The Staircase

The Staircase tells the case of Michael Peterson, but where can you watch the original documentary that inspired and is part of the Colin Firth-led series?

All episodes of The Staircase documentary made their way onto Netflix in 2018. Michael Balderston is a DC-based entertainment and assistant managing editor for What to Watch, who has previously written about the TV and movies with TV Technology, Awards Circuit and regional publications. The filmmakers reportedly spent hundreds of hours with Peterson. In a Vulture article, de Lestrade adds that after a few months of filming, the prosecution cut off their access. This really did happen, with a docuseries also called The Staircase first released in 2004. The Staircase stars Colin Firth as Peterson, Toni Collettte as Kathleen Peterson, as well as Sophie Turner, Michael Stuhlbarg, Rosemarie DeWitt, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Parker Posey and Juliette Binoche. The Staircase 2004 documentary is currently available to stream on Netflix in both the US and the UK.

Directed by Antonio Campos, HBO Max Original Series "The Staircase" is a fictional presentation of the infamous Michael Peterson trial.

At this point, Michael’s innocence is really difficult to believe, as the most convincing explanation is that he had first killed Liz and posed it as a staircase accident, and then had followed the same process twenty years later when he wanted to get rid of his current wife. With Martha herself now having a lot of doubts about their father’s role in both their mother’s eerily similar deaths, Margaret persuades her to sign an official letter accepting the DA’s request to get permission to exhume their mother’s body. On the other hand, Rudolf brings in a team of experts who go through the crime scene and establish a chain of events to put up in court. They get in touch with the man from the photographs, who claims to have spoken with the novelist over mail and text but had apparently never met him in person. At present, Rudolf and his team want to include more of the children in public appearances regarding the case, as it would help garner public sympathy and support towards Michael. They decide to get Margaret and Martha in front of a television interview, despite the latter’s discomfort with doing it, and they talk about how Michael and Patricia had adopted them as their own children when their parents had died in Germany. This interview, and its telecast, terribly misfires for Michael, though, as the DA’s office soon receives a phone call about it. Finally, when she takes a look at the dreaded photographs, there is no doubt in her head about Michael’s involvement in her mother’s death, also partly because of the way it has been presented to her by Hardin and Freda. She leaves a written note for her sisters at their house before finally leaving, and they read it too while returning to their college, but do not seem to act on it. But the absence of any murder weapon does not allow them to put the blame on the husband right away, and Michael’s case is instead put in front of a grand jury, which suspects him to have been involved in his wife’s death. When the murder case trial begins in late 2001 or early 2002, Michael is very quick to claim that he is being framed for having criticized the actions of the DA over a number of years. The father takes Caitlin to spend a few days with him at a hotel, and the already present doubt in the girl’s mind starts to grow. The police now believe that Kathleen had been bludgeoned to death by Michael, who also seemed to have strangled her, as suggested by the fracture of her superior cornu of the left thyroid cartilage. Sensing that the police might take in Michael as a suspect in a possible homicide case, the novelist and his brother meet with a lawyer renowned for saving guilty defendants. Michael had come inside the house a few minutes after his wife and had found her lying on the staircase.

The new HBO show stars Colin Firth as Michael Peterson, the writer who was convicted of his wife Kathleen's murder.

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HBO Max's 'The Staircase' explores the circumstances surrounding the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson at her home with her novelist husband, ...

Peterson could have been sentenced to 64 to 86 months in prison, but the judge acknowledged the 89 months he’d already been incarcerated, and thus, Peterson was made a free man. Currently, Redfin estimates the home is worth just north of $2.3 million, whereas Zillow assesses the home at $3.3 million. Throughout the entire tragic ordeal, the Peterson home remained occupied. After a stir in the local community, a 2004 true crime documentary titled The Staircase investigated the events leading to Kathleen Peterson’s death and the subsequent murder trial. The couple originally moved into the home in 1997, four years before the incident. Subsequent chapters were filmed after the house was sold.

Sophie Turner and Odessa Young tease what's to come for the Peterson kids and their relationship with father Michael during his murder trial.

It’s understood that to a certain extent we’ll never know,” Young says. It’s fascinating.” The actress also teases that Margaret’s belief about her father does waver as the series progresses. Odessa Young, who plays Margaret’s sister Martha, points out that the series digs deeper into the impact of the family than we’ve seen in previous tellings of the story (multiple documentaries exist about the case, including the other Staircase, released in 2004). She also details how Martha reacts to the case, which includes panic attacks in the courtroom, and what that tells the viewer about her.

Colin Firth stars in The Staircase, a true crime story about a novelist whose wife is found dead.

