at the end of the docuseries than you had at the beginning.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
