(TV SERIES) Mindhunter season 1 - The Background History of FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit

Finally I got the chance to complete writing my views about this series that I have binged watched few months ago. I was told about it by two people before I started to find out and seriously look for it online. The first person who told me was my wife's nephew who had a knack for quality, highly critical movies/series and the other one was a person whom we met during one of my wife's event some time ago. Both of them told us that the series was a serious and sort of mind blowing type. When I looked for the synopsis in the internet, I thought I would give this a try and with just 10 episodes in the first season should be easy to complete.

Brief Story Line

In the year 1977, an FBI agent Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff - Frozen, Glee TV series etc) was specialized in hostage negotiation and also a trainer for FBI trainees in Quantico. As he was really into the psychology of the criminals, his unit chief Shepard (Cotter Smith) told him to expand his horizon. Holden was instructed to partner with Agent Bill Tench (Holt McCallany - Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Monster Trucks etc) who was in the Behavioral Science Unit to give training to various local police department about criminology. It was during these trips that Holden was made aware of some local murderer who had done multiple violent crimes. This would be the start of how Holden and Bill doing the interviews to learn more on the psychology of these people. 

Holden had a girlfriend named Debbie (Hannah Gross) who was a post graduate student and very intelligent. Holden would sometime discuss various matters with her and she could also provide some insights as well. As the total people that Holden and Bill interviewed grew larger, Bill thought of collaborating with a psychology professor from Boston university named Wendy Carr (Anna Torv - Fringe TV series) whom he had cooperated few times before. Based on their researches, the three of them would start to compile some kind of guidance on criminal psychology and profiling murderer. When some of the local police asked the help from Holden and Bill, they would start to use their knowledge from those research to assist them finding the perpetrator. But their works were not without any flaws and they also got internal problem as well.

So how would their work be continued if they have to settle their internal differences? Could they really help all the requests or would they actually create unnecessary problems? Find them all in this psychological thriller drama mystery series.

End of Brief Story Line

Well, as I would have expected from this kind of rather heavy drama thriller, the series was having lots of scenes that you need to watch seriously to better understand. I actually felt there were some similarities with the TV series Criminal Minds which I loved a lot. Then I realized the reason for it having similarity was because this series was focusing on the beginning of developing the Behavioral Science Unit (which was the seed of what would later on becoming Behavioral Analysis Unit/BAU). 

Being a series that explained the starting of such unit, it was not focusing on the criminal investigation yet, since the 3 main characters were starting off more like researchers rather than investigators. It was not until in the middle of the series that we would start to see 1 or 2 cases that they gave their insights. Majority of the early and later stages of the series was focusing on the interviews with the subjects (murderers). It was rather creepy and disturbing to learn how these minds work and I think the actors portraying them were absolutely great as we truly felt the uneasiness sensation of how these murderers could have done their crimes. The most memorable one to my opinion was Edmund Kemper (played brilliantly by Cameron Britton). Just so you know, all the serial killers characters interviewed really exist. And this series was based on a book titled Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit written by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker.

I was actually rooting for Holden Ford's character in the series, despite his character development was not to my liking. Meanwhile Debbie's character was the least of my favorite as I think hers was a bit irritating. I like Holt McCallany's acting here and I found that he was very good in his portrayal of a more senior FBI agent. My recollection of his acts were not too memorable as he was mostly having to play minor character in various movies. Anna Torv gave a strong performance here just like her character in the series that I loved Fringe. Overall, the series strength was not in the action (there was very little of it), but mostly on the story telling and of course the setting, make up & costumes which truly made us believed that we were in the 1970s.

So if you are looking for a series that was totally different from other series and you are interested in finding out how the mind of serial killers work, plus you want to see some history/background of those FBI elite unit was formed, then this is definitely something you should try and see. It is available on Netflix. But be warned if you are easily disturbed with the eerie sensation from those killers, then might not be a good idea to see this. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars