'The Staircase' adds dramatic new levels to Michael Peterson's murder trial

(CNN)There are many levels to The Staircase, a drama as much about the making of the docuseries chronicling Michael Peterson's murder trial as the salacious case itself. While the episodes occasionally grind too slowly, Colin Firth's riveting work as the hard-to-read suspect elevates this HBO Max limited series several steps above standard true-crime fare.

The patriarch of a sprawling blended North Carolina family, Peterson wound up being tried and convicted for the death of his wife Kathleen (Toni Collette), who was found dead at the bottom of the staircase in the couple's mansion after her husband's frantic 911 call.

Suspicion quickly turned to Peterson, a novelist, though the questions of motive unleashed an entirely separate dimension to the proceedings, which attracted the attention of a French documentary crew eager to provide a window in the US justice system.

This series thus operates on multiple tracks, covering the case against Peterson and its impact on his family, flashing back to provide glimpses of the Petersons' life together, shifting to portray the documentarians wrestling with their own feelings about how to present it all, and finally jumping ahead to the strange aftermath of Peterson's story, which in a sense connects them all. (Netflix, notably, revisited the original 2004 series in 2018, revealing the toll of the intervening years on The Staircase's protagonist.)