The Staircase does not feel like something that has been approached many times story-wise, and that is made clear when it shows the graphic crime scene and implications that the viewer may never seem to know what happened. Colin Firth and Toni Collette mustered striking performances as Michael and Kathleen Peterson. Firth’s Peterson is difficult to get a read on, and it seems like one may never be able to understand the extent of what he is thinking. While a documentary would be unable to make Kathleen come back to life as a character, a television show allows seeing her as a person that lives and breathes. It merely is a dramatization, something to bring the case to life almost eleven years after it originally happened. As the viewer’s gaze shifts from the ongoing investigation with the DA’s office to the Peterson family, it provides an ominous nature even in moments of solace. As the family begins to internally implode, the actors elevate the tension as more secrets rise to the surface. The Staircase does not bother to hide the brutality of this crime. Colin Firth stars in The Staircase as Michael Peterson, the novelist who initially calls 911 to report that his wife had fallen down the stairs. Now, in 2022, HBO Max’s dramatized version of The Staircase adds to the plethora of new true crime shows seen across platforms. HBO Max ordered the series to run as an eight-episode limited series for their streaming platform, and the first three episodes were released years later in May 2022. Then in 2017, he used the Alford Plea to try and lessen his sentencing. Her husband is the American novelist Michael Peterson, best known for his works based on his time in Vietnam, where he worked with the US Department of Defense.

A look at the history of the house at 1810 Cedar Street in Durham, where Kathleen Peterson died in 2001, including previous and current owners and filming ...

There is even a scene filmed on the back staircase where Kathleen Peterson died. There were no photos of the back staircase where Kathleen died, and a photo of the backyard showed the swimming pool to be drained. ▪ Clairvoyant and medium Biond Fury purchased the house from Balius in 2008, and paid $1.3 million for it. Balius paid $640,000 for the house in 2004 and did renovations before placing it back on the market in 2007. He was convicted in 2003 in one of the longest trials in North Carolina’s history. A large fountain near the pool when the Petersons lived there seemed to have been removed. In addition to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a great deal of the first eight episodes of the 2018 Netflix documentary series “The Staircase” were set at the Peterson home. Peterson said he believed she had an accident and fell down the stairs. The home was a location for the 1990 movie “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which was filmed in Durham and Raleigh and starred Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway and Natasha Richardson. (Not to be confused with the popular Hulu TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which was not filmed at the Peterson house.) ▪ In 2020, the 9,372-square-foot house was again listed for sale at $1.9 million, which was in line with the tax value of the home, listed by the Durham County Tax Administration at $1,937,733. Photos accompanying the online listing showed a renovated home with refinished hardwood floors, an updated kitchen and beautiful spiral staircase. Michael Peterson, a novelist and former newspaper columnist, told police he was sitting by the pool at the house at 1810 Cedar St. on the night of Dec. 9, 2001, and when he went inside around 2:30 a.m., he found Kathleen in a pool of blood at the bottom of a back staircase.

Colin Firth and Toni Collette lead a harrowing drama about the 2004 docuseries of the same name.

But the rich realism of their fraught partnership generally works well, providing a deep pool of conflict from which the rest of the show springs. So it’s a testament to Campos’ strong direction that the first five episodes deliver a consistently fresh presentation of the case’s main players. Positioning Lestrade and executive producer Denis Poncet (Frank Feys) as dubious central figures in the Petersons’ story, this nonlinear reexamination is as much about a possible murder as it is society’s insidious fascination with horrible tragedies. Not only did The Staircase get two more episodes from Lestrade in 2012, but Netflix revived it again with three more chapters in 2018. When Michael was indicted in his wife’s murder the following year, French filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon) was given permission to document his defense in an artful, if controversial, 2004 miniseries of the same name. Almost. Created by Antonio Campos (The Devil All The Time), this riveting drama about the mysterious death of Kathleen Peterson will succeed or fail based on its conclusion.

The limited HBO Max miniseries stars Colin Firth as crime novelist Michael Peterson, who was accused of murdering his wife, Kathleen (Toni Collette).

You can also watch Discovery’s three-part series on Discovery+ or buy it on Vudu for $5. The HBO Max miniseries is based on Oscar-winning French filmmakers Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and Denis Poncet’s documentary series Soupçons (which translates to “Suspicions”), which was first released in eight episodes. While the streamer doesn’t offer a trial period, you can watch The Staircase for free when you sign up for a new subscription to Hulu, which comes with the first month free.

The confounding, and unsolved, case of a man accused of killing his wife that inspired a landmark docuseries has led to a star-studded new crime drama.

