Entertainment Weekly - October 20, 2017

78 EW.COM OCTOBER 20/27, 2017

Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) wants to

understand the epidemic of maniacal mass

murder. Ford meets a professor (Jordan

Gelber) who sums up the problem in his-

torical terms. The FBI was created to catch

criminals like John Dillinger and Baby Face

Nelson, fame hogs with money on the

mind, avatars of an era when crime was

local and explicable. “Now we have extreme

violence between strangers,” the professor

muses. “Where do we go when motive

becomes elusive?”

Given recent events, the answer to that

question could be “America circa 2017.” So

Ford’s quest to understand murderous

motivations is also a checkup on the

national mood. But the show takes time

getting there. After his conversation with

the professor, Ford starts talking with a

FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS, DIRECTOR DAVID FINCHER

has been deconstructing America’s fascination with serial

killers. The tones have varied:Se7enhad the symphonic

nihilism,Zodiachad the clinical precision, andThe Girl

With the Dragon Tattoo had some real pretty snow. But his

crime dramas share a paranoid-android remove, as if the

camera’s an X-ray machine and the actors are carefully

posed skeletons. Here’s a word you don’t expect to use

when describing a Fincher project:charming.

ButMindhunter is quite charming, a conversational

exploration of criminal behavior that could become an

origin story for modern American madness. It’s 1977,

the Son of Sam has just been arrested, and FBI agent

Mindhunter

Edited By| AMY WILKINSON @AMYMWILK

Jonathan Groff and Happy Anderson

TV

DATE

Debuts Oct. 13

TIME

Streaming

NETWORK

Netflix

REVIEW BY

Darren Franich @DarrenFranich

PATRICK HARBRON/NETFLIX