The HBO Max miniseries The Staircase is based on the English-language French documentary of the same name, which is available on Netflix. While the HBO Max miniseries is a typical HBO drama, the story behind The Staircase is more interesting than the HBO Max series. If HBO Max’s house style is your thing then you will enjoy this retelling of Michael Peterson’s story. Otherwise, you will find the series clunky and not that different from The Undoing.
The best part of HBO Max’s The Staircase is Colin Firth’s role as Michael Peterson. Firth, who is always charming, succeeds in convincing you for two episodes that there is no way Michael would kill his beloved wife Kathleen (played by Toni Collette). However, events take a turn in the third episode where you begin to dislike Michael because he lied to everyone about minor – yet easily fact checkable – things like receiving a Purple Heart. This is the point when you realize that the real Michael Peterson’s isn’t likable and that his stepchildren’s living parents aren’t wrong for waiting to remove them from the house where their mother died horrifically.
Unfortunately, all character’s not named Michael Peterson are one-dimensional and exist solely to provide evidence that Michael is a loving, faithful family man, despite his dalliances with men. To be clear, Michael claimed his wife knew about his about his bisexuality and allowed him to have sexual relationships with men, so, even though the scenario looks bad, it is possible that Kathleen was fine with the arrangement.
Since this series is based on a true story from 2001 that ended with a technical guilty plea, there is no need to worry about spoilers. All the facts are part of the public record. We know that at the end of this 8-episode miniseries, Michael Peterson is going to plead guilty based on the damning evidence of the district attorney’s office as he asserts his innocence. Michael is also going to develop a relationship with the editor of The Staircase documentary, which will destroy any notion of impartiality the documentarians may have had. This fact is part of the plot in the HBO miniseries.
While the murder of Kathleen Peterson is officially solved, there are a lot of questions. All versions of the story leaves the viewer with enough reasonable doubt that a definitive verdict will never be possible. If you’re interested in Michael Peterson’s side of the story, Netflix currently has the documentary. If you find the story fascinating but don’t want to sit through almost 13 hours of a highly biased documentary or 6 hours of a slow fictionalization, go read the Wikipedia article. It has enough lurid details to satisfy true crime fans.
The Staircase streams Thursdays on HBO MAX.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TftAFQflBy8