“The grand jury returned a bill of indictment but everybody was chasing rabbits, as far as I’m concerned. “On the other hand, particularly for [prosecutor] Freda Black, it was a real moral issue that she took a lot of importance from. Pollard, the neighbour and former lawyer, believes that her wounds were the result of an owl attack. Michael put on a very brave face in public but I am told that, when he got back in in the holding area, he broke down. “As I’ve said many times, it made me question whether I had been part of the same trial that everybody else had been part of. “For me, it was a non-issue like, OK, so if a husband has an affair with a woman, does that make him a murderer? A woman lies dying in a pool of blood at the bottom of a staircase. He was convicted and spent nearly eight years in prison, only for his life sentence to be overturned amid questions about the reliability of a key witness. Not that it was an every week thing but that had happened. He never believed that Michael Peterson was guilty of killing his wife, a telecoms company executive. “I never saw one bit of trouble,” says Pollard, 74, from his neighbouring home on Cedar Street. “In fact, I thought they were a very colourful couple. This the transcript of a 911 call on 9 December 2001.

Sophie Turner stars with Colin Firth, Toni Collette, Michael Stuhlbarg in HBO Max true-crime series The Staircase about Michael Peterson.

“It actually is about the making of the documentary, on top of the case that’s going on, because there’s layers and layers and layers of corruption.” “This show is about that, but it’s not another telling of the same thing,” Turner explained. “And so about six months later, I found out they were making an HBO show about it, and I was like, sign me up.”

The first three episodes of “The Staircase” are now streaming on HBO Max. New episodes will debut Thursday, May 13.

“Even if we didn’t use it, we had the memories of throwing our arms around each other and making impromptu toasts on her behalf.” Even though most of the footage is only used in the background, DeWitt said it gave the woman at the center of this story the chance to be more than a footnote. “That is Clayton’s perspective and it's fairly clear to him.” “The Staircase,” the resulting 2004 documentary series, garnered infamy and acclaim as an early entry in the now-booming true crime docuseries genre. That’s one of the things we get to explore as actors – deep empathy for somebody. Did Michael Peterson brutally kill his wife, Kathleen, at the bottom of the stairs of their Durham home in 2001?

The Staircase, the dramatization of the documentary of the Michael Peterson case, won't offer you definitive truths.

It’s too early to know how the series will deal with Candace and how prominent the trauma she suffered will be. This slightly bonkers theory is based on the fact that there were Barred owls living near the Peterson house, a species which can be aggressive and have attacked people in the past. Including the filmmakers in the series gives an additional layer – it’s a story about storytellers focusing on variations of the same story. These are director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade played by Vincent Vermignon and producer Denis Poncet, played by Frank Feys. The two won a Best Documentary Oscar in 2001 for their film Murder on a Sunday Morning. The death occurred 17 years before Kathleen’s, was ruled accidental by German authorities and Michael had no motive, but the prosecution still obtained permission to exhume Ratliff’s corpse and presented a case arguing that her death was homicide and not accidental and might have inspired Michael as a way to make a murder look like an accident. In the early hours of Dec. 9, 2001 Michael Peterson called the police to report that his wife Kathleen had fallen down the stairs. Is that the truth? It’s a hollow metal stick a bit like a poker which you can use to stoke a fire (and blow down). Anyway, this was a focal point because for a time it was thought the Peterson’s missing blow poke (a gift from Kathleen’s sister Candace) was the murder weapon. It’s more a show about how the lack of a clear truth affected a family and captivated millions worldwide. As of writing, only three episodes of The Staircase have aired so we don’t yet know how the latter part of the series will unfold, and hopefully it won’t just tread the beats of the documentary familiar to those who have seen it and followed the case. There are only two people who know the real truth behind the events that are depicted in The Staircase. One of them is dead. And the other is Michael Peterson.

The Michael Peterson case has been the subject of a documentary series and a high-profile drama, both titled The Staircase, and fascinating true crime fans.

The Staircase airs Thursdays on Sky Atlantic – sign up for Sky TV here. Ultimately, Peterson was found guilty in the initial trial, but that was far from the end of the story. In the wake of Kathleen's death, authorities examined Michael's computer and found 2000 pornographic images of men on the hard drive, in addition to correspondence with a male prostitute with whom he discussed meeting. Their initial theory, that Michael had used a fireplace tool called a blow poke, was debunked when the object was found in the garage undamaged and with no trace of blood on it. In addition, it was found that her blood alcohol content at the time of death was low enough to pass a breathalyser test, which it was argued meant the death couldn't be chalked up entirely to a drunken stumble. Michael claimed that he had been in the garden by the pool at the time of Kathleen's fall, thus he could not have heard her struggle or had anything to do with the tragic incident.