The following stories are not based on real events. In fact, they're completely made up — even thought they're meant to seem real.
No, Queen Elizabeths staff never hid a copy of the Sunday Times from her because of a front-page headline saying: "Queen Should Abdicate in Favour of Prince of Wales — Half of British Public Agrees."
No, former Los Angeles Lakers head coach Jerry West didn't fly into fits of rage so violent that he tossed his Most Valuable Player trophy through a window in his office.
And no, the two police officers who unwittingly missed an opportunity to arrest Jeffrey Dahmer before he could kill again were not given honors as officers of the year by the Milwaukee Police Department.
But the millions of people who watched the historical dramas "The Crown" and "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" on Netflix and HBO's "Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty" were left to separate fact from fiction on their own.
These series are hardly outliers in the flourishing genre of based-on-a-true-story entertainment. As the number of shows and movies that depict real events has grown in recent years, so, too, have the liberties that screenwriters are taking with the facts.
In many instances, these are not mere embellishments for dramatic flair but major fabrications. Shows like "The Crown" have been forced to belatedly add disclaimers stating that what people are watching is in fact a dramatized version of real events.
Sometimes disclaimers are enough to protect a studio from legal liability. The First Amendment offers broad protections for expressive works like film and television productions.