Alex Murdaugh found guilty as Netflix series Murdaugh Murders explodes
Few crime serials hit Netflix’s top 10 as a verdict comes down. But like the facts in the strange case of disgraced lawyer Alex Murdaugh, you couldn’t script this.
Murder, money, and lots and lots of panoramic shots of bayous. Yes, it looks like another US crime doco has landed on Netflix.
But gosh, the streamer’s timing just gets better and better. Few true crime serials manage to hit the top 10 just as the killer gets in the dock, never mind when the verdict comes down.
Alex Murdaugh, a one-time, big-time lawyer and heir to a legal dynasty in South Carolina’s low country, has today been found guilty of shooting wife Maggie and his son Paul in cold blood at the family hunting lodge in June 2021.
Murdaugh, 54, was found guilty of two counts each of murder and weapons possession. He killed Paul with a shotgun and wife Maggie with the assault rifle Paul used for hunting wild pigs on the sprawling property.
“The evidence of guilt is overwhelming,” Judge Clifton Newman said after the jury’s guilty verdict was read.
Murdaugh killed the pair after realising his years of stealing millions from his law firm and from clients to feed his hidden opioid addiction was about to go public. While evidence put Murdaugh at the scene shortly before the murders, the guns have never been found, and there is no bloodstained clothing or other direct evidence that could prove he was the killer.
Netflix’s Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal will surely rocket even higher in the charts in the wake of the shock trial result.
But where does this doco sit in the pantheon of TV crime? And was it all a bit icky that this doco was being watched by millions - with its pretty clear conclusions about what Murdaugh did - as a jury was considering its verdict at the very same time?
The deaths have rocked the small town where the Murdaugh family have all but controlled the courts and the local law firm for generations.
All very sad, all very gory. So do we need another voyeuristic crime documentary about it all?
You can’t scroll to the end of your streaming browser without hitting a thousand true crime shows, docos or dramas, on the way down. And it’s always better when there’s a real mystery or a clear miscarriage of justice – both in terms of a narrative and, yes, from a moral standpoint.
True crime really can bring about justice. Think of the power of The Jinx – that most supreme of crime documentaries where rich man Robert Durst admits in the very last minutes, on camera, that he “killed them all.”
In streaming’s sister world of podcasts, think of the superlative, groundbreaking work of Serial or this masthead’s Teacher’s Pet or Shandee’s Story: true crime transfigured into muscular, considered, gripping journalism that can uncover killers and release the innocent.
If it’s not about journalism and justice, you can always hope for a rollicking yarn that says something about the wider world.
Think Tiger King and its commentary of the gaudiness of America and the animal trade, or Big Big Country, that masterful doco about the poisonous crimes of a mass hippie sex cult that camps in Colorado, to the horror of their neighbours.
But then there’s hours and hours of pure Crime Channel schlock to wander through.
And sometimes, there is something like The Ted Bundy Tapes – the Netflix hit about that most horrific of serial killers – that makes you think this is all a bit sadistic and too far.
At least these are all documentaries rooted in fact. Never mind something as horrible as Netflix’s other recent hit, the drama Dahmer – where every one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s horrific, cruel, sadistic killings of young boys and men is turned into “dramatic art”. Don’t bother with it.
But where do the Murdaugh murders sit? The story is compelling and intriguing.
The son, Paul, is the focus for the first two episodes as this black sheep of the small town legal lions drinks himself into oblivion, commandeers a boat on a night out, and causes a crash that kills one of his schoolmates.
As the doco makers interview his ex-girlfriend, her mates, the family of the girl killed on the boat, it is made clear that Paul was never going to go down for manslaughter or any other charge.
The Murdaughs, as the local solicitors, appeared to control prosecutors, cops and judges.
And then two years drag on, and Paul and his mother are dead.
What then comes out about his father revolves around the most bizarre string of events – Alex gets shot, but it appears he arranged it himself. There’s allegations of a teen killed years earlier due to secret gay rumours, and millions of dollars stolen from legal clients.
If anything Murdaugh Murders is too short. All the revelations about the family and the central crime are packed into the final hour.
Therefore, we’re left as viewers without any great revelation about the murders. It’s all in the papers and most importantly, it’s all in the courts.
As for the production, it’s fine. The pace is sometimes off, the editing is sketchy, and there are no particularly colourful characters that grip you among the interviewees.
But then again, this is all about death in a normal town. And the most interesting characters are the ones they couldn’t interview.
But is Murdaugh Murders top of the charts because you can watch it alongside a trial in real time?
At least the trial, and the viewing figures, will likely guarantee Netflix a sequel.
****
There’s no murder in our other watch for the week — just a load of mopey teenagers and maudlin strings playing constantly in the background.
OK there’s a bit of self-immolation, but what else do you expect in an Australian girls’ dorm?
Bad Behaviour, Stan’s latest original series, is the latest in the “Picnic on Hanging Rock” genre this country seems to have perfected – private school girls who love nothing more than going into the woods, sharing intense silences and Sapphic stares.
Based on the schooltime memoir of Brisbane-based writer Rebecca Starford, Bad Behaviour tells the tale of a bunch of young students sent to the bush for a year by their posh school to “learn resilience” and “connect with nature” without much in the way of adult supervision.
The result? Well, they’re teenage girls — they rip each other apart of course.
Jana McKinnon is the not-so-rich girl who finds memories of her posh bush school days flooding back when she runs into an old school chum (Yerin Ha) who’s less than keen to see her.
Through four, sometimes awfully slow, hour-long episodes, we see McKinnon – who along with the rest of the cast, plays her character both as a schoolgirl and an adult – remembering the most horrific bullying and the deepest isolations, only to find other girls have different recollections.
There’s a lot that intrigues about Bad Behaviour – especially that concept of how you’ll never find two people who’ll remember their schooldays in quite the same way.
But this dormitory drama lacks both levity and a focal point at times.
There’s a lot of awful bullying which can be hard to watch, but weirdly without much drama.
There’s not a murder, not a great scandal. Even without a bombastic flourish you’d expect in other teen dramas, the plot points fail to come together.
And the pace can be very difficult. Even the most basic dialogue seems to demand three beats before the other actor talks. You feel like this show is in need of a good editor.
But there are some terrific performances. Ha is the standout as the bully’s favourite target who grows into someone more powerful and graceful than anyone could imagine.
Markella Kavenaugh is simply malevolent as the vicious bully by whom McKinnon is tormented as a girl and by whom she is seduced as a woman.
And Daya Czepanski is very good as the poor old present-day housemate who thinks they’re in with a chance with McKinnon, only for the latter’s schoolgirl obsessions to start getting in the way.
Murdaugh Murders streaming on Netflix.
Bad Behaviour, Stan
