This post contains frank discussion of Season 1 of the Netflix series Mindhunter. One of the more brilliant aspects of Netflix’s latest series, Mindhunter, is the way it nimbly treads the line between 10-ish hours of bingeable, David Fincher-led horror and the cozier rhythms of a network TV police procedural. The distinct edges between episodes blur as, perhaps, they only could for a streamable show—and with Season 2 given a green light long before the first 10 episodes premiered, playwright Joe Penhall’s creepily addictive series has also cleverly laid track to pull off the same effect in future installments and, potentially, across years. Look, for example, at the mysterious ADT employee who appears in fleeting vignettes throughout Season 1; that man’s true identity reveals the depths of Penhall’s ambitions. This Christmas Donny Hathaway Midi Files.

The first season of the 1970s-set follows Jonathan Groff’s eager, young F.B.I. Agent Holden Ford and his more world-weary partner, Bill Tench, played with exasperated, intelligent perfection by Holt McCallany. Anna Torv is Dr.

Wendy Carr, a Boston professor-turned-supervisor who adds a much-needed female perspective to a series that delves so deeply into the world of sexualized male-on-female crime, as does the occasional sardonic commentary from Ford’s girlfriend, grad student Debbie Mitford ( Hannah Gross). The show’s marquee moments feature Ford and Tench interviewing fictionalized versions of real-life serial killers Ed Kemper, Richard Speck, Jerome Brudos, and more. Based on the book Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, written by real-life F.B.I agent John Douglas—on whom Groff’s character is based—the series muddies fact and fiction, balancing the birth of the F.B.I.’s psychological profiling unit with the occasional case-of-the-week. In nearly every episode, the series also stops in Park City, Kansas to check very briefly on the disturbing—but not yet explicitly murderous—behavior of an unnamed, mustached man ( Sonny Valicenti) who works for ADT Security Services.