Why Disney’s Amanda Knox drama series is one of the only ways to provide its subject with vindication

Despite a forensic look at neonatal care and an impressive array of statistics, I came away none the wiser after each side had had their say. For some, Letby is the UK’s most prolific modern killer of children and her life sentence isn’t long enough; for others, she’s a victim of a miscarriage of justice. She has one outstanding bid for appeal with the Criminal Cases Review Commission, but don’t expect this to bring resolution, or peace for anyone involved. Retired paediatrician Dewi Evans, who served as the prosecution’s expert witness, calls the verdict “absolutely safe”. How can others be so sure of the opposite, he is asked. “That’s a question for them.” Or for another documentary in a month’s time.

It has been an instructive coincidence that this month also sees The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox come to screen via Disney+. Knox was wrongly convicted in 2009 of the murder of her housemate Meredith Kercher in the Umbrian city of Perugia and, along with her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, spent four years in jail. From the day of the crime, the world’s press jumped at the prospect of a friendship betrayed, of alleged sex games gone wrong, and “Foxy Knoxy” was created.

If critics complained at the time about all the attention showered on Knox rather than the fate suffered by Kercher, they won’t be happy now. No coin in Disney’s deep coffers has been spared on this richly drawn eight-part series, depicting exactly how Knox ended up where she did.

Unsurprisingly, for a production with the real Knox on board as executive producer and creative partner, it’s a sympathetic portrait, reminding us how she appeared to Italian investigators and the world’s press: a self-absorbed young woman, kissing her boyfriend outside the house where her friend’s body still lay. That scene is given fresh context here, revealing Knox numb with shock, Sollecito trying to comfort her, the frowning police looking on all the while.

If Knox realised too late that the self-assuredness that had always served her was to be her undoing – “Lawyers? I don’t need lawyers” – it doesn’t take a huge empathetic leap to imagine being in police cross-hairs in a foreign country, going without sleep, understanding one word in five of questions asked in an alien tongue, struggling to convey that “See you later” doesn’t literally mean “See you later”. The drama’s strength is in its detail, painstakingly reconstructing how Knox ended up in her dire situation, describing herself with understatement as “multi confusione”, leaving you wanting to shout, “Get a lawyer!”

It used to be that the victors got to narrate history, now it’s those telegenic or interesting enough to attract a film or TV crew. Knox isn’t the first to have her wrong, and its belated righting, brought to screen. Disparate figures, from Lindy “a dingo stole my baby” Chamberlain to the Guildford Four, have seen their stories told. (Less tragic, but equally notorious, is Monica Lewinsky, who is an exec producer on Disney’s Knox saga.) Why do they need it? Isn’t freedom enough? Who cares what strangers think?

The answer: long before “cancellation” was a thing (whereby nobody actually gets cancelled, they just hole up on another platform), these people were wronged not just by circumstance, but in the court of public opinion. Reaching big audiences is the only way to reverse that, and secure vindication – even as we remember that, for many of those involved in these stories, the suffering continues long after any credits roll.

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