Mindhunter
Netflix, streaming now
Word to the wise: if you watched the opening episode of Mindhunter, the latest Netflix drama extravaganza, when it dropped last Friday, but found it a tad underwhelming and basically gave up because your time is precious and there are a gazillion other TV series waiting for you, please do try episode two, because that’s when it really kicks off. The series is about two FBI agents (based on real-life operatives, but their names have been changed) in the mid-’70s, who are trying to work out what drives human beings to become serial killers, at a time when the concept of serial killing hadn’t even been recognised. It’s basically Silence Of The Lambs: The True Story, except instead of Clarice Starling, we have grumpy Bill Tench (Holt Mccallany) and his eager partner Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff). Together they meet dramatised versions of actual psychopaths, such as Edmund Kemper, who murdered several mostly female victims, killed his mum and then did unspeakable things to her corpse. Except in this show, they are spoken about. But weirdly, this extraordinary moment doesn’t happen until episode two. Before then, the show takes its own sweet time to set up the complex characters. It’s directed by David Fincher, the movie-making master of serial killer stories, from Seven to Zodiac. But this is unlike those classic films. It’s about the characters’ attempts to understand these real-life monsters but, on some level, it’s also about our obsession with serial killers. In trying to get to the nub of what makes such unthinkable crimes so compelling, this stunning series is doing something totally new.