"How fascinatingly horrible were the Murdaugh family? Very, according to how much true-crime content they've generated. There's already been a hit podcast about them, untangling a narrative that began in enviable luxury and ended with a sordid double murder. There's already been a TV documentary. Now the Murdaughs complete the set with Murdaugh: Death in the Family, the plush fictionalised drama retelling the same awful tale."
"Their legal acumen and wealth, combined with a gangster-ish propensity for exploitation and bullying, give them a level of impunity that Alex blithely pushes to its limit. Patricia Arquette is Alex's wife Maggie, who worries that both his philandering and his opioid addiction have returned and on the second point at least, she is correct. Edging out his more established co-stars to deliver the best characterisation of all is Johnny Berchtold as Alex and Maggie's son, Paul,"
"An alcoholic whose beer-chugging has a desperate mania about it, Paul is infuriated by his father's dismissive labelling of him as the family screw-up, an insult to which he habitually reacts by proving Pops right. Corroded by power and money Johnny Berchtold as Paul Murdaugh. Photograph: Daniel Delgado Jr/Disney Paul is almost catatonic with drunken self-hatred as, in 2019, he takes some friends out on a speedboat at night, ignoring their fearful screams as the craft goes faster."
The Murdaugh family story follows a rise from enviable luxury to a sordid sequence culminating in a double murder and wide true-crime coverage. The dramatization Murdaugh: Death in the Family fictionalizes those events and focuses on a trio of strong performances. Jason Clarke portrays Alex Murdaugh as a powerful personal injury lawyer from a South Carolina dynasty whose legal skill, wealth, and bullying grant him dangerous impunity. Patricia Arquette plays Maggie, concerned about Alex's philandering and opioid relapse. Johnny Berchtold embodies Paul, a self-hating, alcoholic teen whose reckless 2019 speedboat outing signals escalating tragedy.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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