Not long ago, comically bad re-enactments were the cornerstone of true-crime movies and TV shows. Despite their cheesiness, these staged scenes served a purpose: to bring scenarios to life, of course, but also to offer some relief from talking-head interviews and still shots of photographs and documents.
But in the last decade or so, the number of true-crime stories that have received scripted treatment, often casting A-list actors, has exploded. It’s a phenomenon due in part to Ryan Murphy’s true-crime anthology series “American Crime Story” — which debuted in 2016 and has taken on the O.J. Simpson saga and the assassination of Gianni Versace — and more recently “Monster.”
Coming this summer is a Paramount+ mini-series about the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the child beauty queen who was found strangled to death in her family’s Colorado home in 1996. It will star Melissa McCarthy and Clive Owen as JonBenet’s parents. And over at Hulu, a scripted series about the Murdaugh family murders is being developed. Like their predecessors, these series will most likely aim to hew closely to their stranger-than-fiction origins while giving the creators artistic license in how the cases are brought to life onscreen.
Ahead of those, check out these four offerings that give such stories the dramatized treatment to great effect.
Mini-Series
“The Staircase”
Few true-crime stories have held my attention over the years as this one about Michael Peterson, a North Carolina novelist and aspiring politician who was charged with the death of his wife, the telecom executive Kathleen Peterson. She was found crumpled and bleeding at the base of the staircase in their upscale Durham home in 2001.
The 2004 Peabody-winning documentary series “The Staircase,” from the director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, which followed Peterson throughout the early years of his ordeal, made this case famous. The series was later supplemented with a two-part documentary sequel from de Lestrade, who returned to Peterson and his family in 2012 and 2013, and then with three more episodes of further updates. In 2018, Netflix bundled and made available all 13 installments.
That may seem like more than enough, but don’t underestimate the eight-episode biographical drama with the same title, “The Staircase,” which aired in 2022 on HBO Max and stars Colin Firth and Toni Collette as Michael and Kathleen. The performances are stellar — both actors earned Emmy nominations for the roles — and it allows viewers to experience the yarn though a lens other than de Lestrade’s. The series dedicates an episode to the owl theory, a hypothesis that gets only passing attention in the documentary.
Mini-Series
“A Friend of the Family”
This nine-episode scripted mini-series, also from 2022, explores the story of Jan Broberg, who was repeatedly kidnapped by Robert “B” Berchtold, a predator who infiltrated the Brobergs’ churchgoing Idaho community in the 1970s and manipulated Jan’s parents in ways that have to be heard to be believed.
The show was based in part on the 2017 documentary “Abducted in Plain Sight” from the director Skye Borgman, which was based on the book “Stolen Innocence” by Jan’s mother.
The mini-series stars Jake Lacy as Berchtold; Anna Paquin and Colin Hanks as Mary Ann and Bob, Jan’s parents; and Hendrix Yancey and Mckenna Grace as the young and the teenage Jan.
What sets this show apart is the real Jan Broberg’s involvement in the project. When the executive producers Nick Antosca and Alex Hedlund approached her in March 2019, they immediately stood out from other Hollywood types who were trying to acquire the rights to her harrowing tale. “There was care and concern,” Broberg told The New York Times in 2022. “So I was like, ‘I think they get it.’”
Broberg served as a producer on the series, and she makes a cameo in the finale, playing a therapist treating the teen version of herself.
Feature Film
“The Bling Ring”
For some lighter fare, try this 2013 biographical crime drama from Sofia Coppola about a group of Los Angeles teenagers who broke into the homes of celebrities — including Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, Lindsay Lohan and Megan Fox — where they stole shoes, clothing, watches and rolls of cash, among other belongings.
It stars Emma Watson, Claire Julien, Katie Chang, Taissa Farmiga, Israel Broussard and Leslie Mann, and was drawn from a 2010 Vanity Fair article and real case files, offering a stylish, moody but remarkably accurate depiction of what transpired during the crimes in 2008 and 2009.
The film “sticks to the contours of a true story that seems to have floated out of the early work of Bret Easton Ellis,” the author of “American Psycho,” our critic A.O. Scott wrote in his review.
It’s also a technological trip back in time: The crimes were made possible by the internet, which the young miscreants used to learn when the celebrities were traveling and to pinpoint the locations of their homes.
If you still want more, you can hear directly from a couple of the thieves in the 2022 Netflix docuseries “The Real Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist.”
Podcast
“American Scandal” Season 14: “Waco”
This long-running Wondery podcast hosted by Lindsay Graham is among the very best because it manages to stay riveting while going into great depth and detail over its seven episodes. This is accomplished in part because the series uses narrative storytelling to bring historical events to life, often through deft but abundant re-enactments of conversations.
In this season, from 2020, we learn about the federal government’s siege in 1993 of the stronghold of the Branch Davidians, a cult led by David Koresh and based just outside Waco, Texas. But this saga really started many years earlier, when Koresh — whose paranoia ballooned out of control alongside his power — was still a child named Vernon Howell.
Maya Salam is an editor and reporter, focusing primarily on pop culture across genres.
The post The Best True Crime to Stream: Dramatizations That Deliver appeared first on New York Times.
