Parents' Guide to The Staircase

Startling and compelling, this true crime miniseries wrings new juice from a well-worn criminal case with deft and involving characterizations from a powerhouse cast. Make no mistake, The Staircase's deck is stacked: Not only are Toni Collette and Colin Firth given big, meaty, fleshed-out parts to illuminate, all the actors in this drama are making a meal out of even small parts and bringing them to vivid life. They have plenty to work with, too; in the hands of writer Maggie Cohn (American Crime Story) and showrunner Antonio Campos (The Devil All the Time), the members of the Peterson family emerge as fully realized characters, including Kathleen, which is rare in a media milieu in which the lives of female victims are often condensed to a few scenes in order to focus more fully on the horrible details of their deaths.

Instead, we see Kathleen at work, at home, with her family; she's imperfect and drinks too much and is sometimes cranky with her longtime husband and family members, but she also feels real, which makes the crime (or was it an accident?) all the more horrible to witness. Part of The Staircase's intrigue is that it walks through each possibility in the case -- Kathleen fell to her death, Michael bludgeoned her, she was attacked by predatory wildlife, and so on. It's fascinating to see the new light each version casts on facts, yet particularly the scenes that depict Kathleen accidentally falling are devastating. Bloody, disoriented, inebriated, she slips, falls, and then simply can't get up to save herself as she bleeds to death. It's a death that feels so real and relatable, viewers may find themselves wanting to hold onto their own bannisters extra-tight.