The Staircase (2022)

“The Staircase” is exceptionally smart television, an examination of truth, guilt and self-delusion that crackles with ideas and great performances.

Watching this show not only makes the case for revisiting the documentary too; it demands a tandem viewing, with each successfully complementing the other in its existence.

In its painterly flourishes, and its willingness to poke at the moroseness of true crime stories from time to time, The Staircase proves gripping television.

This story really has it all, and Campos clearly gets all of it. His obsession with the case pays off as he turns it into high drama, and high art.

There’s a richness to The Staircase that’s partly due to Michael’s multifaceted and winding odyssey—before and after trial—and partly the result of Campos’ expert approach, which incorporates virtually every important aspect of this story, evokes dread, ambiguity and topsy-turviness via meticulous long-take tracking shots, and sharply delineates every one of its numerous principals and their hopelessly fraught dynamics.

A beautifully done miniseries, and revelatory, too, as it expands the North Carolina case into something more philosophically provocative than its sensationalistic origins might have suggested.

This series is more concerned with asking questions than with making statements. It follows the evidence where it leads: What’s refreshing is that that evidence is less about guilt or innocence in a case on which the court has ruled, but about the strangeness and unknowability of the human heart.

Colin Firth burns with intensity in this nail-biting true-crime series that keeps you guessing if a bisexual novelist, politician, former marine and frequent liar pushed his wife (Toni Collette) to her death down the family staircase or whether she fell by accident.

Exceptionally good. Amid a river of true-crime dramatizations featuring big names side-eyeing their co-stars while contemplating murder, or their characters’ tragically misunderstood innocence, this one knows what it’s doing. It sets a tone, gets everybody in the same movie and focuses on character interaction in long, fluid takes, glance by glance, bizarre development by development.

Through this churn of grief-stricken family turmoil and legal strategizing, The Staircase has begun a treacherous ascent toward saying something truly meaningful. It’s messy and massive in both scope and ambition. But whether that effort will be enough to justify retrying this case remains to be seen.

Campos trusts his cast to find the right notes, while coordinating the timelines so the black comic bits never overwhelm the story’s urgent drama. Together, these human elements work to reinforce the series’ examination of subjectivity.

You will not come away from “The Staircase” convinced of Peterson’s innocence or guilt. The show makes tantalizing equivalences between the filmmaking process and the justice system as storytelling vehicles, without ever tipping into art-house arrogance.

It’s hard to imagine gleaning something new from a subject that’s already been explored via multiple hours of television. But The Staircase, which casts Colin Firth in the role of Michael and Toni Collette as Kathleen, defies expectations, adding new perspective and dimension to a well-known story while creating an experience that differs from the docuseries.

As Michael Peterson, Colin Firth manages to make us think he’s guilty as hell one minute, and possibly innocent the next. Toni Collette is touching as Kathleen. And while many a series has caused eyes to glaze over when the plot shifts to younger characters, the dynamics among grown children in this extended family are consistently absorbing.

All in all, a staircase well worth climbing.

As a whole, The Staircase is a worthwhile watch, mainly for the performances by Firth, Posey and Collette. But you might get more satisfying information about the Peterson case by watching the documentary or docuseries.

The series takes its time to uncover the problems going on beneath the surface of this family. Kathleen is played in flashback by Toni Collette, giving us a chance to understand the victim in a way that the documentary could never deliver.

While the episodes occasionally grind too slowly, Colin Firth's riveting work as the hard-to-read suspect elevates this HBO Max limited series several steps above standard true-crime fare.

The Staircase, especially in the reenactment scenes I mentioned, is not easy viewing. But it steadily builds into something vital, a calmly observational dissection of known and unknown things.

With additional context comes an even greater sense that no secondhand account of what happened on that staircase—whether generated by the prosecution, the defense, or Lestrade—will ever approach the objective truth. The linchpin of this delicate portrayal is Colin Firth’s performance as Michael. ... Although the multiple graphic set pieces that dramatize various theories of how Kathleen died struck me as excessively invasive, for the most part, the flashbacks work to restore her personhood.

Firth feels a bit too handsome and wholesome to play a potential murderer at first, but he effectively imbues Michael with sleaze. He’s fascinating to watch it only because it’s such a departure for him.

This is a well-written drama with clearly defined characters, but it still took me a couple of episodes to figure out everyone’s place on the complicated family tree. ... Toni Collette gives Kathleen a voice through the flashback sequences, and the young actors playing their children are all excellent. “The Staircase” keeps us in its grips throughout.

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.

So far, The Staircase is a good series about a great documentary, but it has the potential to become very good in the home stretch.

In the end, its pleasures are rather cerebral, less a whodunit than a story about telling stories — and the omissions in hopeful service of a greater truth.

Campos brings visual panache to the project – interspersing, for example, scenes of a fundraiser for Peterson’s abortive mayoral campaign with a walkthrough of the crime scene by a squad of forensic experts – but can never quite surmount the old aphorism that truth is stranger than fiction.

It's a complicated case, one that probably deserved its eight episodes to lay out properly, but Mr. Campos hardly makes economical use of his time. The frequent flashings back and forth in time are confusing, the relationships between Peterson family members are never sufficiently explained. ... Mr. Firth and Ms. Collette, as the loving couple who may have hated each other, are playing complex characters with Emmy-worthy aplomb. ... But they find themselves in the middle of a messy business.