What's missing from “Making a Murderer”: How the riveting documentary’s flaws actually fuel its popularity
SalonOver the course of the last two weeks, “Making a Murderer,” Netflix’s original docuseries about the incarceration of 53-year-old Wisconsin resident Steven Avery, has become something of an underground hit. The most riveting moments of the docuseries are in what should, by all rights, be nothing but dry courtroom back-and-forth; “Making a Murderer” makes Avery’s defense lawyers, Dean Strang and Jerry Buting, into careful, brilliant, avenging heroes as they steadily chip away at piece after piece of the prosecution’s flimsy case. Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” is one of a few documentaries and docuseries trying to capitalize on the fervor of audience fact-finding and truth-seeking; Discovery’s “The Killing Fields,” debuting tonight, is another, and while Ryan Murphy’s upcoming “American Crime Story” is a scripted series, it aims for the same sweet spot — the first season will be "The People v. O.J. One gets the sense in both “Serial” and “The Jinx” that the truth led the fact-finders into unexpected directions—whether that is the envelope reading “Beverley Hills” or Syed telling Koenig, “I mean, you don’t really know me.” “Making a Murderer” lacks that sense of central storytelling, and as a result is neither quite as artful nor quite as comprehensively investigative as either “The Jinx” or “Serial.” Instead what comes through in the Netflix series is agenda; the series took 10 years to make, as filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos were essentially embedded with the Avery clan from the 2006 trials and onward.
History of this topic
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