SundanceTV is bringing back The Staircase, your first/next true crime obsession

By Sam Barsanti | January 14, 2016 | 9:45pm

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As Serial and Making A Murderer have helped turn true-crime documentaries from totally engrossing experiences that we privately obsess over to totally engrossing experiences that we openly obsess over, the hipper murder-aficionados out there have been quick to remind the world of a documentary series from 2004 called The Staircase. Chronicling the investigation and murder trial of a novelist named Michael Peterson whose wife supposedly died after falling down a set of stairs (or “staircase”), The Staircase was Serial before it was cool and Making A Murderer before we all got sick of hearing about it. Unfortunately for anyone who didn’t realize how interesting murder is until well after 2004, actually getting a copy of The Staircase is now surprisingly difficult, which has the added effect of making the series even hipper than it was before.

Now, though, in an attempt to capitalize on those other famous murderers, SundanceTV is bringing back The Staircase. The full, eight-part series will be available for streaming on the SundanceTV app and website starting tomorrow, along with two follow-up installments made in 2013 called The Staircase: Last Chance. This may diminish the series’ hipster cred, but that’s a fair price to pay for giving people on the internet another complicated murder case to argue about.