I watched this on dvd years ago and again with the new episodes about a year ago, still excellent. Recommended for true crime fans. Ahead of its time when it debuted on French (and then British and U.S.) TV in 2004-2005, French director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s sprawling whodunit and legal thriller began as an eight-episode endeavor. Twice, however, it’s been revived: in 2013 with an additional two parts, and now via three new installments courtesy of Netflix. At 13 total chapters (all of them premiering on the streaming service on June 8), it’s a binge-watcher’s dream come true: an absorbing epic that echoes its own subject matter—at first intriguing, then suspenseful and infuriating, and finally wearying and depressing, given what it has to say about the possibility of attaining justice and truth. Netflix’s ‘The Staircase’ Is the True-Crime Epic of the Summer
Added to my Watchlist tonight, plus I have 6 Sidney Lumet films on my Amazon Watchlist, plus 5 more seasons of Coach on DVD, plus 4 more films on Blu ray, and the new 22-hour George Carlin box just shipped.
The 13 episodes were very well done. I hadn't heard about this case before, so I didn't know the verdict.
I just finished this Netflix version — I kept waiting for the owls.... where are the owls??? His lawyer mentioned a “raptor” once very briefly. Did the owl theory get shot down since I last saw this on ID?
3 episodes in and I love it!! This is my kind of thing. Making a Murderer & The Keepers are both 10/10 for me so knew that I would love it!!
I first saw The Staircase a couple years back and loved it. Looking forward to the new episodes. I would also recommend an earlier doc. in the same vein by Lestrade called Murder on a Sunday Morning.
I know a little about this case -- in fact, years ago IIRC, some documentary channel had free streaming of Episode 1 (so that is all I watched). And I was thoroughly entertained by the Netflix series "The Making Of A Murderer." However that may be, I have have watched many a Dateline and 48 Hours murder mystery, and many a time, the case is fairly straight forward, but to add drama to the broacast, the story is deconstructed and the significance of events and evidence is distorted by the presentation and story telling. The end result is that a simple murder mystery that would take fifteen minutes to tell is now a two-hour Dateline special, with a gazillion commercials thrown in for revenue sources. So there often really isn't a mystery at all, and the only ones getting murdered are the audience.
Watching his family in court, there’s an enormous elephant, with a striking, fluted trunk, in the room. Given the preponderance of lawyers in the case, I won’t say what it is but I was expecting it to become relevant, to events in Germany if nothing else. Anyone with me?
None of the evidence related to the German case shoukd have been allowed. Irrelevant and prejudicial.
Spoiler That and the prejudicial bi-sexual stuff. A motive for murder has nothing to do with a skeleton in the closet such as that. Now, if there was a "love triangle", then that's another matter. Absolutely no evidence of that. Spoiler This man served 8 years in prison, several years of home arrest, and lost nearly every dime to his name. Miscarriage of justice. Shameful, really.
A technical question: a lot of this footage from 2002 looks to be in perfect HD. Does anyone know if HD was available at that time or did the producers spend some money on upgrading the footage quality so that it would be appropriate viewing on Netflix?
When I first watched it, I thought that the case against Peterson was pretty weak, and couldn't believe that they would convict him. However, there are things that were left out, including the fact that he was broke, and that he had deleted a bunch of stuff on the computer that were about money issues they were having. You mean the fact that one of the adopted daughters looks like a Peterson? I thought the same thing about halfway through watching it.
That’s it. Specifically, the resemblance between that particular daughter and Peterson’s sons. Even if entirely coincidental, it was so striking that I don’t see how the documentary makers couldn’t acknowledge it. Obviously, none of this makes Peterson guilty and, based on the evidence in the programme, if I’d been a juror, there’s no way I’d have convicted.
To come across this after just completing 13 hours of binge watching the entire series is both satisfying and also frustrating.
I watched the original 8 episodes years and years ago. They were shot by the French crew, presumably first for French/European TV, and then aired on the Sundance Channel if I recall (and released on DVD in the US under the Sundance banner in 2005). My recollection is that that original 8-episode run on DVD was presented in non-anamorphic, letterboxed widescreen. I don't believe any of those first eight episodes were shot in HD, and I would disagree that the current versions of those eight episodes on Netflix look like "perfect HD." They look quite good, but I'm guessing the French crew may have shot in SD and PAL or something like that, so the source may have been better than NTSC SD footage, but not HD. That would explain why those first eight episodes on Netflix are what I would characterize as looking "a little better than SD, but not HD either." This is perhaps due to possibly a PAL source (or something better than NTSC) and Netflix prepping/upscaling the stuff. On the other hand, outside of archival footage, the new footage in the two new runs of episodes spanning Episode 9 to 13 does appear to be true HD and the stuff obviously looks much better.
