‘Staircase Murders’ stumbles and falls

In 2005, the Sundance Channel presented “The Staircase,” Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s deeply fascinating and widely lauded six-hour cinema verite documentary about the 2003 murder trial of minor-league novelist Michael Peterson. (The eponymous staircase is the one Peterson’s wife, Kathleen, was found at the bottom of, dead and bloody.) Now Lifetime has put together a movie on the subject, with nearly the same title -- “The Staircase Murders” -- although it is technically based on the book “A Perfect Husband,” by crime writer and TV commentator Aphrodite Jones. Clearly they would like you to make a connection.

Unfortunately, it’s a comparison made only to the new movie’s disadvantage. While real events have, of course, been the basis of great films, all that “The Staircase Murders” adds to the sum of existing material on the Peterson case is the loss of the time it takes to watch it.

Even the best documentaries only approximate reality, and Lestrade’s version has been attacked as biased against the prosecution or at least incomplete as regards the facts. Nevertheless, it made for suspenseful viewing and forced you to think about truth and lies and the fickleness even of your own beliefs. Above all, it let you see Peterson being Peterson, where here you get the less complex effect of Treat Williams wearing his clothes.

The first film’s real subject was not so much Peterson’s guilt or innocence as it was the trial process itself. It also showed how ego shapes what is supposed to be a search for objective truth, as lawyers (Kevin Pollak plays Peterson’s), cops, experts and scientists seek to protect their territory and support their prejudices.

Although one could certainly make a good fictional or semi-fictional movie on that subject, what we have in “The Staircase Murders” is just a re-created crime story, a fancier version of “America’s Most Wanted” without the fun of a number to call. It does have the advantage of being able to pull back to work Lestrade’s documentary crew into the narrative -- although Lestrade has been changed from a Frenchman to an Englishwoman -- but not much is done with this, or any of the other deeper issues the story suggests.

If “The Staircase” cheated at all in Peterson’s favor -- and in the end it made him seem a fairly creepy guy -- “The Staircase Murders” never helps you believe that he might not have done it; the defense theory, formulated by celebrity forensic scientist Henry Lee -- that she fell, basically, but in a complicated way -- is never given the weight necessary to let you find it plausible.

Such story as there is here, and the only real opportunity you get to care about any of the characters, follows the growing rift between Peterson and stepdaughter Caitlin (Samaire Armstrong, from “The O.C.”), who goes from fealty to fear in a kind of “Shadow of a Doubt” scenario. Armstrong does a nice job with what she has; Pollak walks through a part that doesn’t require much more than showing up for it; and Williams (“Everwood”) tries hard to play Peterson as conceivably either innocent or guilty, but to little avail.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

*

‘The Staircase Murders’

Where: Lifetime

When: 8 p.m. Sunday

Rating: TV-14-V (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14, with an advisory for violence)