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Message: [QUOTE="nelsonmuntz, post: 4519841, member: 833"] [B]The Staircase (HBO)[/B] - I have gotten a little worn out by True Crime stories, so I figured I would get to this when I got to this. It turns out that it is really good, although uncomfortable to watch at time. The story is about a really bizarre actual murder case in North Carolina that began in 2001. The acting is really good in a complicated story with lots of complicated characters. Sophie Turner (aka Sansa Stark) and Odessa Young are really excellent as adopted sisters of the lead characters. All the actors that play the kids do a really good job. Juliette Binoche is outstanding as a documentary editor who is the only person trying to find the truth. Colin Firth does a very good job as Michael Peterson, and Toni Collette is solid as his wife Kathleen, but I feel like both were miscast. Firth 95% pulls it off, but I spent the entire series thinking that someone else would have been better for Kathleen. There isn't enough chemistry between the two of them that I really bought that they were ever in love. I think the series would have been better with slightly less acclaimed actors in those two roles. These is a slightly upper-middle class couple from North Carolina, and it is hard to buy these two as those people. I got past it, but they weren't perfect for the roles. [SPOILER="Spoiler - My biggest problem with the series"]My biggest issue is that the show completely looks past an opportunity to intelligently address the massive anti-gay bias that was the underpinning of the trial and Michael Peterson's ultimate conviction. The case against Peterson was OK, but rather than really put a strong case together, the prosecutors leaned in on the fact that Peterson was bisexual. The prosecution's entire theory for the case fell apart when the missing "murder weapon" was discovered and turned out not to be a murder weapon, and the rest of the evidence had lots of problems. Peterson's lawyer got into the trial the fact (which later turned out to have been a lie) that Peterson had told his wife about his bisexuality, and the jury, despite not knowing that was a lie, didn't care. Ultimately, the prosecution got a conviction because the jury didn't like that Peterson was bisexual/gay, and convicted him on that despite all the other problems with the case. I do not know if Peterson did it or not. I could be talked into it either way, but that is why the standard of proof in a criminal case is greater than preponderance of evidence. The standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt", and there is no way the prosecution met that standard. Despite that, Peterson spent 8 or 9 years in jail (I am not clear when he went in) because the prosecution turned the trial into a discussion of Peterson's bisexuality. I would have liked the series to explore that more.[/SPOILER] [/QUOTE]

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