Sky has released the first look trailer for The Staircase, the true crime drama series starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette and inspired by the story of Michael Peterson.
Based on a real-life case, the eight-part series will focus on Michael Peterson (Firth) and the death of his second wife, Kathleen Peterson (Collette), who he claimed to have found lying at the bottom of a staircase in their North Carolina home.
The series will arrive sometime this spring and charts how a now-famous documentary series (later titled The Staircase) on the Peterson family and case began filming shortly after Michael’s arrest.
Co-produced by Annapurna Television, the limited series – airing on HBO Max in the US – is written and executive produced by showrunners Antonio Campos (The Devil All The Time, Christine) and Maggie Cohn (Versace). Campos also directs six episodes, with Leigh Janiak directing two episodes.
“This house is filled with so many memories,” says Firth’s Michael Peterson in the short teaser trailer. As grainy home footage of the Peterson family in happier times plays, he continues in voiceover: “Family is all we got. We’re not perfect, God knows. But we’ve survived, because we stick together, and we love each other.”
However, we soon switch to a more sombre tone, as police sirens blare and one of Michael’s sons says: “Kathleen’s dead. Dad found her at the bottom of the stairs. I think she fell.”
“It’s fiction. It’s fabrication,” Michael later says in the teaser, when the idea that he murdered his wife in “cold blood” is mentioned.
We also see flashbacks to the Petersons’ marriage, with Kathleen even cracking an ominous joke about how she hopes her mysterious husband’s name is in fact ‘Michael’ – “Unless he’s playing the long-con.”
The starry supporting cast includes Dopesick’s Michael Stuhlbarg, Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner, Chocolat’s Juliette Binoche, The Amazing Spider-Man’s Dane DeHaan, Lost in Space’s Parker Posey, The Society’s Olivia DeJonge and Inventing Anna’s Tim Guinee.
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