In the world of true crime, there are only a handful of canonical texts. For books, the prototype is, perhaps, In Cold Blood. For films, Capturing the Friedmans. And for the televisual medium, it might well be Oscar-winner Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s 2004 mini-series, The Staircase, a twisting examination of those two great mazes: the American criminal justice system, and family life.
The fate that inevitably befalls any successful narrative documentary – a fictionalised remake – has now descended upon The Staircase, in the form of Antonio Campos’s eight-part HBO Max mini-series. Colin Firth leads the ensemble cast as Michael Peterson, a Vietnam War veteran and author of historical novels, who finds himself embroiled in a murder trial after his wife Kathleen (Toni Collette) is found dead at the bottom of a staircase. She fell, he claims, but a stomach-churning crime scene (it looks “like the woman’s head exploded”, according to the police) tells a different story. And, fair warning, The Staircase’s re-enactment of various hypotheses should not be watched after a heavy meal. Thus begins a protracted legal saga, with the Peterson family thrust into the limelight, indiscretions and historical tragedies rising to the surface in the process.
