With Netflix’s The Stair­case, true crime has come full circle

The Stair­case (Soup­cons) start­ed life as a French minis­eries on Canal+ in 2004, and pio­neered what we now read­i­ly recog­nise as true crime on the small screen. Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s film took a vérité-style look at the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death of Kath­leen Peter­son and the arrest of her hus­band, nov­el­ist Michael Peter­son in their North Car­oli­na home. The film­mak­er gained a lev­el of access to the fam­i­ly, the lawyers and the court­room that seems almost unbe­liev­able at times, espe­cial­ly in a pre-real­i­ty tele­vi­sion world where doc­u­men­ta­tion of fam­i­ly inter­ac­tions over din­ner wasn’t the norm.

Now the series is on Net­flix, pack­aged with the 2013 fol­low-up and and three all-new episodes that serve as a kind of epi­logue. It makes for odd view­ing in 2018, its rhythms out of sync with a world where audi­ences have become con­di­tioned to expect true crime docu-series to do all the heavy lift­ing. The cam­era lingers, the film­mak­ers offer no the­o­ries, and the ram­blings of a deeply unlik­able, but poten­tial­ly inno­cent, Peter­son take up much of the screentime.

While laud­ed as the pio­neer of the form since its release, and despite wide­spread adu­la­tion on re-release, the series felt slow and aim­less­ly pon­der­ous when viewed in the con­text of the glut of true crime tele­vi­sion. There is also an unease at its core, in the era­sure of the vic­tim of the crime and its focus on the larg­er-than-life char­ac­ter of the accused. This is a trope that finds its way into today’s most pop­u­lar true crime.

In recent years, there has been some­thing of a boom in the true crime form, pro­pelled pri­mar­i­ly by new for­mats and medi­ums. Where­as true crime was the pre­serve of hokey recon­struc­tions on Dis­cov­ery ID for a two decades, it sud­den­ly start­ed to make the tran­si­tion into the long-form and pres­tige areas of pop cul­ture, com­plete with med­i­ta­tive title sequences and thought­ful music com­po­si­tion, thanks in large part to stream­ing plat­forms and deep-dive pod­casts. On Net­flix, mil­lions fol­lowed Mak­ing a Mur­der­er inves­ti­ga­tions in Man­i­towoc Coun­ty, Wis­con­sin and in Ser­i­al, the dul­cet tones of Sarah Koenig took us through the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

More recent­ly splashy releas­es by Net­flix such as Evil Genius have failed to make as much of a dent in the pop cul­ture con­ver­sa­tion. Arguably the biggest true crime suc­cess of 2017 was Amer­i­can Van­dal, a hilar­i­ous par­o­dy that deft­ly sends up every genre trope as it fol­lows an inves­ti­ga­tion into spray-paint­ed dicks in a high school park­ing lot. It has every­thing from the score and the title sequence to the earnest pub­lic radio host and lov­able if unbear­able accused pro­tag­o­nist. That that the series – essen­tial­ly a dick joke stretched over eight episodes – could be so com­pelling and suc­cess­ful is telling about the lim­i­ta­tions of the genre. Once you start get­ting into Spinal Tap ter­ri­to­ry, it’s time to take a long hard look at the genre.

Obvi­ous­ly these shows attract a large of audi­ence, in which I include myself unashamed­ly. They appeal to both a mor­bid curios­i­ty and the kind of sub­red­dit-fuelled ama­teur inves­ti­ga­tions we all enjoy. There is a thrill in prob­lem solv­ing, and feel­ing part of a sys­tem that is hold­ing peo­ple account­able. But as we see the lim­i­ta­tions of pres­tige tele­vi­sion for pres­tige television’s sake (cf the sec­ond sea­sons of True Detec­tive and West­world), the form would prof­it from some soul-search­ing. What is a true crime docu-series try­ing to do besides appeal to our thirst for the sensational?

One direc­tion to go in could be to fol­low in the foot­steps of a series like The Keep­ers gets a lot right, by appeal to that our fas­ci­na­tion for prob­lem-solv­ing, while remain­ing focussed on the vic­tims and the sys­temic prob­lems that lead to the crime at its core. These doc­u­men­taries are less sen­sa­tion­al, less for­mu­la­ic, and could serve a real pur­pose. And most impor­tant­ly in an enter­tain­ment and art con­text, they feel like hon­est and com­pelling sto­ries. Then there are the fic­tion­alised forms like Mind­hunter, and semi-fic­tion­alised ones such as Real Detec­tive, that focus on law enforce­ment and how these crimes leave long-last­ing effects on the peo­ple inves­ti­gat­ing them.

True crime has a place in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion, that much is for cer­tain. But in the past its abil­i­ty to stay rel­e­vant, and to serve a pur­pose, has depend­ed on its abil­i­ty to rein­vent itself. Crime as spec­ta­cle is noth­ing new, nor is it some­thing that will – or should – be elim­i­nat­ed com­plete­ly. I think that we’re start­ing to walk a thin line though, where the form is tired and the inten­tions are mud­dled. In a decid­ed­ly woke cul­tur­al land­scape, the era­sure of vic­tims seems tone deaf. Cou­ple that with tropes that feel worn out a cou­ple of years into the genre’s rein­ven­tion and new­found pop­u­lar­i­ty, and you can guar­an­tee some­one, some­where is think­ing about how to take the form for­ward. At least that’s my semi-informed sub­red­dit theory.