--- title: "The Staircase" year: 2022 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/the-staircase-2022" fi1m_score: 75 critics_score: 79 critics_reviews: 12 published: "2026-09-17T13:27:41.537776+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T13:27:42.236550+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Staircase (2022) Created by António Campos · MPA TV-MA · Drama, Crime **Fi1m score: 75** · Critics 79 from 12 reviews *In a sentence:* Colin Firth explains himself for eight hours and each explanation is slightly worse than the last > António Campos’s eight-part dramatisation of the Michael Peterson case is better than it needed to be, largely because Colin Firth and Toni Collette refuse to play a villain and a victim. It is also two episodes too long, and its cleverest idea arrives late. ## Synopsis Durham, North Carolina, December 2001. In the early hours Michael Peterson (Colin Firth), a novelist, calls the emergency services: his wife Kathleen (Toni Collette) is at the foot of the back staircase of their house, bleeding and not breathing. He says she fell. The police, looking at the blood on the walls, say otherwise, and before long he is charged with her murder. He hires defence lawyer David Rudolf (Michael Stuhlbarg) while the family assembles: his sons Clayton (Dane DeHaan) and Todd (Patrick Schwarzenegger), the Ratliff sisters Margaret (Sophie Turner) and Martha (Odessa Young), and Kathleen’s daughter Caitlin Atwater (Olivia DeJonge), who begins to have doubts. A French documentary crew led by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon) asks to film the defence. ## Review The death of Kathleen Peterson has already been told once at length. Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s documentary, also called *The Staircase*, followed Michael Peterson and his lawyers through the trial and kept returning to him for years afterwards. António Campos, who created this eight-part dramatisation, writes on it and directs alongside Leigh Janiak, has not tried to pretend otherwise. He puts de Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon) and his camera crew into the story, so that we watch the Petersons being watched. It is a good idea, and it makes the series better than the average true-crime rerun. It is also an idea the series takes its time getting round to. Colin Firth’s Michael Peterson is the reason to watch. He plays him as a man who has talked his way through his whole life and has no other setting. He explains the fall to the police, to his children, to his lawyer, to the documentary crew, and each time the account is fluent and slightly different, and each time Firth lets a little irritation show that anyone should need it explained again. The body is soft, the shirts are expensive, the voice has a writer’s pleasure in its own sentences. We spent eight hours unable to decide whether we were watching a liar or a bore who happened to be telling the truth, and we think that is exactly what Firth intended. Toni Collette has the harder job, because Kathleen is dead before the first episode has settled, and most series of this kind would leave her there. This one keeps going back. We see her running the house, drinking wine with the daughters, doing the accounts at the kitchen table with a face that says the numbers are worse than she is letting on, and shutting a bedroom door on an argument she does not want to finish. It made us unhappy in a way true crime rarely manages, because we knew where every one of those scenes ends. Collette plays her as tired, funny and holding a good deal in, and the marriage she and Firth build is warm enough that the question of what happened on the stairs actually hurts. Michael Svitak and Lyle Vincent shoot the house in warm lamplight when Kathleen is alive and drain it to grey when she is not, and Michael Shaw’s production design makes the back staircase a narrow, badly lit thing that nobody would choose to die on. The camera looks down it from the landing as if into a well. Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans keep the music to low sustained strings that hum under the dialogue. The four editors, Sofía Subercaseaux, Christopher Rand, Eric Spang and Shelby Siegel, move between several timelines, sometimes across a single cut, so that a man in his fifties becomes a man in his seventies mid-sentence. It is a lot of cutting, and in the middle episodes it starts to feel like a delaying tactic. Those middle episodes are the problem. Eight hours is more than this story needs, and the fourth, fifth and sixth circle the same ground: another hearing, another family dinner that curdles, another piece of evidence turned over. Michael Stuhlbarg’s David Rudolf is watchful and dry and better