I’m amused by “new” viewers just coming into “The Staircase.” Not the ones who are fascinated by it, but the small group of viewers I’m seeing who seem to find the series a slow slog. Clearly they’ve been groomed on too much of the more modern doc series; even the more glacially-paced modern “true crime” doc series with multiple parts move at a much faster pace than “The Staircase.” “The Staircase” dwells on ample amounts of courtroom footage, and often hangs on silent, pregnant pauses in interviews for a loooong time. You definitely need to have some patience. This doc more than perhaps any other shines a light on some of the very real, accurate, bizarre aspects of serious court cases/trials. You see Peterson and his lawyers joking a good amount, and both the sort of “gallows humor” as well as general joking seems often to be totally understandable as a coping mechanism, and still occasionally truly odd and bizarre (I’m sure some of us can imagine never being able to laugh or smile while on trial). I watched the original 8-episode run around a decade ago (and then watched the two circa 2011 episodes on YouTube a few years later), and I was certainly hooked on the story. But even having been hooked into the story all those years ago, rewatching this all in 2018 meant I had to “adjust” a bit to the style of editing/cutting on this series which makes even “Making a Murderer” seem frenetic in comparison. It’s funny how often each subsequent crime case miniseries is compared to “Making a Murderer”, when I recall first watching “Making a Murderer” the first thing I thought was “I wonder if people who are obsessed with this one have seen ‘The Staircase.” I think a case can be made, especially with the young Dassey in “Making a Murderer”, that a clear, obvious injustice was done. “The Staircase”, though, is frankly perhaps the most ambiguous, “I have no idea if he did it” sort of case and documentary. To be clear, while I think many, many viewers of “The Staircase” (including the filmmakers and, I’m only guessing, some of Peterson’s own family deep down) are truly torn and somewhat 50/50 on whether he “did it”, I think most viewers back then and now came away thinking what I did, which is that there arguably was more than sufficient reasonable doubt in his original trial even as presented with all of the wonky testimony, and certainly once the faulty, perjury-laden testimony (and then subsequent tainted physical evidence) is taken into account, there is no way to justifiably convict the guy regardless of whether one thinks he did it or not. But the guy is an enigma in a very different way than, say, Avery from “Making a Murderer.” Peterson is a strange, eccentric guy that, for all of the allegations that the film portrayed him too positively, did himself no favors in hedging, over-explaining some things while under-explaining others, coming across as somewhat of a know-it-all, and didn’t think it might not do him any favors to be eccentric enough to smoke an old fashioned tobacco pipe in some of the original footage (yes, I know it’s North Carolina). There are a few things I’m skeptical of as far as his telling the truth, chiefly his affairs/attempted meetings outside of his marriage. I *maybe* buy that he suspected that his wife suspected something, and I might even buy that his wife was essentially taking a bit of a “mob wife” mentality about the subject, but I don’t buy that they had a fully open, clear understanding and discussion about him being able to have these meetings/interactions. In his “final interview” in 2017 for the doc series, he even seems to contradict (arguably) past characterizations of what she knew and how much they discussed it. I’d have to go back and watch the interview again, but at one point I was starting to wonder if he was literally going back and admitting she *didn’t* know much or anything about it. But, there’s no question that, regardless of whether one’s “gut” feels he did it or not, he shouldn’t have been convicted back in 2003 (evidence then-legitimately let in for the trial I don’t believe should have, and the judge in 2017 has even acknowledged he *may* agree on some of those points, and even with the evidence as-presented, there certainly appeared to be a pretty textbook example of “reasonable doubt” in the case), and that the amount of testimony/witnesses/evidence that was debunked/proven to be inaccurate, coupled with all of that and more (physical evidence, the entire Germany part of the case) that likely would not have been allowed in a new trial, there’s certainly no longer enough evidence, outside of a videotape of the guy doing it, to get a conviction.
Attorney David Rudolf has little "commentaries" on his site for each episode of the series, and he says the following: (although the prosecution conducted DNA testing during the trial to try to prove that Michael was Margaret and/or Martha’s biological father. The tests proved he wasn’t). Chapter 3: A Striking Coincidence - David S. Rudolf
Watched the final episodes yesterday evening; this was a VERY strange case, wasn't it? I don't understand a lot of the practises; already in the old series all the evidence is weak and circumstantial, but it seemed to work to YELL VERY LOUDLY at the jury to vote Peterson to jail. In later series I found Peterson more sympathetic; in the early episodes he came over as agitated (agressive pipe-smoking) and cynical, which I can understand when after the death of your wife you meet hostility and get some extra hostility because of your sexual orientation....
Good series, just started watching last weekend. One thing that I can't get over is all the blood all over the stairs and walls...
My wife completely dove into this one over the weekend. Man, the most disheartening aspect about this whole series is the specific folks in high positions who are supposed to be devoted to "science" and "empirical data" are drawing a conclusion first, and then using science to cut a path to that conclusion. Jeez look how a very affluent defendant with a lot more resources than most is thrown around the legal system... Would even a middle-class or poor person have even stood a chance in this case with a court-appointed lawyer?
No. Durham has a long history of miscarriages of justice. The manipulative practices of the DA toward the jury in this one along with absolute malpractice by the SBI agents soiled the original verdict beyond repair. This case was all over the news locally back in the day. Even back then I remember asking how/why when it came to the SBI's forensic tests which seemed really bizarre.
Just watched and was floored. At the end I have no idea he did it. I did not see the 3-4 minute mini episode with the owl theory until we had finished the series. Once you mentally match the owl's talons to the very problematic scalp lacerations, it is very hard to get that out of your mind. Until I saw that, I was heavily leaning to guilty. Now I don't know. But the most shocking part for me was the judge admitting on camera the mistakes he made in the original trial, that was really something. Admitting the Germany stuff was outrageous. Once you present it to the jury, they have to think "they are telling us this because he did that too". Has Rudolph or Peterson commented on the owl theory?
I just finished the 13 episodes and like many others I don't know what to think. When I went to IMDB that was the first that I heard about owls. I was disappointed that the doc didn't go into more detail about his and hers backgrounds. How did he go from Viet Nam to being a newspaper columnist? Her life wasn't really discussed at all. How did they even meet? In any event, I see that a movie version with Toni Collette is currently filming. Whomever is portraying blood splatter expert Duane Devers is going to have a real chore on his hands. That guy was unbelievable!