Murder on Middle Beach

The emotional foundation of a torn-apart family is what strengthens “Murder on Middle Beach” but it’s also a fascinating mystery without the personal touch. ... Most importantly, Hamburg never comes off like he’s playing to the camera. None of it feels forced or scripted. He is a fascinating blend of committed devotion to his mother and reticent fear over what his father or aunt or even sister might say next.

Watching Murder on Middle Beach often feels like spying on Hamburg’s most private therapy sessions. This is thanks to Hamburg’s deeply intimate filmmaking style that refuses to turn off the camera even when he’s at his lowest moments. ... Altogether that’s where Murder on Middle Beach excels, in its intimacy.

The Serial-style mystery rarely comes together in as traditionally satisfying a whodunit way as you might hope for, and the autobiographical elements absolutely feel protracted, but the way the series gels is as the latest meta examination of why we're attracted to true crime in all its forms. ... It's an intellectual coping mechanism and an emotional healing process come to life over four parts, as exposed and ungainly and raw and hopeful as that implies.

Madison, a conflicted yet driven narrator-as-victim, makes this a unique piece of true crime filmmaking. He captures the messy darkness that can hide behind seemingly shiny lives. Including his own.

The actual substance of this four-hour miniseries could comfortably fit into an hourlong episode of a TV true-crime show—or even a Dateline segment, really. That’s if you took out the personal element, of course, as well as the first-person testimony where each of the involved parties gives their side of the story (except for Hamburg’s father, who as previously mentioned refuses to discuss his ex-wife’s death in any detail). Do the extra hours make the story any more complex? Not really. Do they make it more memorable? Definitely.

Despite periodic awkwardness, Mr. Hamburg’s film succeeds in sustaining the emotional weight of this enterprise—his direct and obvious effort to discover who in the family could have murdered his mother. ... The truth—evident from the outset of this series—is that the mystery of the killing will not be solved, that there will never be, in its affecting chapters, the moment of revelation that everyone carried along by such a drama is desperate to see.

“Murder on Middle Beach” proves affecting in its portrayal of a grieving family and a questioning son seeking to root out the truth. But it doesn’t have enough germane material for four installments – the second episode goes off on a tangent that proves largely fruitless – and it ends at a seemingly premature juncture.