<em>The Case Against Adnan Syed </em>Challenges the True-Crime Playbook
The new four-part documentary series on HBO goes deeper into the story of Hae Min Lee and the ex-boyfriend convicted of her murder.
It’s impossible to write about without writing about . On the most straightforward level, Amy Berg’s new HBO series wouldn’t exist without Sarah Koenig’s 2014 podcast, a work so prodigiously successful that it’s been downloaded more than 175 million times. Berg, in many ways, is picking up where Koenig left off in considering the flawed investigation of the murder of Hae Min Lee in 1999, and the dubious conviction of Lee’s ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. ’s explosive debut more than four years ago means that the podcast has come to define 21st-century true crime, for better or worse: the cliff-hanger endings, the obsessive Reddit forums, the sidelined victims. With , Berg isn’t just adding to ’s story. She’s challenging the playbook
