For armchair detectives, Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” is delicious fodder: 10 hours of a true-crime documentary, smartly released by the streaming service over the holidays, when free time is abundant. After watching the story of Steven Avery, it’s difficult not to immediately postulate theories and throw things at your screen as you rage against the imperfections of the American justice system.

Like the HBO documentary “The Jinx” and the podcast “Serial” before it, “Making a Murderer,” which took 10 years to complete, has transfixed many. District attorneys and defense lawyers alike have received negative Yelp reviews and death threats. Mia Farrow is outraged, Ricky Gervais thinks the series deserves a Nobel Prize, and Alec Baldwin live-tweeted his thoughts while watching. In Wisconsin, the Manitowoc Police Department has distanced itself from the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department, which handled Mr. Avery’s case. And the hacktivist group Anonymous has apparently found its latest mission.

Here’s a quick rehash of the case’s facts:

In 2003, after spending 18 years in prison, Mr. Avery, as a result of DNA evidence, was found not guilty of a sexual assault he’d long maintained he didn’t commit.

Two years later — after filing a $36 million lawsuit against Manitowoc County officials over his false conviction — he was arrested again and charged with a new crime: the murder of 25-year-old Teresa Halbach, who’d visited the Avery family’s car-salvage yard to photograph a minivan for an automobile magazine.