The Staircase (Season 1)

Watch The Staircase (Soupçons, 2004) online on iFILM — a documentary crime series by Oscar-winning French director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. In 2001, novelist Michael Peterson called 911 to report his wife Kathleen had fallen down the stairs at their home in Durham, North Carolina. She was dead by the time help arrived. Peterson was charged with murder shortly after.

De Lestrade was given extraordinary access: the defense team, the family home, private strategy sessions with the lawyers. His cameras roll through the pre-trial hearings, the courtroom testimony, the moments when the case seems to turn — in both directions. Nothing is dramatized. Everything happened.

What unfolds across multiple installments is one of the most disorienting true-crime records ever put on screen. The case kept generating new evidence long after the verdict, and the director kept filming. For anyone who has watched scripted legal dramas and wondered what an actual defense looks like from the inside — this is it. Stream The Staircase online on iFILM.