Hulu Subscribers Are Obsessed With This New Star-Studded True Crime Miniseries

The first three episodes of "Murdaugh: Death in the Family" dropped on Hulu on October 15, 2025, and audiences are going wild over the miniseries according to FlixPatrol. So what is the show about, and what's the origin story of this new entry to the true crime genre?

Based on the "Murdaugh Murders Podcast" hosted by Liz Farrell and Mandy Matney, which ran from 2021 to 2023, Hulu's "Murdaugh: Death in the Family" is helmed by Michael D. Fuller and Erin Lee Carr, the latter of whom is responsible for a ton of true crime documentaries (including "Mommy Dead and Dearest" and Netflix's "Britney vs Spears," just to name a couple). The story itself focuses on the real Murdaugh family who, in 2021, became infamous when South Carolina authorities and its judicial system brought patriarch Alex Murdaugh to trial for allegedly murdering his wife, Maggie, as well as their son Paul. (At the time, Paul had been involved in a boating accident that killed a 19-year-old girl.)

Maggie received a strange call from her husband and, upon arriving home, found Paul's body; she was shot shortly thereafter, and both bodies were ultimately discovered. Alex was convicted of the murders but was also held accountable for a string of non-violent crimes that led up to the murders, including fraud, embezzlement, and theft. The strangest thing about this entire ordeal is that Alex was a high-powered attorney and prominent member of the community, and nobody who knew him saw any of this coming.

Hulu's series boasts a pretty incredible cast, including Jason Clarke as Alex, Patricia Arquette as Maggie, Brittany Snow as podcaster Mandy Matney, and veterans like J. Smith-Cameron, Noah Emmerich, and Jim O'Heir play supporting roles. So what do we need to know about the source material?

There's so much more at play here than Alex Murdaugh killing his wife and son, so I'm not surprised the story became the subject of a true crime podcast. Not only did NPR eventually report that the Murdaugh patriarch had stolen $12 million from clients over time, but in a piece in The Guardian about the "Murdaugh Murders Podcast," the outlet also provided the important context that, after his wife and son were found dead on his property, Alex faked his own death by staging an incident where he himself was shot to death.

Still, as The Guardian notes, the podcast ended up bringing new information to light and giving the case a national spotlight: "And there's no question that the scrutiny on him would be nowhere near this intense if it weren't for Mandy Matney, the meddling reporter who kept a harsh spotlight trained on the Murdaugh family until they became impossible for anyone to ignore." 

Matney told the outlet that when Paul was involved in the boat crash, she was working at a small South Carolina publication called Island Packet and became interested in the family. "I'll never forget being in a meeting in March 2019 my boss saying, 'I'm sick of the boat crash stories,'" Matney said, recalling that her editors didn't care about this scoop. Encouraged by how many page views those stories were receiving, though, she followed the trail ... and stumbled into a massive murder investigation.

The evidence Matney eventually uncovered helped authorities hold Murdaugh accountable, which is frankly incredible. Still, there are some questions raised by the Hulu series "Murdaugh: Death in the Family" — specifically, how ethical is all of this?

"Murdaugh: Death in the Family" comes on the heels of Netflix's true crime miniseries "Monster: The Ed Gein Story," which is part of a larger anthology about famous American serial killers helmed by super-producer Ryan Murphy. To be clear, these two things are pretty different; while the Ed Gein series (which cast Charlie Hunnam as Gein) has been accused of sanitizing the killer by making him sympathetic and even attractive (as well as changing a ton of key details), "Murdaugh: Death in the Family" takes a different approach thanks to its podcast source material, making Mandy Matney a character and making the narrative about cracking a case rather than glamorizing a killer.

Still, people have been asking a lot of pretty reasonable questions lately about whether or not the massive popularity of true crime is ... ethical. Some projects, like the book and docuseries "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," admirably puts the focus on victims and survivors instead of giving all the focus to a murderer (and if you're looking for a novel that does the same thing, the recent hit thriller "Bright Young Women" by Jessica Knoll stands out from the pack). Even though the "Murdaugh" series arguably places equal importance on the titular family and Mandy, it's still valid to ask: Should we be producing so many true crime shows, at what point does it cross moral lines?

"Murdaugh: Death in the Family" is currently airing new episodes on Hulu every Wednesday.