samba-97913 The story itself, with all its plot twists, rivals a good murder mystery, but I would've enjoyed reading about the case rather than watching the documentary. The technique seemed amateurish to me: long, too-close closeups, blurry shots brought into focus (instead of edited out), pointless scenes where nothing is happening.The rest of my criticism is admittedly unfair, but I'll say it anyway, because it definitely detracted from my enjoyment of the series. I found several of the people involved very hard to watch and listen to: Martha, who spoke in "up talk" (making every sentence sound like a question) and was so vapid; Caitlin with her "vocal fry" (hard to explain; just look it up); Michael, so dripping with self-pity that every time he opened his mouth, I couldn't help but think he was lying, his false bravado, his self-sacrificing-but not really; and the lawyer Rudolf who grinned and hammed for the camera and was overall so glib you'd think he'd forgotten his client's life was on the line.And then there was the scant treatment of family members who didn't defend Peterson, which makes the whole enterprise seem very biased. Why didn't we hear more about Caitlin's research that led her to doubt her dad?People who like documentaries more than I do will probably like this one.

dannad11 You will really enjoy watching this and sway back and forth about whether he did it or not, but the problem is, he was in a relationship with the documentary's editor and so a lot of facts were left out. When you read that information such as their financial struggles were left out, you quickly realise that you weren't actually shown anything that would make him look completely guilty.Google 'Michael Peterson' and you'll find lots of other things that were left out.

progers-18321 I watched" The Staircase" on Netflix, from beginning to the end . Early on in the investigation Mike Peterson stated "His wife Kathrine knew he was a homosexual but they didn't talk about it."In an interview near the end, Mike Peterson talks about his homosexuality and that he "Didn't Come Out to Katherine."

jerkassstore I agree with a couple of reviews below. Firstly, this thing is dragged out. Secondly, I guess it was made in partnership, in some way, with the defense so really focuses on Peterson's side of the story without really giving a fair focus on the prosecution's side. Peterson did also come across to me as, not only a narcissist, but a raging sociopath. The defense is pretty flimsy. I mean, really how in the hell could a human gush so much blood from falling down some stairs? Has that ever happened in history? The defense makes a point that in a blunt trauma beating there is always some kind of fracture or whatever. Who cares!? Maybe Peterson didn't cause blunt trauma with the blow poke. He could've used a raking motion or something to cause lacerations. Stuff like that isn't explained and I don't understand why. My feelings is that the prosecution didn't have quite enough evidence to convict Peterson without a reasonable doubt but at the same time the defense IS pretty flimsy.In any case we're dealing with raging sociopaths, motivated probably by money. Once the victim found out her husband was banging gay guys, most likely some kind of monetary consequence was revealed, divorce or whatnot. While at the same time we have idiotic prosecutors with their lying and evidence tampering to prosecute Peterson at any cost. But really, who's kidding who. He did it. Peterson's guilty. Period. I mean, maybe he didn't do it. Maybe it was a ghost, right? There's no way in hell all that blood was caused by a stair fall. No way.