The Staircase premieres with three episodes on HBO Max on May 5, 2022, with new episodes weekly each Thursday.
Like modern True Crime as a whole, HBO Max’s The Staircase owes a lot to Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s 2004 docuseries of the same name, from which it was adapted. If you’re familiar with the original — its stellar eight episodes are available on Netflix, with a further five, less interesting follow-ups folded in — there isn’t a lot this new series adds in terms of perspective, at least in its three premiere episodes. They occasionally struggle to feel cohesive, but they do hint at a few key details that could make for interesting hooks in the future. This remains to be seen, as the show retreads much of the ground de Lestrade already covered — it is, in essence, a dramatization of the documentary that also recounts how it was made — but what makes HBO’s The Staircase work, right from its opening frames, is Colin Firth’s portrayal of Michael Peterson, the author and politician accused of murdering his wife in December 2001. Were the series’ quality to plummet during the remainder of its eight episodes, it would still be worth a watch for Firth’s incredible performance as a man nauseated by grief and rankled by the slow emergence of all his most intimate secrets.
The Staircase opens in 2017, with what seems to be just another day for Peterson — the series, even though it appeals to fans of the original, plays rightfully coy with the details of what has since transpired — but it soon flashes back to the night he apparently found his wife, Kathleen (Toni Collette), at the bottom of the stairs in their home in Durham, North Carolina, laying in a pool of her own blood. It’s a grisly introductory sequence, not just for the stomach-churning makeup and effects job applied to Kathleen’s body, but for its snaking long take that rarely shies away from either the bloodshed or from Firth’s stunning work, as he stays hyper-aware of the camera’s movement and the scene’s complicated blocking while also losing himself in bodily shock and emotional anguish.
Unfortunately, that’s about as aesthetically intricate as the premiere episode gets (at least until one inventive shot towards the end of its hour-long runtime, which captures the topsy-turvy events and their ripple effects on Peterson’s family). In the meantime, as the police and prosecutors lay the blame at Peterson’s feet — the author, however, maintains that Kathleen likely slipped and fell — the premiere entry begins to construct not only a family tapestry, by introducing the couple’s five children and step-children, but it attempts to paint a portrait of Kathleen herself. The resultant structure jumps back and forth in time in almost disconnected fashion; what’s worse, it leaves Kathleen herself feeling like the least interesting part of her own story, and offers Collette comparatively little by way of complicated drama.
This problem extends to the second and third episodes as well, because as much as the show attempts to bring Kathleen to life, it often does so obliquely, and only through the lens of her impending death (her scenes are framed by text denoting how long she has left to live). By the time the second episode opens, The Staircase has begun to tell the story of de Lestrade’s documentary, which began in the lead up to the trial, and in which Peterson and his family recount memories of Kathleen. Several of these scenes are recreated, and even when the documentary camera isn’t running, characters recount their time with Kathleen and manage to paint an oral portrait of her which far outshines her living, breathing depictions in flashback. In trying to expand on the documentary’s focus, the series can’t help but dilute it at times.
The three premiere episodes were directed by showrunner Antonio Campos, who does an adequate job of letting the actors dictate the flow of most scenes, and the series is better for it. While the performers are often the only ones left telling the story — little is conveyed by the lighting and framing, and even less by the score, which occasionally evokes the haunting opening title music from the original, but adds little else in terms of mood — the cast is often enrapturing. Firth’s spot-on Peterson isn’t just an impression, but a spiritual recreation of the way the author’s speech and tone of voice feel constantly on edge, like his throat is trying to expel air faster than his lungs can breathe it. He also turns Peterson’s lumbering cadence and darting, impatient glances into riveting beats that absorb the story happening around him and regurgitate it as growing pain and paranoia as his life unravels. It’s a TV performance for the ages.
Michael Stuhlbarg does a similarly worthwhile impersonation of Peterson’s attorney David Rudolf, but he also brings his signature warmth to the role while balancing it with a subdued, manipulative streak, making even the kindest and most welcoming conversations slither along a knife’s edge. Like the documentary, the HBO series is nominally about the ins and outs of the U.S. justice system and its differing perspectives, and Stuhlbarg’s Rudolf is very much a paradoxical part of that portrait (as are Cullen Moss and Parker Posey as seemingly ruthless state prosecutors who soon reveal their own hidden layers). Vincent Vermignon plays director de Lestrade, and while it initially seems odd that an otherwise accurate recreation would cast a Black actor in the role of a white filmmaker — making it especially strange when the character makes explicit and implicit racial commentary on occasion — it soon becomes clear that he’s a perfect fit, walking an emotional high wire between gentleness and authority, as an artist charged with both capturing and manipulating a volatile tale that’s still unfolding.
The Peterson children each have their moments and inter-personal tensions — Sophie Turner, Dane DeHaan, Patrick Schwarzenegger, and Olivia DeJonge all perform admirably — but The Staircase’s’s secret weapon may very well be Odessa Young as the quiet daughter Martha, who brings such a raw and alluring naturalism to her role, one that reflects the slowly building pressure beneath the family, that it’s often hard to look away from her, even when she sits silently in a corner. However, the show often struggles to string even its best performances into something rhythmic. Its camera lingers on individual moments that feel charged, but their potential soon dissipates as it cuts almost thoughtlessly to unrelated scenes, unable to reconcile the energy of any two events, let alone any themes of duality or façade which may cross-pollinate between them.
The Staircase rarely has its own identity outside of the documentary on which it’s based — not yet, at least. It does, however, introduce a specific character in its fleeting 2017 timeline (played by French powerhouse Juliette Binoche) who, when her story is inevitably told, has the potential for added commentary on why de Lestrade’s doc took the excessively flattering form it eventually did, though whether the series will follow this subversive instinct is yet to be seen. In the meantime, it takes that same approach as well, finding itself squarely on Peterson’s side of things just like de Lestrade’s series, but it leaves little to the imagination, with its many explicit and thuddingly literal dramatizations.
Its problem is also that it wants to appeal to both new viewers and those already familiar with the case, but in the process, its storytelling often ends up in a lukewarm, noncommittal space. While it hopes to tease and set up various future twists, its attempts at foreshadowing are less about dramatic irony, and more about letting the camera linger on mundane objects and conversations, over and over again, only to later reveal their significance. It does this so frequently, so stiltedly and so artlessly, that the result is less of waiting for a mystery to unfold, and more akin to watching a Tetris block float neatly into place. There are few jagged emotional edges when setups are inevitably paid off. Of course, there are still several twists and turns to behold, but ironically, the ones that come out of nowhere feel most tonally in-tune with the rest of the story. In the meantime, the drama of what’s known is a mere waiting game, as the show’s back-and-forth chronology feels as if it’s playing out on shuffle.
Perhaps the focus of future chapters will be tighter — or ideally, will diverge from that of de Lestrade’s narrative — but as far as the premiere episodes are concerned, you’d be better off watching the documentary series first, before chasing it with Firth’s acting masterclass.
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