Miniseries The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox dramatises the famous miscarriage of justice, which saw her convicted – then acquitted – of the murder of fellow student Meredith Kercher.

Last year, 17 years after 21-year-old British student, Meredith Kercher, was murdered in Perugia, Italy, an eight-part TV dramatisation about the case was announced. Kercher's sister, Stephanie, told The Guardian as filming got underway: "Our family has been through so much and it is difficult to understand how this serves any purpose." With the series, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, beginning on Hulu in the US and Disney internationally today, many viewers will likely be wondering the same thing.

The answer is that the series has been driven by Amanda Knox, Kercher's American flatmate, who – along with Knox's boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, and local drifter Rudy Guede – was initially convicted of the 2007 murder of Kercher. After Knox spent almost four years in jail for a crime she maintained she was innocent of, she and Sollecito had their conviction quashed and were freed in 2011, but were convicted again in a retrial in 2014, before finally being acquitted by Italy's Supreme Court in 2015. Meanwhile Guede served 13 years of a 16-year sentence, and was released from prison in 2021.

Knox experienced a terrible miscarriage of justice – the Supreme Court ruled the investigation had had "stunning flaws" while the European Court of Human Rights ordered Italy to pay her €18,400 (£16,000; $21,500) in 2019, finding faults with how the police originally interrogated her. She also suffered a trial by media: alongside the lead Italian prosecutor on the case, Giuliano Mignini, they cast her as a sexual deviant – "Foxy Knoxy", as the tabloids delighted in calling her – who, the prosecuting case initially argued, orchestrated the killing of Kercher with the two men as part of a satanic-ritual inspired orgy that went badly wrong.

Ultimately, Knox and Sollecito were exonerated, in large part because DNA evidence linking them to the scene was also found to be flawed.

Knox has since been very vocal about her experiences in Italy, and the hate and ridicule she suffered globally since her wrongful conviction. Her first book, Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir, was released in 2013, and she followed it up in March this year with Free: My Search For Meaning. A 2016 Netflix documentary, Amanda Knox, further examined Knox's ordeal, featuring extensive interviews with her about her treatment. The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox again highlights what she suffered. However, two memoirs, one documentary and several podcasts (one called Hard Knox) on, it's difficult to understand what it really hopes to achieve.

Tonally, the drama – the work of showrunner KJ Steinberg, a producer on the likes of This is Us and Gossip Girl – is inconsistent. Knox (played committedly by Grace Van Patten) is presented in a jarringly light and jokey manner as a quirky student, larking around in hammy scenes with Kercher, and then making inappropriate, blackly humorous comments on unfolding events during the investigation and trial.

At times, the story feels........

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