than the material around him. Parker Posey’s prosecutor Freda Black is pitched a size too large, a Southern accent doing the work a character should. Dane DeHaan and Patrick Schwarzenegger, as the sons, are given loyalty and not much else. Sophie Turner and Odessa Young, as the Ratliff sisters, take three episodes to become distinguishable. Rosemarie DeWitt, as Kathleen’s sister Candace Zamperini, is the sharpest thing in the supporting cast, a woman who has made up her mind and will not be moved. What lifts the second half is the decision to stage Kathleen’s death more than once, each time according to a different account of it, and to show the documentary crew deciding what to keep. We will not say which versions, or who is telling them. We will say that the series does not settle the matter, and that we came away respecting it for that and slightly worn out by it too. If you have seen de Lestrade’s film you will spend much of this comparing the two; if you have not, the series still works, though it assumes you know how the documentary made you feel. Watch it two episodes at a time, at home, and do not expect to be told what happened. The tagline promises there is no truth without lies. On this evidence there is not much truth with them either. *Fi1m score 75, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Every one of the twelve reviews lands on the positive side, and most of them say the same two things. First, Colin Firth’s Michael Peterson is the reason to watch: critics return again and again to how slippery he makes the man, insecure and evasive at once, with Toni Collette nearly as often singled out beside him. Second, the series earns its place next to the documentary it retells by folding that documentary’s crew into the story, so it becomes as much about how a case gets narrated as about who did what on the stairs. The spread is narrow. Nobody thinks it fails; the question is how much it adds. The Evening Standard calls the dramatisation unnecessary even while admitting it grips, and The Hollywood Reporter finds the early episodes uneven. The AV Club, having seen only part of the run, holds back a final view until the ending. Collider is the warmest, treating the performances as reason enough. ### Reviews we read (12) - **The Guardian** (90/100, inferred): The dramatisation of the notorious true-crime case is a hugely compelling who/if/how/whydunnit that fizzes with tension. Firth and Collette deliver brilliant performances as the slippery, complex central couple. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/may/05/the-staircase-review-colin-firth-and-toni-collette) - **IndieWire**, Ben Travers (B+): The critic praises Colin Firth's lead performance and the series' clever examination of how narratives shape perceptions of guilt and innocence. It notes the effective use of multiple timelines to deepen character portrayals while balancing fact and fiction. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/2022/04/the-staircase-review-hbo-max-colin-firth-1234719990/) - **The AV Club**, Alison Foreman (B+): The review finds the series riveting in its exploration of the Peterson case and true-crime sensationalism but withholds full judgment pending the ending after viewing only partial episodes. It highlights strong performances by Colin Firth and Toni Collette amid questions about the docudrama approach. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-staircase-tv-review-hbo-max-1848879938) - **The Telegraph**, Anita Singh (4/5): This HBO dramatisation keeps viewers hooked with its central mystery of whether Michael Peterson killed his wife. It matches the hit documentary as a compelling, corkscrewing whodunit. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/staircase-review-corkscrewing-whodunit-match-hit-documentary/) - **The Times**, Hugo Rifkind (80/100, inferred): This is prestige stuff that is cold, shaking, surreal and grim; the reviewer is transfixed by the brilliant unravelling of Peterson’s character from all-American alpha patriarch to a flaky confusion of petulance, deceit and sexual incontinence. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/the-staircase-review-di-ray-the-terror-infamy-0gtw36g6k) - **Evening Standard**, Vicky Jessop (70/100, inferred): This dramatisation is unnecessary but gripping, with Colin Firth convincingly inhabiting the morally slippery Peterson and strong turns from the young cast as the fractured family. It adds nothing new to the well-trodden story yet keeps viewers on edge. