“The devil is known to assume pleasing shapes.” So warns the mother of future Italian magistrate Giuliano Mignini during a flashback in The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox , which premiered on Hulu on August 20. “Always remember that,” she barks, wrenching the boy from a window where he can ogle the inmates of a neighboring women’s prison.

That lesson in suspicion—revealed in one of the many warmly lit, vaguely folkloric moments of retrospect in the series—seems to undergird the relentless crusade of Mignini (played as an adult by Francesco Acquaroli), the prosecutor who helped convict the 20-year-old American exchange student Amanda Knox of the murder of her study-abroad roommate Meredith Kercher. But just as factors like context and biography count in this story, so too does appearance.

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