PSYCHO KILLER, QU’EST-CE QUE C’EST?

Mindhunter, Netflix’s latest series, is a riveting drama about the formation of the FBI’s behavioural science unit in the ’70s. Created in response to the discovery of serial killers and spree murderers like David Berkowitz (‘Son of Sam’) and Charles Manson, the unit’s work included interviewing some of the most infamous killers.

With four of the 10 episodes directed by David Fincher (Seven, Zodiac et al), the drama traces the birth of ‘profiling’ through federal agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff ) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany).

Ford is young, enthusiastic and relentless, while Tench is more reluctant to speak to the likes of Edmund Kemper, Monte Rissell, Jerry Brudos and Richard Speck, all real killers who have targeted women. It’s an ideal partnership. Ford is driven by curiosity, treating his subjects almost with reverence. Tench balances that with his aggressive stance.

While past books, films and series have mostly stood in the shadow of the fictional profilers created by novelist Thomas

Harris (Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs), for Mindhunter, writers Joe Penhall and Jennifer Haley went back to the reallife source: the true crime book, Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker.

With a taut script and arresting conversations, the adaptation succeeds in translating the tension and thrill of the chase to the small screen—along with the emotional toll that the effort to understand twisted minds takes on the two agents. “You want truffles, you gotta get in the dirt with the pigs,” says Holden as he starts speaking the language of killers—much to the worry of his colleagues and girlfriend.

His obsession with the job creates much of the conflict in the show. For a show that is focused on knowing, “I don’t know” is the mostoft repeated line in the show. What makes Mindhunter incredible is that even as it keeps viewers hooked on “how crazy thinks”, it also presents the vulnerability of its heroes as they deal with morally degenerate men. That Season 2 has been given the green light is perhaps the best news Netflix could give its viewers.