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/tvfilm/the-staircase-review-sky-atlantic-colin-firth-true-crime-b997125.html) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Daniel Fienberg (70/100, inferred): It rises above typical true-crime scripted series through its focus on the documentary crew's role and the meta examination of how truth is shaped, with effective performances from Firth and others that add layers beyond reenactment. The first episodes show promise, though some elements feel uneven. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/the-staircase-review-1235139509/) - **Variety**, Daniel D'Addario (70/100, inferred): The series elevates the familiar true-crime story by weaving in the making of the original documentary as a meta layer about narrative construction, guilt and media. Strong performances, particularly Firth's portrayal of Michael Peterson's insecurity and complexity, help make it probing rather than rote. [Read](https://variety.com/2022/tv/reviews/staircase-review-hbo-max-colin-firth-1235243037/) - **Collider**, Carly Lane (A): The series is hailed as a compelling companion piece to the documentary that widens the focus to fractured lives and relationships without providing easy answers. It singles out the performances, particularly Colin Firth and Toni Collette, as the most compelling element. [Read](https://collider.com/the-staircase-hbo-max-review-colin-firth-toni-collette/) - **Consequence**, Clint Worthington (80/100, inferred): The series is praised as a self-aware prestige drama that expands the Peterson case into a multifaceted exploration of truth, self-delusion, and secrets. It singles out Colin Firth's performance as Michael Peterson for its scintillating opaqueness. [Read](https://consequence.net/2022/04/the-staircase-review-hbo-colin-firth/) - **/Film**, Chris Evangelista (75/100, inferred): The limited series is viewed as a worthwhile expansion of the original documentary that examines its own creation and questions of objectivity. It singles out the strong performances by Colin Firth and Toni Collette for carrying the story. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/843999/the-staircase-review-colin-firth-and-toni-collette-are-equally-strong-in-this-expansion-of-the-true-crime-saga/) - **The Ringer**, Alison Herman (75/100, inferred): The HBO Max series distinguishes itself in the true crime genre by widening its scope to the Peterson family dynamics and especially by turning meta in its later episodes to examine the documentary crew and media frenzy around the case. The critic highlights how this approach poses broader questions about storytelling, audience attachment, and the influence of the medium itself. [Read](https://www.theringer.com/2022/05/05/tv/the-staircase-hbo-max-review-colin-firth-toni-collette) ## Details - **Created by:** António Campos - **Creator:** António Campos - **Director:** António Campos, Leigh Janiak - **Writer:** António Campos, Craig Shilowich, Emily Kaczmarek, Maggie Cohn - **Cinematography:** Lyle Vincent, Michael Svitak - **Editor:** Eric Spang, Sofía Subercaseaux, Shelby Siegel, Christopher Rand - **Music:** Saunder Jurriaans, Danny Bensi - **Production design:** Michael Shaw - **Costume design:** Jennifer Starzyk - **Producer:** Craig Shilowich, Christina M. Fitzgerald - **Cast:** Colin Firth as Michael Peterson; Toni Collette as Kathleen Peterson; Michael Stuhlbarg as David Rudolf; Dane DeHaan as Clayton Peterson; Olivia DeJonge as Caitlin Atwater; Patrick Schwarzenegger as Todd Peterson; Sophie Turner as Margaret Ratliff; Odessa Young as Martha Ratliff - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 5 May 2022 - **Genres:** Drama, Crime - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8TW6Ap-IYE ## Where to watch in the US - Netflix: streaming - HBO Max: streaming, uhd - Hulu: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Apple TV: buy, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy, sd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, AZ, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IS, IT, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *The Staircase* (2004): De Lestrade’s original documentary, which this series cannot stop looking over its shoulder at - *Anatomy of a Fall* (2023), Fi1m 86: A husband dies, a wife stands trial, and a marriage is dissected in court — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/anatomy-of-a-fall.md) - *The Jinx* (2015), Fi1m 77: A documentary about a rich man who talks too much to the cameras filming him — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/the-jinx.md) - *Landscapers* (2021), Fi1m 78: A British true-crime drama that keeps showing you the set and the story being built — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/landscapers.md) - *The Night Of* (2016): Eight episodes of a murder case where the process grinds harder than the mystery --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/the-staircase-2022