Making A Murderer [Netflix - Documentary Series]

Having finished it a few days ago, the way the show was put together made me feel a tad uneasy. I know this is probably heresy for the thousands of people who became engrossed in the documentary over very short periods time, but I'm going to be honest: I found the decision to position it as a 'binge-watch' courtroom thriller detracted from the piece both journalistically and artistically. If the outcome of the trail had been made clear at an earlier stage, I believe the filmmakers would have put the viewers in a stronger position to analyse and engage with the material. Yeah, I say this aware of the fact that it would likely have lacked the cultural crossover appeal in that case, but IMO it would have made for a stronger documentary. I also think the structural decisions sort of downplay the tragedy of Teresa Halbach - somebody was really murdered here, and compared to similarly themed documentaries I feel that's something that's handled somewhat carelessly. And in the 'internet detective' age, I continue to find it unfortunate the almost witch-hunt impact documentaries like this have - although that, to be be fair, is not necessarily a problem with the production itself.

The selective perspective is also something I found problematic. Strangely, I found that Steven remained an enigma - which made me less willing to get on the directors' and lawyer's argument that he was innocent. Don't get me wrong - in terms of portraying the class and prosecution-favouring biases inherent in the US court system, it does a good job, and it's a subject worth constantly exploring (if well covered already in IMO a number of superior productions - but the problem hasn't gone away, and is unlikely to anytime soon). I also believe that there was more than enough reasonable doubt to make the verdicts seem quite outrageous, especially in Brendan's case, assuming definitive evidence wasn't held back in the series. In that sense there was a potential miscarriage of justice here worth documenting. But perhaps ironically the decision to spend so much time with Steven's defence and efforts to humanise him left me on the fence, despite the filmmakers' IMO clear position on said fence. In the end, I didn't feel that I got a good grasp on Avery as an individual, so I didn't fully buy into some of the arguments being presented.

While series 1 of Serial wasn't perfect, I think it's an interesting comparison with this. Sarah Koenig I felt managed to explore a case where there was very possibly a wrongful conviction. The difference is I felt that presented the case in a more balanced, even-handed way, where all parties were given sufficient space to make their cases. Listeners were left with questions that were purposely difficult to answer, with no definitive 'correct' interpretation. Despite the lack of the filmmakers' own voices here, it strangely feels like a more explicitly authored piece of work - and while some of the footage and evidence presented here is compelling and at times shocking, the 'whole' doesn't feel quite as comprehensively presented as its ten-hour running time would suggest.