If you didn’t know it was true, you wouldn’t believe it. That’s the abiding sense left by the latest miniseries from HBO Max (shown here on Sky Atlantic), The Staircase. The eight-part drama tells the story of Michael Peterson, whose second wife, Kathleen, died in December 2001. He claimed he found her at the foot of the stairs she had fallen down while drunk and cradled her as he called the emergency services and she breathed her last. The police in Durham, North Carolina, confronted with a body whose head “looked like it exploded” and which seemed to have breathed its last quite some time before the call, reckoned he bludgeoned her to death. Peterson was arrested for first degree murder. The subsequent investigation revealed a millefeuille of layers to the man, the family and the story.
If this all sounds familiar, it may be because it has already been the subject of another eight-part miniseries: the 2004 Peabody award-winning documentary of the same name by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. I’m not sure how much anybody who has seen that meticulous piece of work, let alone the five follow-up episodes that appeared in 2013 and 2018, needs what is effectively a dramatisation of all the ground covered there. But for those who haven’t, the latter is undoubtedly a hugely compelling who/if/how/whydunnit. For those who have, think of it as a more sophisticated, prestige version of 1984’s Fatal Vision instead of a gutted Gallic thinkpiece and see how you get on.
