Netflix’s Thrilling 2-Part Series Completely Rewrote the Crime TV Formula

Ask a TV fan about their favorite show that ended too soon, and you’re going to get a multitude of answers. Freaks and Geeks got just one season on NBC. The same goes for Firefly on Fox. More recently, there’s Mindhunter, which got two superb seasons on Netflix before abruptly ending in 2019. Despite the outcry from those wishing for its return, it doesn’t look like it’s ever going to happen. While that may be disappointing, it doesn’t change what we got. Mindhunter gave us 19 episodes of perfect television that’s even better than you remember, and none of it would have been possible without famed movie director David Fincher.

‘Mindhunter’ Was a Different Kind of Crime Drama

Television crime dramas are nothing new. For decades, they’ve dominated the ratings. Just as we crave the predictability of a sitcom, where a group of characters gets into some funny predicaments and makes up in a half-hour, audiences love the tropes of a good detective series. Here, in only an hour, a detective can solve a murder-of-the-week, wrapping up a mystery in under an hour before moving on to the next case a week later. However, while those types of shows are thrilling, they’re not exactly realistic.

When Mindhunter came onto the scene, debuting on Netflix in 2017, it sought to get away from what viewers expected from the genre. In a 2024 interview with France’s Premiere (per The Fincher Analyst), series creator David Fincher described Mindhunter as “a procedural on behavioral sciences that would be neither X-Files, nor CSI, nor Criminal Minds, but would function as the portrait of a guy who loses his virginity in the world of psychosexual sadists.” It’s safe to say that the series was a risk for the streamer, but one that ultimately paid off.

‘Mindhunter’ Changed the Network Procedural Formula

The virgin Fincher spoke of was Holden Ford, played by Jonathan Groff. Although loosely based on the real-life John Douglas of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, Holden is an unusual character. He’s not your typical police procedural hero like the ones mentioned in those network TV examples; that’s more the stoic, by-the-book Bill Tench (Holt McCallany). Holden breaks the mold as someone more complicated and less cookie-cutter. Away from the restrictions of network TV, Mindhunter‘s protagonist could be someone darker than the norm. He’s the microcosm for Mindhunter as a whole.

Mindhunter surprisingly follows a typical police procedural setup, utilizing the familiar format as a path into the series. It follows a pair of investigators and their team working together to try to capture the bad guys. The difference is how they go about it. Mindhunter isn’t about men with guns getting into chases and bringing killers of the week to justice. Their job is more terrifying: interviewing killers in prison to learn more about how they operate, with the hope being that their research can help find other active serial killers. It’s as if the tense meeting of Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) and Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in The Silence of the Lambs was turned into a TV show.

Mindhunter also breaks away from traditional procedurals through its villains. The bad guys here aren’t sneering stereotypes laughing maniacally at the camera. They’re also not caught and put away every week. The men Ford and Trench speak to are so much more than just tropes. The series gives us an intimate look at real-life killers and portrays them in a chilling way we’ve never seen before. Cameron Britton‘s portrayal of serial killer Ed Kemper is terrifying not because he’s foaming at the mouth and breaking out of his restraints, but because he’s so disarming and intelligent. It’s easy to forget his crimes and try to empathize with him, completely forgetting that he’s still a monster who could tear you apart.

David Fincher’s Talent Elevated ‘Mindhunter’

Image via Abaca Press/INSTARimages

Until the last decade or so, movies and TV have been kept separate. If you were a movie actor or director, you stayed in your lane with film. If an artist made their name in television, they stayed on the small screen. These days, this no longer applies. David Fincher was one of the first to change this when he developed Mindhunter. Before 2017, he was already very well known in the world of movies as the director of such instant classics as Seven, Fight Club, The Social Network, and Gone Girl. When it was announced that he would not only be developing Mindhunter, but directing many of the episodes as well, it elevated the series into something more. Fincher has always been a visionary who took the known and added a new twist. In his interview with Premiere, he said:

“I always take a slight step aside from what is expected of me. Otherwise, I’m not interested. At a test screening of Seven, in the second of silence just before the lights came back on, while everyone was gasping for air, I caught the producer cursing at me, ‘This guy has taken a great thriller and made it into a foreign film!'”

Mindhunter is cinematic, with each episode costing millions of dollars to produce. That cost would eventually be its downfall, as Netflix decided it was simply too expensive for them, but it doesn’t hinder what we got. Mindhunter is like 19 short movies that pull in the viewer and demand you put the phone down and watch them on the biggest screen you have.

A TV series that thrives on conversation over murder is going to have a limited audience. Mindhunter is a slow burn of high tension and compelling characters, helmed by a director who knew how to add grit to simple conversations. Not only did it set a new standard for true crime, but it also refused to compromise. Fincher told Premiere how Netflix asked him to make the series for less money and “make it more pop” to increase its viewership. And that’s exactly why Mindhunter is so great. It led the way, confidently blazing the trail for what is now so popular.