Michael Peterson Jean Xavier De-Lestrade France show death queer and Michael Peterson Jean Xavier De-Lestrade France

‘The Staircase’ Writers on Michael Peterson’s Queerness and Expanding on the Infamous Owl Theory

Reading now: 924
variety.com

Sasha Urban editorNowadays, it’s harder to not land on a scripted true crime series while scrolling through your chosen broadcaster.

There’s “The Girl From Plainville,” “Inventing Anna,” “The Thing About Pam” — the list goes on, with nearly all of them based on podcasts, books or documentaries that at one point gripped the nation.But before any of those stories existed, there was “The Staircase,” a 13-part docuseries by French filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (released in parts beginning in 2004 on the Sundance Channel before landing on Netflix in 2018) that followed the confounding case of Michael Peterson and his wife Kathleen’s 2001 death at the bottom of their home’s back staircase.

The series pioneered a new, episodic style of gripping documentary storytelling, and in real-time revealed the details of Kathleen’s death, Michael’s trial and its aftermath, becoming an object of cult fascination that persists to this day.

Antonio Campos first learned of the docuseries in 2008, when it was submitted to him for a possible feature adaptation. At the time, only eight episodes had been made, and Campos watched them all in one sitting.“It just felt like one of the best true crime stories that I had watched, in part because I recognized that there were so many things in it that were unknowable,” Campos told Variety. “Michael Peterson as a central figure was really strong.

Read more on variety.com
The website celebsbar.com is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.

Related News

DMCA