On a long summer break we have spent an inordinate amount of time watching television and movies. Our internet usage has skyrocketed!

Here’s some of what we’ve been viewing.

Making A Murderer – if you were a fan of the Serial podcast you will like this Netflix documentary. It’s a fascinating looking at the legal system in the US. Filmed over ten years the doco covers the story of Stephen Avery – a man who spent 18 years for a sexual assault he didn’t commit – eventually exonerated by developments in DNA testing.

He was out of jail for just two years and in the process of filing a  $36 million lawsuit against Manitowoc County and several county officials associated with his first arrest when he was charged with the murder of Teresa Halbach.  Teresa was a photographer who was last seen at the Avery property photographing a car they had for sale.

There are a number of breathtaking moments in the doco particularly related to the confession of Avery’s 16 year old nephew, Brendan Dassey, who initially claimed he and Avery and raped and killed the young woman, he later recanted this statement. A boy of below-average intelligence, dodgy lawyers, police intent on getting a confession it all played out like you were watching a crime fiction show – only this was real.

Produced and directed by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demo it’s not a series which aims to prove guilt or innocence but it does highlight some disturbing features of the US justice system. You wouldn’t want to be poor and innocent in this environment.

At the end of the ten episodes I’m not sure whether Avery is innocent or guilty. I suspect he’s not always a particularly nice man but he was certainly poor and uneducated and that worked against him. There were numerous questions about how the Halbach case was investigated and and like just about everyone watching I became a big fan of one of Avery’s lawyers, Dean Strang, whose passion was admirable even when he was up against pretty big obstacles. The man is apparently now a “sex symbol” with on-line fans.

For something a little lighter – we also ventured out to the movies and saw Joy. We are big fans of Jennifer Lawrence in this house and she did a great job in this film. Who would of thought a story about the inventor of a mop could be interesting?

A star studded cast including Robert De Niro, Isabella Rossellini and Bradley Cooper join Lawrence in telling the story of Joy Mangano the creator of the Miracle Mop. While I thought it got a little slow in parts my daughters loved all of it. To go with my crush on Dean Strang (see above) I also was quite taken with Joy’s ex-husband Tony Miranne who lived in her basement. When I got home I had to google to see what parts of the story were fact and which were fiction. I was pleased to see that her relationship with the ex must have been as good as depicted because she gave him a job in her company early on.

It was a lovely story of against-the-odds success and how pursuing your dreams can  pay off big time.  Now if I could just think of some amazing invention that would save people hours of time doing the housework I would be set – although I suppose in order to do that I really should occasionally do some housework so I had some idea of what needed to be improved!!

What have you been watching lately?