In 2003, Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man who had served 18 years in prison for sexual assault, was exonerated through DNA evidence. The victim in the original crime apologized to Mr. Avery and a state bill devised to minimize such wrongful convictions took his name. The high-profile case became a calling card for the Wisconsin Innocence Project, a local version of the national nonprofit devoted to helping those wrongly accused.

Two years later, he was arrested again and charged with a new crime: murder. Despite Mr. Avery’s claims that he was being framed by officials because of his $36 million dollar lawsuit against county officials over his previous conviction, he was found guilty and is now serving a life sentence.

Mr. Avery’s saga is the subject of “Making a Murderer,” a new 10-part Netflix documentary that became available last week. The creators, Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, spent a decade following the case, compiling a riveting true crime story that arrives after HBO’s critically acclaimed series “The Jinx” and the hit podcast “Serial.”

“Making a Murderer” diverges significantly from both, however. Unlike “The Jinx,” about the strange tale of the real estate heir Robert Durst, there are no artful re-enactments of grisly deaths. And where “Serial,” which explored the 1999 murder of a Maryland high school student, leaned heavily on the likable voice of its host, Sarah Koenig, the Netflix series does not use narration. Instead, it relies on title cards, interviews, news reports and hour upon hour of courtroom and police interrogation footage. In its meticulous assemblage of almost 700 hours of footage, the series is, as Mike Hale of The New York Times puts it, “immersive, compulsive and unpredictable, but also exhausting.”