The Defense Will Not Rest

Amanda Knox’s scripted miniseries about her ordeal tells us nothing new.

- ROXANA HADADI

IN THE LIMITED SERIES The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, created by K. J. Steinberg (This Is Us) and executive-produced by Knox, the infamous American coed (played by Grace Van Patten) studying abroad in Italy describes herself more than once as “weird.” She imagines flyers animating themselves and beckoning her; she lets whimsical visions shape her sense of reality as if she’s Audrey Tautou in her favorite film, Amélie. All these moments, the series suggests, are expressions of her naïveté, of how unprepared she will be for the deluge of suspicion and the international infamy that come her way once she is arrested for the killing of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher. The show attempts to take back Knox's story, to redefine her as a girl rather than a temptress, an innocent rather than a murderer. It’s an understandable, well-meaning desire. It’s also not enough to fuel eight episodes told from a defensive crouch. Its contradictory impulses chastise viewers for having paid attention to Knox's story back then— yet implore us to pay attention now.

On November 2, 2007, Kercher's body was found under a blanket in her locked bedroom. Almost immediately, Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were accused of taking part in her murder, despite the lack of DNA evidence linking them to the scene, in what prosecutors later described as a perverted sexual game gone wrong. Knox signed a confession claiming she, Sollecito, and her boss, Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba, had committed the crime. She retracted that confession and said it was made under duress, but over the next eight years, Knox and Sollecito would be found guilty, and acquitted, twice. The trials became a massive international story, sparking endless news coverage.