The Case Against Adnan Syed

Disappointing. Was eagerly waiting for this to watch. Sadly it was not worth the wait. Poor camerawork. Cheesy music/sfx. Cheap animations. Lazy phone I/V with Adan. And distasteful re-enactment V/O for Hae. It's always easy to be the armchair critic however the sleights of this doco are all valid. Peace

The first episode was somewhat slow and it is probably the reason for so many bad reviews. The second episode, though, it is much better with better pace and all of this contradictory information which make this case such a mystery

It just shows how messed up the legal system is :( keeping his family in my prayers

Incredibly one sided information that doesnt have the same professionaliam and objectivity as Serial. Its great hearing more about this case and putting faces to the voices, but i feel like this was a wasted opportunity to give another unbiased accounting of the story. Instead this feels like propoganda to help exonerate Anand.

N 2014, a podcast called "Serial" went viral when doing its first season on the Adnan Syed murder case. Apparently it's been downloaded 175 million times. Think about that! That's more than half the country's population. Now 5 years later comes this 4 part documentary from HBO, in essence a visual rehash and update of the podcast. As the documentary opens, we get a short introduction as to the main persons involved in this matter, including 18 year old Hae Min Lee, who was brutally murdered in early 1999, 17 year old school mate (and ex-boyfriend) Adnan Syed, their respective families, and others. The attention of the Baltimore Police focuses quickly on Syed, a Pakistani American whose family is super-strict, but he himself is not.

Couple of comments: this documentary is written and directed by highly respected and long-time documentarian Amy Berg (whose 2006 "Deliver Us From Evil" was nominated for Best Documentary Oscar). The documentary is in 4 parts, and I have now seen 3 of the 4 parts (I'll watch the last part surely later this week). The documentary feels at times s bit heavy-handed, if not one-sided, at least through the initial 3 parts, mostly telling the story from Syed's and his lawyer's and family's perspective. Part 2 ("In Between the Truth") looks up close at the various testimonials. Because so many aspects and angles of the case come up, I admit that at times I lost track of certain things. It's not very often these days that one gets too much information! When Berg lets the Korean American family and Baltimore community speak their minds, it only reinforces how little attention is paid to them overall. One interesting item that came up a number of times is how the "Serial" podcast has impacted the people involved, even those just on the fringes (a HS classmate comments that she wishes she'd never gotten involved in the podcast).

Despite its flaws, I nevertheless found this pretty compelling viewing. I think one reason for the podcast's extraordinary success and now the strong ratings for this documentary is that the appetite from the public at large for a murder case in which we may never fully know what truly and really happened, is simply insatiable.

*UPDATE* I saw the 4th and final episode and it doesn't change my overall view of this documentary series: heavily tilted towards the Syed camp's view of events, but in the end we really don't know know what happened 20 years ago