The controversy surrounding the new series about Amanda Knox, convicted and acquitted in Italy for the murder of a colleague

The miniseries The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox dramatizes the famous miscarriage of justice that convicted — and later acquitted — Amanda Knox of the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher.

This eight-part TV series about the case was announced last year, 17 years after the murder of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy.

At the start of filming, Stephanie, the victim's sister, told British newspaper The Guardian: "Our family has been through a lot, and it's hard to understand what the purpose of this is."

The premiere of the series The Twisted History of Amanda Knox on Wednesday (20/08), on the streaming service Hulu, in the United States, and on Disney+ in other countries, including Brazil, will probably lead many viewers to ask themselves the same thing.

The answer to that is that the series was conceived by Amanda Knox, Kercher's American roommate, who — along with her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and drifter Rudy Guede — was initially convicted of the 2007 murder.

After Knox spent nearly four years in prison for a crime she always maintained she was innocent of, she and Sollecito had their convictions overturned and were released in 2011, but were convicted again in a retrial in 2014, before finally being acquitted by Italy's Supreme Court in 2015.

Meanwhile, Guede served 13 years of a 16-year sentence and was released in 2021.

Knox faced a terrible miscarriage of justice — the Italian Supreme Court called the investigation "stunningly flawed," while the European Court of Human Rights in 2019 ordered Italy to pay him €18,400 (about $24,000) after finding irregularities in his police interrogation.

She was also a victim of a trial by media. Alongside the case's lead prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, the press portrayed her as a "promiscuous woman"—"Foxy Knoxy," as the tabloids liked to call her.

The prosecution initially argued that she orchestrated Kercher's death with the two men as part of a satanic ritual orgy gone wrong.

In the end, Knox and Sollecito were acquitted, largely because the DNA evidence linking them to the crime scene was also found to be flawed.

The challenges and problems of the series

Since then, Knox has spoken openly about her experiences in Italy and the hatred and shame she suffered worldwide following her wrongful conviction.

Her first book, Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir , was released in 2013. In March of this year, she published Free: My Search for Meaning.

In 2016, the Netflix documentary Amanda Knox shed light on her case again, with extensive interviews.

The Twisted History of Amanda Knox once again exposes what she endured. But after two memoirs, a documentary, and several podcasts—one of them called Hard Knox—it's hard to understand what this new production intends to add.

In terms of tone, the drama - the work of showrunner KJ Steinberg, producer of series such as This is Us and Gossip Girl - is inconsistent.

Knox, played by Grace Van Patten, comes across as surprisingly lighthearted and almost comical, as a quirky student who enjoys over-the-top scenes with Kercher and then makes inappropriate and darkly humorous comments about the events that unfold during the investigation and trial.

At times, the narrative feels overly romanticized. The series even attempts to imitate Amélie —the film Knox and Sollecito (Giuseppe De Domenico) said they watched the night of Kercher's murder—with colorful vignettes and magical realism, such as the scene where a gang of teddy bears applaud Knox performing as a clown as a child.

"The homage to Amélie was a great way to introduce viewers to Amanda the person before her distorted version was cemented in the popular imagination," showrunner Steinberg told The Seattle Times.

Clichés are also rife—from voices that disappear and return in a police interrogation to a forced metaphor of a trapped bird, unable to escape.

Another point that bothers the series is the irreverent narration in a millennial tone done by Van Patten as Knox, reminiscent of recent true crime series, such as Inventing Anna or Apple Cider Vinegar .

By trying to imitate the "lighter" style of these productions, the dramatization ends up reducing the gravity of the real case.

The wave of 'reappropriation' of narratives

However, after the grave injustice of being accused of a murder she did not commit, it is understandable that Knox would want to retell her story once again and "reclaim" her narrative.

Over the past decade, a wave of documentaries, podcasts, and pop culture dramatizations has helped famous women do the same, shedding new light on 1990s celebrities like Britney Spears , Pamela Anderson, Monica Lewinsky, and Tonya Harding, who were publicly demonized after scandals.

Interestingly, Lewinsky is an executive producer on The Twisted History of Amanda Knox , alongside Knox herself, after having co-produced in 2021 the miniseries Impeachment: American Crime Story , by Ryan Murphy, where Lewinsky recounted her affair with then-US President Bill Clinton from her perspective.

Some of these projects, like Lewinsky's, were made with the direct participation of the characters portrayed; others, like Hulu's Pam & Tommy , about the Pamela Anderson sex scandal.

As Jessica Bennett questioned in the New York Times about this subgenre of "narrative reappropriation" productions.

"It's no secret that humans love to consume spectacle—and we love it doubly when it involves women and sex. But at what point does the fictional representation of that spectacle, and our act of watching it, become as bad as watching the original?"

Knox's goal

Knox stated that the series aims to highlight that the real killer was Rudy Guede, which is a valid point. Guede had a "speedy" trial and was convicted of the murder out of the public eye, without being subjected to the same intense media scrutiny as Knox.

In a recent interview with Newsweek magazine, Knox said: "Nobody cares about the guy who murdered my roommate. I think it speaks volumes to what was going on at the time, and has always been going on with this case, [which] is the idea that it was never really about Meredith... The truth about what happened to her, and the truth about the person who actually committed the crime, has been completely lost in favor of a scandalous story."

Still, the dramatization is misguided. This story has two victims, but by centralizing Knox's experiences, it ends up relegating Kercher's death to the background, compromising the delicate balance of a case in which one of the victims was unable to tell her side of the story.

The final two self-centered episodes highlight this. Much of the screen time is devoted to over-the-top scenes in which Knox meets her prosecutor, Mignini (Francesco Acquaroli), in a church in Italy to confront him about his conviction that she committed the crime.

Surprisingly, this meeting actually took place in Perugia in 2022. In the series, melodramatically, Mignini ends up crying and saying to the heavens: "God sees that we both suffer."

Even in the brief tribute to Kercher at the end of the series — a home-video-style montage of the young woman (played by Rhianne Barreto) smiling, laughing, and having fun in Italy — Knox is once again the main focus.

In voiceover, she says that "it was fate that Meredith was home that night and I wasn't. I was lucky."

Then he continues: "I hate that I have to dig through a decade of my trauma just to find memories of her. I never had the chance to truly mourn her death... I'm going back. I'm mourning for both of us."

It's possible to argue that the fact that Kercher's sister — speaking on behalf of the family — didn't want any involvement with the production should have led Knox, Lewinsky, and others responsible to question the project and whether it wasn't done at the expense of the other, equally wronged victim.