It was South Carolina’s “trial of the century”- Alex Murdaugh, the fourth in a family line of prominent lawyers, was charged with the murder of his wife, Maggie, and his son, Paul, in 2021, who was already under suspicion for drunk-driving a boat, leading to the death of Mallory Beach. This would turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg as more accusations, implications, and fatalities occurred surrounding the family.
Which also meant it was ripe material for the media. HBO Max, ID, and Netflix produced documentaries on the case; the true crime series Storm of Suspicion covered the Mallory Beach incident in one episode; and even Lifetime made a movie about the family in 2023. One of the more interesting sources of info was the Murdaugh Murders Podcast, where Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell covered the case as it unfolded from June 2021- when Murdaugh was formally accused- to May 2023, soon after Murdaugh was convicted.
Michael D. Fuller (Quarry series, Locke & Key series) and Erin Lee Carr (Mommy Dead & Dearest 2017, I Love You, Now Die series) indeed found it interesting enough to make it the primary source material for their new Hulu series, Murdaugh: Death in the Family. It follows Alex (Jason Clarke: Terminator: Genisys 2015, Mudbound 2017) and Maggie Murdaugh (Patricia Arquette: True Romance 1993, Boyhood 2014) as they try to hold their family together following Paul’s (Johnny Berchtold: Dog Gone 2023, The Passenger 2023) involvement in a boating accident. But as more skeletons fall out of their closet, things go from bad to worse.
The eight-episode series was made for Hulu, where it has been streaming on their service and Disney+ since October 15, 2025. It was good enough to hit #1 on their top lists and become the fifth most-streamed show in the US on release. But does that make it any good? It got a lot of views, though, so did those Michael Bay Transformers movies. Big numbers do not necessarily mean top quality.
Luckily, it is better than those movies, though it takes an interesting approach to adapting a real crime. Instead of the old ‘based on a true story’ note, each episode opens with a disclaimer that essentially says that, while it is based on real events, the show is taking some artistic license to tell a dramatic story. Granted, pretty much every true crime series, movie, etc, does that, though it is rare for them to say so this openly.
Still, for an 8-episode show, it manages to cram a lot of the events surrounding Alex Murdaugh and tie them together in a well-paced Drama. There are significant incidents like Mallory Beach’s death and the eventual murders, but there is always some additional wrinkle that either pops up or lingers in the background. Each threatens to knock down Alex’s house of cards until each proverbial tremor comes together to knock it down.
Which is essentially what viewers get with the show: one man trying to hold onto his pride no matter the cost, then paying a heavy price for his hubris. Even before the rot sets in, one gets the sense that the Murdaughs’ idyllic family life was a veneer: Alex gets around the law to keep his fishing business going, his marriage is strained, and his kids are already fighting over one thing or another. Alex tries to cover it up, patch things up, or turn things in his favor through schemes and lies, but the weight of the corruption becomes too much for all involved to bear.
Which comes through particularly well in Clarke’s performance, as he balances Alex’s scheming sliminess with an earnest desire to support his family. Albeit more for his own interest than theirs, as he will ignore their needs if he is aware of them to begin with, but will make sure to treat himself at their cost. It makes him a fascinating figure to watch, and one that will make viewers feel bad for those around him—particularly Maggie and Paul.
Arquette arguably offers the best performance in the series, as her Maggie is actually trying to hold everything together, offering sympathy and support while Alex is screwing others over, including herself. If viewers got lost in the crime drama minutiae of withheld legal payments, lawsuit talk, etc, Maggie’s conflicted feelings of suffering more slings and arrows in the Murdaugh household, or finding a way out to reclaim her own life.
Some might prefer Paul’s story, as he struggles to come to terms with the boating incident and the fallout from it. He is initially a complex character to sympathize with- a frat boy without the frat, so to speak- yet Berchtold does a good job at capturing how traumatized he ended up being, and how he tries to deal with it. Paul’s surviving brother Buster does not get as much to do until the later episodes, but his actor, Will Harrison (This Is a Film About My Mother 2022, Manhunt series), also puts in a strong effort as a conflicted figure dealing with his own secrets on top of those from his family.
If anything, the show is weaker when it occasionally strays from the family drama to focus on the investigative side. Notably, how Matney (Brittany Snow: Hairspray 2007, Pitch Perfect 2012) started digging into the Murdaugh’s secrets, and the eventual start of her podcast. Maybe these scenes were verbatim how she got into the topic, as the real Matney is an executive producer on the show. Still, it shows that truth might be hokier than fiction sometimes, as her scenes feel more contrived by comparison, bordering on self-aggrandising when covering the Stephen Smith incident.
Also, being a series set in South Carolina, when the episodes do not use tense, they use incidental music to build one mood or another, and the soundtrack is thick with country music. Diegetic or non-diegetic, it all adds to the setting. Authentic as it may be, if anyone is tired of good ol’ boy tunes about ice-cold beer, or that one tune from those annoying Foxy Bingo commercials, Murdaugh will not be doing them any favors.
But if viewers want a tense family drama with crime overtones, little investigative touches, strong acting across the board, and visual storytelling as on point as its spoken narrative, Murdaugh: Death in the Family will have them covered. It offers shocks and thrills without wearing out its welcome across its eight episodes. As such, Cryptic Rock gives Murdaugh: Death in the Family 4 out of 5 stars.
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