Summary
This is an unnerving true crime story that will have audiences jolting into armchair investigators.
Netflix documentary series Under Suspicion: Uncovering the Wesphael Case was released on the streaming service on March 17, 2021.
Let’s cast our eyes back to The Staircase — a true-crime documentary series that split audiences down the middle — “did the husband do it?”. It was not like Making a Murderer, where there was frequent circumstantial evidence and highly suspicious pitfalls in the investigation — a lot of the evidence relies on the husband’s account of what happened. This Netflix series offers something similar; looking into Belgian politician Bernard Wesphael, a man accused of murdering his wife Véronique Pirotton in 2013 — she was found dead in a hotel room, and he was in the hotel room at the time.
And like the mentioned documentary series, the formerly accused is interviewed as part of the material; he describes his restless, agitated wife who committed suicide in the hotel room bathroom while he was momentarily asleep after a highly-fuelled argument. The opening episode reimagines this fatal night where the marriage was slowly falling apart, ending in tragic circumstances.
Netflix’s Under Suspicion: Uncovering the Wesphael Case makes this a compelling story, leading the audience astray, not knowing what’s the fact of the matter. Hotel occupants, staff, family and friends all pitch into this documentary, giving their feeling of the events. It tantalizes the audience with doubt as the events unfold and brings in courtroom footage of the actual trial. This is an unnerving true crime story that will have audiences jolting into armchair investigators, creating Facebook groups to discuss the latest evidence found on the web.
The series questions how subjective these incidents can be; how can prosecutors truly find the truth of the matter when there’s so much ambiguity of the events that unfolded that night — there are many cases like this. It puts the judicial system up for review.
Under Suspicion: Uncovering the Wesphael Case is addictive — each chapter has an average run time of 35-minutes, all ending on some cliffhanger, making sure that the viewer binges. It’s a true-crime fans’ perfect environment where they will be tempted to watch it late into the night. Do not give this one a miss.
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