brains

This Des review contains spoilers. Serial killer dramas have a grimy reputation. The phrase conjures up lurid magazine headlines promising Sick! Twisted! Depravity! and Never-Seen-Before Crime Scene Photos! Think ‘true crime serial killer’, you think of Jack the Ripper tours and David from Psychoville poring over victim stats and working himself to a froth over all the gory details.   To shake off those associations and emerge as nuanced, intelligent and non-exploitative, a drama has to work hard. It has to foreground the human cost and trace a story that doesn’t revel in gore. It requires scripts that build in context and narrative…