Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
A new, scripted ‘Staircase’ offers an intriguing, meta twist on a true-crime classic
Some history: In 2001, in the city of Durham, N.C., Michael Peterson, a writer and sometime political candidate, either did or did not kill his wife, Kathleen, who either fell down a flight or stairs or was beaten to death at its foot. A French television crew, under the direction of Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, arrived soon after Peterson was accused of murder and produced an eight-episode docuseries detailing the trial from preparation to verdict — “The Staircase,” a Peabody Award-winning early model for the twist-and-turn truecrime documentaries and podcasts that have come to clutter the cultural landscape; subsequent episodes were added, updating the story with new developments through 2017. (The 13-episode complete set is available on Netflix.)
Still, as to guilt or innocence, things remain less than perfectly clear. For the armchair judge, it is not so much a matter of who you believe — there being improbabilities and weirdnesses in both the prosecution and defense — as who you don’t. And though you may form an opinion, you can never really know; indeed, it may be this very inconclusiveness that has kept the case alive in the public imagination. The only thing people like more than a mystery may be a mystery they can’t solve.
This history has now been converted into an HBO Max miniseries, also titled “The Staircase,” with Colin Firth as Michael and Toni Collette as Kathleen. Created by Antonio Campos (“The Devil All the Time”), who also directs several episodes, and Maggie Cohn (“American Crime Story”), it’s not the first such adaptation — a 2007 Lifetime movie, “The Staircase Murders,” preceded it, to little acclaim — but it covers miles more ground, is not without ideas and marshals the power of HBO to gather stars, budget and screen time. And is good, if at times unavoidably problematic. (Five of eight episodes have been made available for review; the original trial ends halfway through the series.)
With the Peterson case having been meticulously reported or revisited in various books, true-crime television episodes and podcasts, one may reasonably ask: What is the point? There is, of course, the purely commercial attraction of revisiting a True-Crime Classic in an era that owes it much, and the advantage of borrowing energy and interest from a sensational event That Really Happened.
There is the promise of going behind closed doors, into the unrevealed personal lives of Michael and Kathleen and their blended family of adult children — an empty promise, given that those bits are necessarily invented, but the promise that powers all docudramas. And, fair enough, there is a drama only such inventions can deliver, and it’s executed well here. It’s a pro job. But if you’re interested in the facts behind the factbased fiction, there is little new to learn. (There is one major addition/revelation, but, as they say in court, it has no bearing on the case.)
In documentary and docudrama alike, it’s not hard to grow a little weary of Peterson, with his insistence that everything in his life was finer than fine and habit of holding back potentially damaging information until someone else shoves it in his face, and then dismissing it as unimportant or merely a matter of semantics. It’s not difficult to portray a narcissist — it’s done all the time in movies and on television, and viewers know the signs — but it’s trickier to tackle a character whose personality might, in one performance, either mistakenly or accurately lead you to find him guilty. A lack of appropriate response — in one scene, De Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon) asks Michael to show more emotion as he walks the film crew through the house and the events of the fatal night — might or might not mean something. Unlike some other players here, Firth is not especially reminiscent of his real-world model; but he ekes a person out of the material, and he does keep you guessing.
The narrative jumps around in time, sometimes quickly, which among other things gives the viewer a chance to visit the Petersons before they were news and Colette the opportunity to play scenes other than as a corpse. (It does feel a little wayward at times, contributing to the occasional sense that the series might never end.) As with Michael’s doubleness, some care is taken to let us see her as conceivably the victim of a murder or an accident, as perfectly happy and less than perfectly happy, a true-crime Schrödinger’s cat.