The Staircase still leaves us gripped on whodunit
If you’re a Netflix subscriber and a fan of true-crime documentaries, you may well have watched The Staircase (Sky Atlantic). It is the story of American writer Michael Peterson, who dialled 911 one night to report that his wife had fallen down the stairs at their North Carolina home. The sight that greeted police on their arrival suggested otherwise: the scene was awash with blood, and Kathleen Peterson lay dead with shocking head injuries consistent with attack using a blunt object.
That lengthy documentary series, made by two French film-makers and picked up by Netflix several years later, has now been turned into a drama starring Colin Firth as Peterson. It covers everything, which means that this dramatised version of The Staircase shows Peterson being followed around by the crew making the documentary version of The Staircase. It’s not straightforward; but then, neither is Michael Peterson.
Firth doesn’t quite capture the unreadability of the real-life Peterson, and doesn’t disappear into the role: we’re always aware that we’re watching Colin Firth, famous actor. But he does convey something of Peterson’s strangeness, his blase reactions as fresh revelations start piling up (he was having gay liaisons; a woman he had been close to many years earlier was also found dead at the foot of the stairs). He comes across as untrustworthy, and it’s testament to Firth’s acting that he doesn’t overdo this in the manner of a shifty villain in a second-rate thriller. One character, asked if he thinks Peterson killed his wife, replies: “I really don’t know. Sometimes I’m convinced he’s lying. But even when I know he’s telling the truth, it can sound like a lie.”
But the drama is compelling for the same reason the documentary was compelling: did Peterson do it? Or did Kathleen really die in a freak accident? Early on, we see a re-enactment of the scenario put forward by the defence experts: Kathleen tripping on a stair, hitting her head on the wall, briefly coming back to consciousness and hitting her head again, spreading blood around as she did so. It looks unlikely yet plausible. But then other evidence stacks up against Peterson. The defence team, led by charismatic lawyer David Rudolf (Michael Stuhlbarg) has its work cut out.
The series takes its time to uncover the problems going on beneath the surface of this family. Kathleen is played in flashback by Toni Collette, giving us a chance to understand the victim in a way that the documentary could never deliver.
The footballer Paul Merson has never, in his 54 years, been for a walk in the countryside. At one stage – during the time he spent playing for Middlesbrough – Merson actually lived in the countryside. But he didn’t notice it, let alone enjoy the fresh air. Mind you, he was living with Paul Gascoigne at the time. “We played football, trained, went home, got drunk – the only time we ever walked was probably to the pub,” Merson said. Paul Merson: A Walk Through My Life (BBC Two) changed that. It was an extended version of last year’s meditative BBC Four series Winter Walks, which sent household names into the great outdoors and asked them to document their journey by talking to a camera on the end of a selfie stick.
Walking across the North Yorkshire Moors, Merson marvelled at the peace and quiet and the fact that people had time to stop and chat. Not that they always said the most tactful thing. Merson bumped into a couple who recognised him, but weren’t aware that he is a recovering alcoholic. They directed him to a pub. “I walk past pubs now, I don’t walk into pubs any more,” Merson explained.
The programme was more therapy session than nature show. Merson talked candidly and sometimes tearfully about his addictions to alcohol and gambling. There was a lot of self-analysis, and evidence that he is still plagued by anxiety: about being an older father, or feeling that he has taken his wife for granted. But Merson also did his best to sound optimistic. He was walking before 8am; in his old life, he noted ruefully, he’d just have been getting in from an all-nighter. Now, he listened to the birdsong and loved it; in the bad old days he “wanted to throw a brick at the tree, to be honest, just to make them fly away”.
Perhaps because it was stretched to an hour, the programme felt more studied than Winter Walks. Did a bagpiper just happen to be practising in his garden at the moment Merson walked through the village? But it was good to see Merson appreciating life, after many dark days. “Thank God,” he said, “I’m still here and I can enjoy this.”
The Staircase ★★★★
Paul Merson: A Walk Through My Life ★★★