This Netflix show is so good it ruined all other detective series for me

There are a ton of detective series out there, both very popular ones and those that have flown under the radar. Mindhunter, which ran for two seasons on Netflix between 2017 and 2019, is somewhere in the middle: it definitely found a fanbase, but that fanbase wasn’t big enough to secure it a third season, leaving us with two of the best seasons of true crime TV ever produced.

I’m not kidding: I’ve had trouble watching other detective shows, even really good ones, after mainlining Mindhunter, and I’m afraid that it’s ruined the genre for me forever.

Mindhunter is written, directed, and acted to within an inch of its life

With David Fincher in charge, expect nothing less

Credit: Netflix

Mindhunter begins in the late 1970s and chronicles the early days of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, which pioneered the idea of looking at the psychology behind why criminals act the way they do. Agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) team up with psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) to profile serial killers, who were then widespread. A lot of famous ones show up in cameo form, and our heroes end up investigating a couple of real-life cases themselves.

None of this is groundbreaking material, but the show treats it with a subtlety rarely seen in the genre. Many of the episodes are directed by de facto showrunner David Fincher, who helmed all-time great serial-killer movies like Se7en and Zodiac. Fincher is famously meticulous, and his eye for detail goes a long way towards making Mindhunter feel special. The period details are perfect, the pacing is precisely calculated to keep you hooked, and the show itself is beautiful to look at. Do you see the shot above, where the characters are bathed in the multi-colored lights of the police car? I mean, come on.

Fincher and his team also get great performances out of the actors; Mindhunter was one of the vehicles that made Jonathan Groff a star. As with a lot of Fincher’s work, there’s an icy precision to Mindhunter, which fits given that our heroes are dealing with some seriously cold-hearted individuals.

And speaking of them…

We love serial killers, and Mindhunter knows it

Sick but true

Mindhunter is a little different from a lot of detective series in that it’s not exactly about solving murders; when the agents interview serial killers, they’re already behind bars. And when they’re on the trail of an active one, like the real-life serial killer the Grim Sleeper in the second season, history already tells us what they did. Mindhunter is more about the how and the why. What makes people go to such extremes?

David Fincher has long been fascinated with that subject, as are a great many people around the world. We love leering at lurid true crime, and Mindhunter gives us an eyeful. The serial killer interviews almost play like celebrity cameos; the agents talk to the likes of David Berkowitz (Oliver Cooper), Richard Speck (Jack Erdie), Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton), Charles Manson (Damon Herriman), and many more famous psychopaths.

I don’t know what it is, and I kind of wish it weren’t true, but these people are almost American folk heroes, towering figures that have fascinated the masses for decades. And unlike a true crime show like Monster, which takes real-life serial killers like Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer and turns them into soap opera stars, Mindhunter keeps things grounded enough that it doesn’t feel exploitative…while still giving us an excuse to luxuriate in the disgusting details of these peoples’ crimes.

Mindhunter is a beautifully made show about perhaps the least beautiful topic in the history of topics. That gives it a tension that’s irresistible.

Will there ever be a Mindhunter season 3?

Probably not, but…

The second season of Mindhunter doesn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, but there are storylines left unresolved. Throughout the first two seasons, we catch creepy glimpses of Dennis Rader (Sonny Valicenti), better known as the BTK killer, doing his grim work. Our heroes never actually encounter BTK, but you know they wouldn’t have shown us what he was up to if they weren’t leading up to something. It kills me that we’ll never get to see what.

Or at least, we probably won’t. A lot of years have passed since the end of season two, and Jonathan Groff in particular is very busy—you can see him right now at the movies in Merrily We Roll Along—but we do still hear whispers about a revival from time to time. In July of 2025, Holt McCallany told CBR that he’d talked to David Fincher and that the director had hinted that the series could be wrapped up with a trio of two-hour movies.

Is that the same thing as a proper third season? No, but I’d gladly take it!

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Just one more episode, I promise.

Nobody does it better

In the meantime, I’ll just have to accept that no other crime show will ever quite hit like Mindhunter has, even though there are plenty of worthy ones out there. And if anybody wants to step up and try to surpass it, I encourage their ambition.

If you love this show as much as I do, you can always check out more of Fincher’s work. His 2023 Netflix movie The Killer has a lot of what made Mindhunter so good, namely the razor-sharp direction and grim subject matter. It might not be the same, but it’s better than nothing.

Release Date

2017 – 2019

Showrunner

Joe Penhall

Directors

David Fincher

Writers

Joe Penhall