In November 2001, Kathleen Peterson was found lifeless and surrounded by blood at the bottom of the stairs of her house by emergency services. Michael Peterson, her husband, was accused of murder in a trial that lasted for a period of three months. 

Did Michael Peterson murder Kathleen? The HBO Max miniseries The Staircase has been the latest to explore this intriguing real case. The first one was a documentary series with the same name, which followed in 2003 the real trial and its preparation by the defense and prosecution were followed by a documentary team led by French filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade.

The result was eight episodes (originally aired in 2004 on Canal+ France), that make up a docuseries that is considered the precursor of true crime in serialized format that became a global phenomenon a decade later.

An exciting deconstruction of true crime

The Max series, written and directed by Antonio Campos (The Sinner) and Magie Cohn (American Crime Story), is based on that documentary and not only reconstructs the mysterious real case, but also introduces the documentary team that followed it, thus making an exciting exercise of metafiction that deconstructs the genres of documentary and true crime to show their seams. 

That is one of the most fascinating aspects of the fictional series: the importance it gives to the point of view in narrative construction and how it has used that concept to deconstruct the true crime genre. 

"A trial is two parties competing to tell the best story", says a character in the fourth episode, summarizing the series' thesis while pointing out the flaws of the judicial system. 

Three timelines

The story starring Colin Firth as the novelist convicted of his wife's murder, played in fiction by Toni Collette, works for both those who have seen the original documentary and know the case and those who don't.

Following three timelines, The Staircase shows us the life of the Petersons before Kathleen's death, what immediately followed (up to the 2003 trial) and a final one in 2017.

In addition to an interesting meta reading, the key to this addictive true crime lies in the peculiarities of the story around which all the others are built: the Peterson family, especially the inscrutable Michael Peterson, portrayed magnetically by Firth.

*This article has been automatically translated using artificial intelligence