Hulu’s Sinister Crime Series sensation
From the Netflix docuseries “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal” to HBO’s “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty,” much has been said on-screen about the famous South Carolina family whose legacy collapsed amid murder, theft and addiction. Now, Hulu is giving the infamous saga the Hollywood treatment in a fictional miniseries, “Murdaugh: Death in the Family.” Created by Michael D. Fuller and Erin Lee Carr, the show is a compelling portrait of greed, cruelty and arrogance. The eight-episode series recaps what’s so compelling about this particular family and why they ultimately set themselves on fire.
Based on the “Murdaugh Murders Podcast” by Mandy Matney (played on the series by Brittany Snow), the series begins on the evening of June 7, 2021 at the Murdaugh estate, Moselle, in Hampton, South Carolina. Night has fallen and as the camera rolls, the audience sees blood dripping and pooling around the doghouses. A distraught Alex Murdaugh (played by Jason Clarke) is seen surveying the grounds. He sees the bodies of his wife Maggie (Patricia Arquette) and son Paul (Johnny Berchtold) before calling the police. The scene is shocking. But it soon becomes clear that the Murdaughs were always going to implode.
The show then returns to February 22, 2019, another infamous day in the Murdaugh family. The sun rises over the Moselle as viewers find Maggie and the family’s beloved housekeeper, Gloria (Kathleen Wilhoite), preparing an evening in honor of Alex’s father, Randolph (Gerald McRaney). Alex is also present, but beneath his gregarious personality lies a deep insecurity and pressure that centers on his position at his law firm, his mounting debts and a debilitating painkiller addiction. Meanwhile, 19-year-old Paul, after another night out with a lot of drinking, comes home with a large tree branch stuck in the steering wheel of his car. His own personal failures and limitations are compounded when his older brother, Buster (Will Harrison), the golden child, announces that he is going to law school.
The intense coddling and dysfunction within the family comes to a head at the end of the show opener when a drunken Paul crashes a boat, killing his best friend’s girlfriend, Mallory (Madeline Popovich), and injuring everyone on board. It’s a heinous crime, which Alex and Randolph immediately try to sweep under the rug when they arrive at the hospital. Moreover, it marks the first crack in the Murdaugh facade, which would eventually lead to complete disintegration in the years to come.
With the relentless coverage of the Murdaughs on national news, and especially amid the plethora of podcasts and docuseries, many details about Maggie and Paul’s family and killers have long been public knowledge. However, Fuller, Carr and the actors are adept at truly immersing the audience in the Murdaugh ecosystem, especially highlighting the men who used their privilege and wealth to gain dominance over this South Carolina community for generations. Not until tenacious local reporter Mandy Matney does it begins to uncover the truth about the Murdaughs and it becomes clear that their buried skeletons date back decades.
From patriarch Randolph onwards, the Murdaughs are not a sympathetic group. They dominate their Hampton community using coercive control, wrapped in a thin veil of charm, to protect themselves and deprive others. The show cleverly focuses inward. While Maggie and Paul are not necessarily likable characters, Arquette is exceptional as always, portraying a woman of a certain age trapped in a life she thought she wanted, with no way out other than leaning further into servitude and passivity. While she is certainly not blameless in her contributions to her sons’ crimes, she is a victim of misogyny and archaic patriarchal ideals.
“Murdaugh: Death in the Family” highlights how Alex’s obsession with authority, Maggie’s constant coddling, and their shared fixation on appearances warp their marriage and personalities, which in turn warps Paul and Buster’s sense of morality. This is best seen in episode 3, “Kokomo,” where, following Paul’s indictment for Mallory’s death, Alex takes the family on a lavish vacation in the Caribbean. It’s an obscene display of recklessness.
The series weaves together various topics and challenges Alex faced, including a lawsuit from Mallory’s parents, the revelation that he had been stealing from his underprivileged clients, his substance abuse problems, and Maggie’s dissatisfaction with their marriage, and shows how these all destroyed the immunity he had built and courageously exercised throughout his life.
“Murdaugh: Death in the Family” is a deeply compelling character study of a man so deeply rooted in his own allure, anchored by legal, political and financial influence, that the idea of being swallowed up by his own monstrosity was foreign to him. Yet, as the show shows, we often have to answer for our transgressions, no matter how long it takes. You pay up front or back, but the bill always comes due.
The first three episodes of “Murdaugh: Death in the Family” premiere on Hulu on October 15, with new episodes released weekly on Thursdays.
