New Aussie true crime show gives viewers rare look inside jury room

A fascinating new Australian true crime series premiering on SBS this week takes viewers behind the closed doors of a jury room on a criminal trial.

A fascinating new Australian true crime series premiering on SBS this week takes viewers behind the closed doors of a jury room on a criminal trial.

Part social experiment, part reality show, The Jury: Death on the Staircase takes as its inspiration a real-life manslaughter case, acted out word-for-word from court transcripts. Identifying details have been changed, and actors play the people in question - a Sydney gay couple, one of whom is found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their inner-city townhouse, having apparently met a violent end.

Neighbours say they were a fiery pair who were prone to arguments – but the dead man’s surviving partner is bereft, and swears he had nothing to do with his death.

Was this a terrible accident, or a deadly case of domestic violence?

Jurors listen on in The Jury: Death on the Staircase.

Determing this is the responsibility of 12 ordinary Australians who make up the new jury for this televised mock case.

The judge, the accused and witnesses are all (very convincing) actors playing their roles, but the twelve jurors are everyday people from a wide demographic of ages, racial and social backgrounds who’ve been enlisted for the experiment.

Across five episodes, the jurors examine the case and attempt to come up with a decisive verdict, as the show poses a very uncomfortable question: Is our jury system actually fair and fit for purpose?

The jurors are shown (staged) crime scene photos …

… and react with horror.

It makes for fascinating viewing, as the imperfect nature of a jury system is soon revealed.

Prejudices and pre-assumptions are immediately apparent: One juror, a gay woman, admits that despite having not heard any evidence yet, she’s more likely to believe that the man’s partner isn’t responsible for his death, because they’re a same-sex couple.

Conversations in the jury room very wildly off track as other jurors squabble, theorise, and jump to conclusions despite all instructions not to do just that. It’s an unavoidable fact that each juror brings their own biases and prejudices to the case, but the question becomes how well they’ll be able to cast them aside to examine the evidence presented.

Thanks to some stellar performances from the actors involved – including harrowing re-enactments of the alleged crime scene – the show unfolds as a proper whoddunit (with more than a few similarities to 2022 HBO true crime series The Staircase).

One to file alongside Alone Australia as another very watchable SBS reality TV show with a difference.

The Jury: Death on the Staircase premieres 8.30pm Wednesday November 6 on SBS and SBS On Demand.

Originally published as New Aussie true crime show gives viewers rare look inside jury room