Patricia Arquette in Hulu Mini

The question that Murdaugh: Death in the Family, the latest true crime miniseries from Hulu, aims to answer is not who was behind the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh. It knows you probably know, and while it flirts with misdirection, it does not stray far from the facts as previously reported. Nor is it really about the why, at least in the sense of unpacking the killer’s motive in the moment, though it offers enough context that you can hazard a guess.

Creators Michael D. Fuller and Erin Lee Carr are, instead, most interested in how the Murdaughs found themselves here to begin with — specifically, in the toxic combination of privilege and desperation that propelled them. But if their exploration of that theme is thoughtful and thorough, it’s also one that, over eight moderately watchable hours, sticks to familiar territory rather than blazing new ground.

The incident that catapulted the Murdaughs into national notoriety, for those who missed the headlines the first time around, is this: On the night of June 8, 2021, 53-year-old Maggie (Patricia Arquette) and her son, Paul (Johnny Berchtold), were shot and killed on the family property in Hampton, South Carolina. Alex (Jason Clarke) — her husband, his father and the main subject of the series — is introduced surveying the carnage, nearly incoherent with grief as he dials 911 for help that’s already too late.

It would be a shocking turn of events for any household. But the Murdaughs are no ordinary family, as we discover when the timeline jumps back two years to chronicle the events leading up to that night. A generationally wealthy clan of lawyers whose influence stretches all the way to the top — Alex’s father, Randolph (Gerald McRaney), counts the state governor as a personal friend — they’re admired and feared in equal measure, known by all but seemingly untouchable to anyone but God.

They are also, underneath that polished surface, a roiling mess of resentment and entitlement. After Paul is involved in a drunken boat crash that kills one of his friends (Madeline Popovich’s Mallory), Alex and Randolph get to work on the cover-up with a confidence that suggests this isn’t their first rodeo. But the case attracts the attention of Mandy Matney (Brittany Snow), the tenacious local journalist on whose podcast this series is based. (The real Matney is credited as an executive producer.) Her reporting turns the accident into an albatross around their necks, tearing at their reputations and tugging at all the other skeletons in their closets.

It’s hardly revolutionary to note — especially in this moment, 10 months into an unprecedentedly lawless administration — that the rules don’t apply to the elite the way they do the rest of us. All the same, there’s a grim satisfaction in seeing exactly how the corruption sets in. The Murdaughs are not unknowable monsters, but cautionary tales for what a lifetime without consequences can do to a soul. Alex casually informing a family friend that their son will take the fall for Paul’s sin is clearly grotesque behavior. It also makes perfect sense coming from a family who’ve been raised to understand that — as Randolph sternly reminds Paul’s big brother, Buster (Will Harrison) — “The truth is irrelevant. You’re a Murdaugh.”

The lead actors likewise find the balance between understanding these people and making excuses for them. Weirdly brassy dye job aside, Clarke is impressively natural as Alex’s easy smiles and superficial charm give way to flop sweat and nervous tics. If Arquette’s performance veers a bit broad in big moments, she shines in quieter ones as Maggie slowly comes to terms with her own unhappiness. And Berchtold capably taps into the raw pain underneath Paul’s party-bro exterior, rendering him pitiable if not exactly likable.

The supporting players are given far fewer depths to plumb, although casting the likes of Noah Emmerich (as Alex’s brother) or J. Smith-Cameron (as Maggie’s sister) does a lot to make characters feel richer than they’re written on the page.

A product of the seemingly inexhaustible Hulu true crime pipeline that’s brought us everything from The Act to Good American Family to The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, Death in the Family sidesteps the worst excesses of the genre by grounding the Murdaughs in a recognizable humanity. It doesn’t leer at the bodies or sensationalize their terror; it places its emphasis more on how these people lived than how they died. Nor does it scold us for watching any of this at all — though it can’t resist a touch of self-righteousness about Mandy’s efforts to speak truth to power, going so far as to explicitly reject any ambivalence around the unintended consequences of her reporting.

On the flip side, its tunnel-vision focus on the Murdaughs means that the non-Murdaugh, non-murder victims left in their wake, like Mallory and her family or the clients Alex defrauds at work, are reduced to symbols. Death in the Family does not tap into our empathy for them so much as our own sense of aggrievement at having to exist in a world where people like the Murdaughs can skate by without consequences for even the worst of their sins.

But the show’s biggest issue is the same one that plagues so many entries in the genre: the sense that there might not, in the end, be that much to gain by rehashing the facts of a case so recent that development on this series began before the murder trial did.

Near the very end of the season, we visit that scene of carnage again, only this time with full clarity as to how the events unfolded. Whereas the rest of Death in the Family brings you into the characters’ inner lives through lingering close-ups that capture every tremulous breath or furrowed brow, this sequence is shot at a clinical remove and edited at a brisk pace. It’s a pointed choice, forcing us to look at the violent external reality of the shootings rather than dwell on the twisted internal logic underlying them.

It’s also a jarring and alienating one — meant, perhaps, as a tacit admission that there’s only so much any of us can ever know about what goes through a person’s mind in a moment so singularly awful, and that there’s only so much it matters anyway when the end result is still two dead bodies by a dog kennel. But then, what were any of us doing here in the first place?