Long before serial-killer procedurals became weekly television staples, TNT’s The Alienist arrived in 2018 like a blood-stained calling card from another era. Adapted from Caleb Carr’s bestselling 1994 novel, this lavish, two-season thriller plunged viewers into the fetid underbelly of 1896 New York City — and delivered one of the most intelligent, atmospheric crime dramas ever made.

At its core is an unlikely trio hunting a child murderer who scales buildings and mutilates his victims with surgical precision. Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Brühl), a brilliant but haunted “alienist” (early psychologist), believes the killer can be understood — and stopped — by mapping the twisted pathways of the human mind. Joining him are John Moore (Luke Evans), a dissolute New York Times illustrator with a conscience, and Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning), a secretary at police headquarters who is quietly determined to become the city’s first female detective.

What elevates The Alienist far above standard period whodunnits is its unflinching examination of trauma. Every corpse is a mirror reflecting the city’s rot: immigrant poverty, corrupt Tammany Hall politics, rampant child prostitution, institutional abuse, and the casual brutality of the Gilded Age. Kreizler’s groundbreaking (and controversial) methods — using what we now recognise as criminal profiling, forensic photography, and psychological autopsies — feel revolutionary because, in 1896, they genuinely were.

Season 1, subtitled simply The Alienist, is a near-perfect 10-episode descent into darkness. The production design is breathtaking: gas-lit streets choked with fog, opulent mansions hiding horrors, asylums that look like gothic nightmares. Brühl’s Kreizler is magnetic — cerebral, damaged, and morally uncompromising — while Evans brings roguish charm and vulnerability. But it is Dakota Fanning who steals the show. At just 23 during filming, she delivers a performance of astonishing maturity as Sara Howard: poised, fiercely intelligent, and constantly battling the era’s suffocating sexism. Her quiet defiance in a world that expects women to be decorative rather than dangerous is riveting.

Season 2, The Alienist: Angel of Darkness (2020), somehow improves on perfection. Based on Carr’s sequel novel, it fast-forwards a year and centres on the kidnapping of a Spanish diplomat’s baby. Sara — now running her own private detective agency — takes the lead, making this one of the rare historical dramas to hand narrative power to a woman and never look back. Fanning’s evolution is staggering: from determined outsider to confident leader, her Sara Howard is a full-blown feminist icon long before the word existed.

Critics adored it. Season 1 holds an 85% “Certified Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes; Season 2 climbs to 91%. The cinematography earned Emmy nominations, and the costumes, makeup, and production design were rightly showered with awards. Yet somehow the series slipped under mainstream radar, perhaps too dark, too cerebral, or simply arriving before the current golden age of prestige limited series fully exploded.

Now streaming free on Spectrum (and available elsewhere), The Alienist feels more relevant than ever. Its themes — institutional corruption, the weaponisation of childhood trauma, the birth of forensic science — resonate powerfully in 2025. And in an industry still criticised for under-serving female leads, Sara Howard remains a triumphant reminder of what happens when you give a brilliant actress a brilliant role.

Two seasons. Eighteen episodes. Zero filler. If you’ve never watched The Alienist, cancel your weekend. Dakota Fanning, Daniel Brühl, and Luke Evans deliver performances that linger like cigarette smoke in a Victorian drawing room. This isn’t just television — it’s a beautifully crafted autopsy of the human soul.