The Following
I'm quite the fan of detective and mystery fiction, but if there's one thing I hate, it's when shows like this handle serial killers. Serial killers are what I like to call Easy Evil - like Nazis and terrorists - because writers don't have to work hard to make a serial killer evil. They usually just say "serial killer" and that's all the motivation that the characters need to go after them. And they're frequently used in the pilot episode of a new series, because when you're trying to sell your show, you need to bring out the big guns' something with the wow factor to impress network executives.
"The Following" does all of this in the first five minutes. And I find myself enthralled by it.
The reason for this is because the writers have taken the time to establish the serial killer as an actual serial killer. When his crimes are described, you can see the pathology of it mirrored in his behaviour while acting as a functioning member of society. And because of it, he is more than a simple plot device: he is an actual character. Casting James Purefoy in the role really helps, too, because he gets just the right amount of menace going. He has a master plan, of course, but he isn't counting on the police and the FBI to make a complicated set of very specific moves and counter-moves that he would have no way of anticipating, but is somehow able to (something that really turns me off to the genre). Kevin Bacon's character is written in exactly the same way, which creates for an interesting dynamic between the two.
"The Following" does have its moments of brutality, and while the goriest moments are never shown on camera, the series is smart enough to know that anything the viewer thinks of is going to be ten times more disquieting than whatever the writers commit to. It also does a fine job of addressing one of my pet hates within film and television: violence for the sake of it. I cannot stand films like Saw and Hostel, which are simply two hours' worth of pretty young people being tortured in increasingly brutal and imaginitive ways. The violence in "The Following" is pretty high-impact at times (though it never goes anywhere near the level in those films), but the series takes the time to show the effect it has on the characters. This reinforces the idea that there are actual stakes to play for, and that mistakes by the main characters can - and do - result in the deaths of others.
"The Following" injects a few new ideas into an old framing device precisely where they are needed. It doesn't try to be earth-shattering or genre-defying, but instead knows the rules of the genre and plays by them - the difference is that it knows the rules so well that it can play with them in new and interesting ways.
