If you’re one of the countless people obsessed with Netflix’s Making a Murderer, go ahead and make plans to dedicate ten hours or so of your life to SundanceTV’s re-broadcasting of The Staircase that begins on Friday, January 15, via the network’s website and mobile app. Just trust me on this. The Peabody Award-winning docu-series is as riveting as — if not more than — Making a Murderer, and has been cited by the Making a Murderer filmmakers as a major source of inspiration.
Some background: Originally aired by Sundance in 2004, The Staircase follows the legal saga of Michael Peterson, a Durham, North Carolina-based writer whose wife, Kathleen, died mysteriously in 2001. (She appeared to have fallen or been pushed down a flight of stairs in the couple’s home; thus the name, The Staircase.) Local prosecutors — among them the notorious Mike Nifong of the Duke lacrosse team rape case infamy — charged Michael Peterson for her murder. French filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade was provided extraordinary behind-the-scenes access throughout the months that followed Kathleen’s death, the result being the eight-part docu-series.
(Personal note: I watched this series when it originally aired and felt for years like the only person who saw it. None of my friends at the time seemed to have seen it, and no one that I knew of was writing about it on the Internet. And, of course, this was before social media became a thing. I only knew about The Staircase because of a New York Times review of the series that I’d read prior to it airing. It was a mild form of torture to not have other people to talk to about this show. Imagine watching Making a Murderer and not having any outlets available to feed your post-viewing obsession.)
Here’s a trailer for the series from its original airing back in 2004:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-W-S6kQ1mc
SundanceTV is adding two additional chapters that focus on what happened in the years since The Staircase‘s initial broadcast. And boy oh boy have there been some interesting developments. Most notably, SPOILER ALERT, that…
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An owl — a freakin’ owl — may have done it! If you’ve already watched the series, watching it again with this knowledge in mind sheds a lot of light on things. It all kind of makes sense! Just google “owl attacks” when you have a second. They’re actually quite common, and they almost always go for the head. So, yeah, if you’ve already seen The Staircase, watch it again, and if you haven’t seen it, what the hell are you waiting for? Watch it, dangit.
