Shane Nyman

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

'Dateline NBC' will explore the Avery case on Friday night.

Topics related to 'Making a Murderer' have been among Wikipedia's most popular pages for weeks.

A Montana author has a bold theory about who framed Avery.

It was only a matter of time. The case at the heart of "Making a Murderer" will be the subject of an hour-long "Dateline NBC" episode this week.

Titled "Two Sides of the Steven Avery Case," the episode airs at 9 p.m. CT Friday on NBC.

It's no surprise that "Dateline" would be interested in revisiting the case they featured almost a decade ago. We all remember it was a "Dateline" producer who gets some screen time in the fourth "Making a Murderer" episode, eliciting a few eye-rolls with lines like "This is the perfect 'Dateline' story" and "Right now murder is hot. That's what everyone wants, that's what the competition wants and we're trying to beat out the other networks."

You can watch the minute-long trailer over at the NBC website, which features clips of fresh interviews with Ken Kratz and Jerry Buting.

Daily newsletter: Sign up for 'Making a Murderer' updates

Timeline: History of the Steven Avery case

Related:'Making a Murderer' coverage, archived stories and more

BUZZ MONITOR

The "Making a Murderer" buzz continues now more than a month after its release on Netflix. Earlier this month we took a look at ways to measure just how many people are watching the series because Netflix is notoriously tight-lipped about viewership data.

Here's another indication of the popularity of the series: the Steven Avery and "Making a Murderer" Wikipedia pages are racking up millions of page views per week.

In the latest Wikipedia Top 25 report, which shows a weekly ranking of the most-viewed Wikipedia articles, the Steven Avery page comes in at No. 3 with more than a million views. It's topped by only the pages for Glenn Frey, the founding member of the Eagles who died last week, and "The Revenant," one of the front-runners for Best Picture at the upcoming Academy Awards.

The "Making a Murderer" page came in at No. 7, sandwiched between Avery and the pages for David Bowie, Martin Luther King Jr. and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."

The Wikipedia traffic for "Making a Murderer" topics likely peaked in the week of Jan. 3-9, where Steve Avery was the most-viewed article on the site, with more than 2 million views. The "Making a Murderer" page was No. 3 that week as well.

► Add Detroit to the list of cities to get a visit from the Jerry Buting and Dean Strang road show. The Avery defense duo will make an appearance at the Royal Oak Music Theatre in metro Detroit on March 19, the Detroit Free Press reports. That's the day after their appearance at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee. The pair also have a sold-out appearance set for tonight at a brewery in Minneapolis.

► Errol Morris, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker behind "The Thin Blue Line" talked to Slate about his "Making a Murderer" experience.

"There’s something so horrific about process in that story," Morris tells Slate in the lengthy Q&A-format interview. "Another thing that I was struck by watching 'Making a Murderer' was the feeling of the inexorable grinding of a machine that is producing, potentially, error."

Morris is no stranger to the true crime genre himself. "The Thin Blue Line," released in 1988, led to the release of a wrongfully convicted man in Texas who had served 13 years for the murder of a police officer. He's also currently working on a new true crime project for Netflix.

► Those of you who've kept a close eye on the conversations taking place on the "Making a Murderer" subreddit, the name Edward Wayne Edwards might ring a bell. A convicted killer who died in 2011 in an Ohio prison, Edwards has been among the subjects of some alternate theories as to who — if not Avery and/or Dassey — is responsible for the Halbach slaying.

John Cameron, a former police detective and author in Montana, talked to the Great Falls Tribune about his theory of Edwards having set up Avery for the Halbach murder. Whether you think it's credible or not, it's an interesting read — Cameron attempts to connect Edwards to several other famous murders, including that of JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson and the victims of the famous Zodiac Killer.

"By the fourth episode, the prosecutor said that (Halbach) had been killed by rope, by knife, by gun and by fire, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing because that is what Ed Edwards killed by," Cameron said to the Tribune. "I had all of the information of Ed already in my head from my book and it played out in that documentary. Every scene."

► "Making a Murderer" was a topic of discussion on the most recent episode of the NPR podcast "Pop Culture Happy Hour." The roundtable talks about the responsibilities of documentaries in general and looks broadly at the true crime genre. Among their talking points is whether or not a documentary can ever be both entertaining and without bias. Stephen Thompson, an editor at NPR Music, is among those taking part in the chat. He's a native of Iola, so he brings a close-to-home perspective. You can listen to the episode here.

Shane Nyman: 920-996-7223, snyman@postcrescent.com or on Twitter @shanenyman