Netflix: The Alienist review ★★★★★

The sinister scuttling noise of a black pot boiling over a fire. The grind of a knife as it slides through flesh and thuds dully on the wooden surface beneath. The meow of a cat as tiny maroon-red chunks of flesh fall out of blistered fingers and into its mouth. The sizzle of two kidneys being sautéd. And, finally, the welcoming splash of a young child's eyeball as it falls into the boiling water. Try not to vomit.

Where else could we be but in yet another gruesome Victorian crime drama? It might be Sweeney Todd or Ripper Street or Sherlock Holmes, but it happens to be Netflix's new psychological thriller The Alienist. Lovingly macabre, bleak and humourless, the ten-episode series is saved from being unwatchably revolting by intelligently drawn characters and an exciting murder mystery plot. With shows like these, it's small wonder the streaming giant has the confidence to spurn Cannes and take on the Oscars.

Set in 1890s New York during the dawn of modern psychiatry, we meet the magnificently moustachioed Dr Lazlo Kreizler (Daniel Brühl) as a criminal psychologist or an 'alienist' (a term that derives from the 19th-century belief that those suffering from mental illness were 'alienated from themselves'). Kreizler is our Sherlock Holmes stand-in for the series. But, unlike most Sherlock knock-offs, Krieizler is soft and curious, despite being a professional know-it-all sleuth who lives by his 'own rules'.



In fiction, all private investigators are hated by the police, and so it is here. Kreizler must send his right-hand-man, the newspaper illustrator John Moore (Luke Evans), to infiltrate a crime-scene where a male prostitute child dressed as a girl has been chopped into pieces, and now looks as though 'an animal had torn him apart'. Queue the camera's slow zoom into the dead child's empty eye-socket. We told you it was macabre.

Lots of money has clearly been spent on making The Alienist visually compelling, which it is, despite the brown, grey and urine yellow palette compulsorily in every Victorian city drama. And even though it was shot in Budapest, there's a real sense of what New York must have been like at the turn of the 20th century as the streets are full of thin, suffering faces and a collision of different accents from around the world.

The Alienist has echos of Netflix's last serial killer drama, David Fincher's Mindhunter, but has the added benefit of Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning) who observes the stupidities and hypocrisies of clever men as she helps Dr Kreizler and Moore with their case. Slick writing, soft characterisation and a complicated plot, make The Alienist another feather in the overcrowded Netflix cap.