The Staircase Teaser: The True Crime Saga Becomes An HBO Max Series Starring Colin Firth And Toni Collette

HBO Max has released a trailer for the upcoming Max Original limited series "The Staircase," and consider us intrigued. The series is based on a true story — one I'll admit that I'm not at all familiar with. In the trailer, we meet what appears to be a loving couple: Michael Peterson, played by Colin Firth, and Kathleen Peterson, played by Toni Collette. They have grown kids, a life that appears to be happy, and enough money to have a giant house. But when Kathleen falls to her death down a staircase in the family home, the media starts to swarm. The death looks suspicious, and the husband is always the prime suspect. 

If the story weren't interesting enough, the series has a fabulous cast to support it. In addition to Firth and Collette, we have Michael Stuhlbarg, Juliette Binoche, Dane DeHaan, Olivia DeJonge, Rosemarie DeWitt, Tim Guinee, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sophie Turner, Vincent Vermignon, Odessa Young, and Parker Posey. It's hard to go wrong with a group like that. 

Full disclosure: I will admit that hearing Firth do an American accent is jarring. This is my issue to overcome.

Here is the logline for "The Staircase."

Based on a true story, THE STAIRCASE explores the life of Michael Peterson (Firth), his sprawling North Carolina family, and the suspicious death of his wife, Kathleen Peterson (Collette).

Between the ominous music playing over the footage and the line about some things coming to light that shouldn't, I would assume that Michael Peterson is either a murderer or an accessory to murder, but I honestly liked this trailer so much that I don't want to look up what really happened. If you do want to do some more research, though, you should check out the Netflix documentary series of the same name; the filmmakers behind that series are depicted as the documentary crew who appear in this trailer. 

"The Staircase" was created by Antonio Campos ("The Devil All the Time"), and written and executive produced by Campos and Maggie Cohn ("American Crime Story"), who both serve as showrunners. Campos also directed six episodes of the series, while "Fear Street" trilogy helmer Leigh Janiak directed the remaining two. The first three episodes of "The Staircase" will debut on May 5, 2022, and the remaining five will debut each week through June 9, 2022.