Candace Owens gets her hands on the long-promised response series to Netflix's Making A Murderer

Given the omnipresence of “true crime” today—available in the form of podcasts, live tours, movies, TV, books, and more—it can feel like few and far murder victims actually get laid to rest these days. Ever more focused on crafting a gripping narrative than actually honoring victims or supporting the bereaved, true-crime content has developed a troubling taste for bulldozing ahead with a chosen narrative regardless of the consequences. Needless to say: it’s not exactly surprising that The Daily Wire is finally elbowing for a space in the genre with a very pointed docuseries.

Announced today, the ten-part docuseries Convicting A Murderer—which serves as a direct response to the Netflix series Making A Murder— will premiere sometime this summer on the conservative news website’s streaming service DailyWire+. Like Making A Murderer, Convicting A Murderer will chronicle the case of Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man who was exonerated in 2003 after serving eighteen years in prison on charges of sexual assault and attempted murder, only to find himself on trial again in 2007 for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach. The Daily Wire’s largest streaming acquisition yet (by their own account), the series has been in the works for nearly six years.

An immediate mega-hit when it premiered in 2015, Making A Murderer raised enough questions about the Halbach investigation’s air-tightness that a 2016 petition urging President Obama to pardon Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey garnered 500,000 signatures. (The White House responded by stating the President “cannot pardon a state criminal offense.”) The series also drew backlash, with prosecutor Ken Kratz alleging that Making A Murderer left out key evidence from its narrative.

Aiming to reframe Avery’s story in a very different light, Convicting a Murderer will reportedly feature “exclusive interviews with subjects not included in the Netflix show, including law enforcement officers, family members, and fans-turned-investigators whose lives have been profoundly impacted by the case.” (For what it’s worth, fans-turn-investigators getting talking head slots seems to all but guarantee this series will veer away from any truly salient criminal justice analysis.)

In his own statement, director Shawn Rech opines that not many companies “have the courage to air this type of project, which closely examines the work of a major player in the entertainment industry.” Clearly, the series will be just as much an investigation of Netflix as an investigation of Avery’s case, trial, and ultimate imprisonment.

Conservative commentator Candace Owens serves as narrator and host on the series, which is produced by noted WAP denier Ben Shapiro. Owens herself expands on the project’s purpose: “I have an interest in the media’s ability to transform villains into heroes via selective reporting. An argument can be made that Netflix made millions by transforming an irrevocably evil man, Steven Avery, into a sympathetic character.”

In their comments, both Rech and Owens reveal one of Convicting A Murderer’s not-so-clandestine motives: entering the streaming game by giving Netflix a pointed kick in the shin. But what does proving Netflix is the “real villain” in the Avery case actually do for those personally connected to it, not to mention the small Midwestern communities that have faced extensive scrutiny because of these projects? If only a ten-episode series interrogating the motives behind the true-crime boom had the potential to garner as much traffic as one exhaustingly reshaping a complex and tragic situation into whatever form best suits the base that day.