Mindhunter is cracking. Set within the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico when criminal psychology was in its infancy, the show’s FBI special agents interview the whole gamut of notorious serial killers in order to glean patterns of behaviour, applying this to ongoing cases. It’s got David Fincher all over it, the chap serving as executive producer and helming seven episodes.
It’s gripping stuff, as a time capsule and insight into a grisly world very few of us will thankfully ever even glimpse. Netflix addiction strikes again, though in my case generously bequeathed episodes from a questionable benefactor. I can’t help but picture the British spin-off were this to happen. In the show they remove the chains of the convicted mass murderers in order to make them feel more comfortable during questioning, to even help generate a bond for the ‘interrogation’. Imagine Scotland Yard doing that to Charles Bronson (not that he’s killed anyone).
I also have a picture in my head of Lord Longford, absolute weirdo that he was, helping Myra Hindley escape through a window during their interview, the former wielding bolt cutters or a blowtorch, zany hair flying everywhere.
Interestingly (for me), I clocked the actor who plays Bill Tench straight away. Holt McCallany wound up in two of the best movies of the late ’90s in Three Kings (1999) and Fight Club (1999). He even initiated the whole ‘His name is Robert Paulson’ recital. I hadn’t seen him in anything else until this.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 