Mindhunter

The interviews in Mindhunter are often more tense than a pursuit. Two FBI agents and a psychologist are trying to understand violent offenders by listening to them, while deciding how much of what they hear can usefully become a method.

Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany and Anna Torv give the developing work different kinds of confidence and caution. An interesting answer is not automatically reliable, and professional curiosity can become uncomfortable when the speaker recognises the attention he is receiving.

The period setting is handled with restraint. Offices, travel and paperwork create a working routine around material that could easily be sensationalised. The series is fictionalised drama drawing on the history of profiling, not an endorsement of every conclusion its characters reach.

It is an excellent choice for patient crime television, particularly if conversation is more appealing than constant incident. Black Bird puts a similarly dangerous kind of listening inside a prison. Mindhunter gives the investigators an institution around them, without making that institution certain about the value of their work.