Mindhunter, episode 1 review: the most accomplished drama on TV right now
Television tends to misremember the Seventies. This decade of industrial action and political corruption, of division and disappointment, is usually portrayed with an emphasis on nostalgia – a retro-kitsch homage to spacehoppers and Spangles, Afghan coats and Afros. Think of Days Like These, The Get Down and Life on Mars, all of which cared more about the aesthetic than accurately depicting the times.
Mindhunter, a fantastic new US drama, was so muted in its palette that you barely noticed it wasn’t set in the present (the use of 10cc’s treacly I’m Not in Love as an accompaniment to a sex scene was a rare indicator of the time).
David Fincher, the director of the series, and Joe Penhall, its writer, have instead concentrated on the mood of the times and imagined Seventies America as a place of transition, where psychologists are seen as cranks, and where the fight for sexual and racial equality feels far from over. It still does, of course.
Jonathan Groff starred as Holden, a hostage negotiator whose bland face belied a wicked sense of humour.
“I can see you’re naked,” he shouted across to a nude, gun-wielding madman. “I can see you’re cold.”
Before long, however, Holden had been put out to pasture in Virginia, lecturing to policemen on the de-escalation of hostage takers and overseeing psychological strategy exams. This was where Penhall (the British playwright known for creating works of acute unease such as Some Voices and Blue/Orange) really showed off his talents.
The men – and they were all men – who attended Holden’s lectures had fairly unreconstructed Old Testament views on right and wrong. They were scornful when this boyish wonk started asking them to empathise with Charles Manson. “Next time, let’s discuss Lee Harvey Oswald as Oedipus,” he said cheerfully.
Mindhunter is grown-up television that compels you to think about shifting attitudes in society. Perhaps that sounds turgid, but there is a playfulness to Penhall’s script that sometimes makes you laugh and sometimes makes you gasp at the horribleness of history. “Imagine I am a Negro,” said one bumptious recruit to another during a simulated hostage situation. “Try jive talking at me.”
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But Mindhunter avoids the trap of other dramas, which seem overly concerned with upbraiding the past for failing to live up to the politically correct ideals of the 20th century. It’s not tutting at the bad old days so much as presenting the intellectual wrangling that saw police psychologists rise from back-room boys to star players in major criminal investigations.
Under the direction of Fincher (returning to television for the first time since his triumphant House of Cards), there is an unshowy, meticulous cinematic quality that draws you in, irresistibly, to its pale-brown world of desk jobs and smoky cinemas. If the BBC’s hopeless Rellik has put you off serial killers for life, I’d advise that you watch Mindhunter – it would be too weird to call it a tonic, but there’s nothing quite as gracefully accomplished on TV right now.
