The Staircase

:

Season 1
User Score
7.2

Generally favorable reviews- based on 20 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 20
  3. Negative: 3 out of 20
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User Reviews

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  1. darkapaw
    Jun 15, 2018
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. MOST UNLIKEABLE CENTRAL CHARACTER EVER
    I largely am in full agreement with Amy Glynn from Paste Magazine who sees Mike Peterson as a thoroughly unattractive egotist who simply loses any pity of the so called State Bureaucracy victim.
    To me he is one of the ugliest and loathsome characters since Miss Haversham by Dickens.
    Why so unlikeable?
    1. Social class is always obnoxious when the super Rich try to buy justice with High class legals
    2.. What normal person invites cameras into every minute of their post traumatic experience?? Where is the genuine remorse? Why does Kathleen disappear to a minor side character or a fictitious soul partner who lived in delirious happiness?
    3. Mike's well kept secret life with homosexual affairs on the side and in cyberspace. His outright LIE in court in the first trial that Kathleen knew of these liaisons. It is only at the last minutes of episode 13 that Mike admits he never shared this but that Kathleen knew it intuitively. What BS!
    4. If Mike lies about this key issue what else has he locked in the vault about that night of gross death.
    I now have a pathological fear of all stairwells. No satisfactory explanation is made of the accident/ murder by either side. Deep inside you know the truth has never been told by Mike Peterson.
    5. Mike as a famous writer and journalist is strangely unintelligible and vague when he enters deep soliloquies. That weird little laugh is totally irritating. His attempt at being Hamlet and digging into his multiple personalities fails miserably. He seems illiterate at so many levels.
    6. His closing conclusion by plagiarising Will's R and J " we are all punish ED!!" Is pathetic because he has been playing a self conscious role all 13 hours long... and we as the audience have been punish ED having to endure his narcissistic self important pontificating about Corruption In The Legal System.
    7. As a protagonist Mike Peterson is unbelievable. I am with the Jury. He is guilty of murdering his audience with his endless mirror gazing of this self made home movie.    … Expand
  2. BrineWR71
    Jul 18, 2018
    2
    I don't understand the reviews I'm seeing. While the subject matter is interesting and I want to know more, IT'S SO BORING!! Do we really need to see 15 minutes of his defense team discussing all the minutiae of the case? I feel like I'm reliving EVERY SECOND of this man's life from the moment he was accused until the final verdict! UGH! EDIT MUCH? Apparently not!

    I keep starting    I don't understand the reviews I'm seeing. While the subject matter is interesting and I want to know more, IT'S SO BORING!! Do we really need to see 15 minutes of his defense team discussing all the minutiae of the case? I feel like I'm reliving EVERY SECOND of this man's life from the moment he was accused until the final verdict! UGH! EDIT MUCH? Apparently not!

    I keep starting an episode and stopping it because it's EXCRUCIATING waiting for them to get to the POINT! It's like hearing my grandma tell me a 45 minute story about her 45 minute trip to the grocery store.

    I'm trying my best to get through this, but WOW! C'mon Netflix, you can do better.    … Expand
  3. HRHSBB
    Jul 26, 2018
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Justice was not served... The District Attorney's Office is corrupt, the first district attorney I can't belive has ever been elected to a Judge JOKE!!! He knew the expert's they used were liars, Peterson talks very early in series about how he wrote about the DA being incompetent, this was the DA's revenge to put Peterson behind bars no matter what it required, lieing, cheating or what ever was necessary for a guilty verdict, the whole popker as the murder weapon is a complete joke.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

2
#2 Best TV Season of 2004
8
#8 Most Discussed TV Season of 2004
7
#7 Most Shared TV Season of 2004

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
95

Universal acclaim - based on 9 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 9
  3. Negative: 0 out of 9
  1. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Maureen Ryan
    Apr 20, 2018
    100
    The documentary keeps adding layers of complexity to the tale until one is entirely hooked by its ambiguities and twists and turns -- and soon, as with a great novel, one can't wait to see what happens next.
  2. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not Credited)
    Apr 20, 2018
    100
    The eight-part feature, which aired on the Sundance Channel in 2005, is absolutely gripping and illustrates just how powerful documentary filmmaking can be.
    Read full review
  3. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: Tony Dokoupil
    Apr 20, 2018
    90
    The Staircase is the scariest portrait of criminal justice since the nonfiction film that helped launch the modern innocence movement, Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line. It’s scarier, in fact, because The Staircase isn’t based on re-creations but on original footage, a front-row view of legal truth as it’s feathered into existence, manufactured from guesses and conjecture, and sold to a jury as more or less believable fiction.
    Read full review
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