Murder on TV
Making a Murderer, a 10-episode Netflix documentary series, follows the twisted legal saga of Steven Avery, a Wisconsin native who served 18 years in prison for the sexual assault and attempted murder of Penny Beerntsen. Avery was exonerated in 2003 but rearrested in 2005 and convicted of a totally different murder after a byzantine sequence of legal maneuvers.
Similar to the hit podcast Serial, the show gains its spellbinding power by delving ever-deeper into the ordinary, messy, ruined lives of those who run, and run afoul of, the criminal justice system. The result is a thrilling—and ambiguous—look at a part of American life typically shrouded in secrecy.
When the series debuted in December, it fed into a growing national conversation about cronyism and corruption in America's judicial systems, prosecutorial misconduct, standards of evidence, and the need for criminal justice reform.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Murder on TV."
