If you were one of the many people who loved the 2015 docu-series Making a Murderer, here’s some good news: the show officially has a follow-up series, Convicting a Murderer, and it’s started production!
For a refresher, Making a Murderer follows Wisconsin man Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey, who were convicted of murdering a woman named Teresa Halbach in 2005. It gained both critical acclaim and general public popularity, and even some celebrities praised the series on Twitter. Others weren’t so happy with it, claiming that it presented a bias against law enforcement that skewed viewers’ perceptions of the case.
In place of Making a Murderer’s writers and directors Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, documentary filmmaker Shawn Rech and attorney Andrew Hale will take the helm for Convicting a Murderer, which is being differentiated from a sequel as a “follow-up series.”
Convicting a Murderer is going to have eight episodes (compared to Making a Murderer’s 10), and will center on the same people, with a slightly different focus on law enforcement’s case against Avery and Dassey. Rech has noted that they plan to address the claims of bias, with more appearances from people like Tom Fassbender, the lead investigator on the case, who wasn’t a part of the first series.
Rech said of the first series that “many on the law enforcement side of the story could not, or would not, participate in the series, which resulted in a one-sided analysis of the case,” which is a fair argument for why it may have come across as biased. But looking to the future, Rech mentioned the use of a “broader perspective” that might make the series a bit less controversial.
So if you need me in the meantime, I’ll be re-watching Making a Murderer in preparation!