Mindhunter season two: Why this continues to be one of Netflix’s best series

Netflix may be dropping dozens of new shows and movies each month, but this one stands out as one of its best.

It’s truly baffling Netflix didn’t publicise the second season of Mindhunter, because it really is one of the streaming network’s best series.

Or maybe it was a genius move, because TV critics and writers just couldn’t fathom why Netflix didn’t shout about Mindhunter from its well-resourced high perch — and now it gets two waves of press.

And it deserves it. Mindhunter is an excellent series, and all of its fans have waited with great anticipation for two years for its return. Here is a TV show that isn’t only cinematic in its look and feel, but where the writing is taut and gripping.

When Netflix is increasingly releasing dozens of new titles indistinguishable in their mediocrity every month in its bid to be everything to everyone, it’s comforting to know that it still has TV shows like Mindhunter — shows that command every ounce of your attention and not just fodder for the background while you shop on your phone.

Jonathan Groff plays Holden Ford, a name the show acknowledges is a “bad joke in Australia”

Perhaps that protracted wait was worth it, because this second season is every bit as great as the first, with even better momentum now that everything has been established.

Set in the late 1970s, Mindhunter is based on real-life FBI profilers’ experiences in the early days of criminal psychology — the idea that depraved killers may share commonalities that could be studied, and then used to catch them.

The show follows two fictional agents Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) and Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) who establish the fledging behavioural science unit alongside academic Wendy Carr (Anna Torv).

They go about interviewing incarcerated serial killers including, in the first season, Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton), Richard Speck (Jack Erdie) and Jerry Brudos (Happy Anderson). These little tetes-a-tetes try to get at the heart of what makes these killers tick.

It’s chilling stuff that burrows under your skin, and not suited to delicate constitutions.

Staring evil in its face

In season two, the serial killers are more famous — Charles Manson, Son of Sam — and the personal stakes for Bill, Holden and Wendy become even more heightened.

Manson, who features heavily in episode five, is played by Australian Damon Herriman, who happens to portray the cult leader in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , also out this week.

Herriman is barely in Tarantino’s movie, amounting to a 40-second cameo, but he gets a good chunk of time here to stretch his dramatic legs. Herriman’s Manson is mad but strangely charismatic, filling up the screen with his erratic presence. It’s a performance that makes you want to see Tarantino’s four-hour director’s cut if there’s more of Herriman in that.

Woven between the captured killers are the ones still eluding police — the BTK Strangler and whoever is responsible for the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979 to 1981.

Bingeing just got easier with the New Foxtel Experience. Foxtel and Netflix now all in one place. Get Foxtel

Damon Herriman plays Charles Manson twice this week

Director David Fincher, who also serves as executive producer, returns to direct the first three episodes again, while Australian Andrew Dominik (Chopper, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) and Carl Franklin helm the remaining six.

Fincher’s aesthetic and style permeates the series, lending it that rich and dynamic energy while cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt’s muted palette works to magnify the tense atmosphere. There’s no argument here — Mindhunter is a stunningly beautiful show to look at, even when what you’re watching are grisly crime photos.

The show is also surprisingly funny at times, though its sense of humour is on the darker side of tar.

Sign up for our entertainment newsletter to get the weekly What to Watch movies and TV guide every Friday afternoon in your inbox

Anna Torv’s Wendy explores more of her closeted sexuality

There’s something perverse about exploring the world of serial killers — why do we object ourselves to it?

In a scene in the first episode, Bill is holding court with his neighbours who listen on with morbid fascination about his work. The wide-eyed shock at abnormal human behaviour, the kind that drives people to kill, crawls into our subconsciousness but also protects us.

The idea of “the other” — monsters so different to ourselves — creates a distance between us and them, and that demarcation makes it safe to devour stories of evildoers.

Mindhunter allows us to confront the very base of humanity and what it’s capable of, and in that peeping tom process, provides a kind of catharsis — what could possibly happen to you, just sitting on your couch?

Mindhunter is streaming now on Netflix

Share your TV and movies obsessions | @wenleima