In the 19th Century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be alienated form their own true natures. Experts who studied them were therefore known as alienists.
SPOILERS AHEAD
In New York City during the mid-1890’s, a boy prostitute in woman’s clothing has been found dead. The Alienist, Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Brühl), is asked by the newly selected police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Geraghty) to help him with an off the books investigation. Kreizler asks his friend John Moore (Luke Evans), an illustrator for the New York Times, to join him. A group of two cannot work fast enough, therefore he ask three other people to join his task force: Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning), Roosevelt’s secretary and the first woman working in a police department, and the twin brothers Marcus and Lucius Isaacson (Douglas Smith and Matthew Shear), both detective sergeants in the NYPD.
It is revealed that Kreizler has a personal interest in this murder. A couple of years ago, a young boy was his patient and he also liked to dress up as a girl and Kreizler told the parents they should leave him be. This boy and his twin sister were later found dead. Kreizler thinks that both murders have been the work of the same culprit and he is determined to find him and put him behind bars.
The team are investigating different leads at the same time as the evidence has led them to a young man from a wealthy family who seems to be abused by his mother.
Former head of the NYPD detective department Thomas Byrnes (Ted Levine) holds grudges against Roosevelt, who fired him because he accused him of being corrupted. It just so happens that he has still a lot of police officers who are loyal to him, including Captain Connor (David Wilmot). He wants to catch the murderer himself to be reappointed to his former position. Besides, how would it look if an alienist finds the murderer before the police does?
Connor is following Kreizler’s team every step of they way and he kills the young man the team accused to be the murderer. Unfortunately, it turns out that he was not.
As the investigation brings a new lead to light, the team includes Kreizler’s servants Cyrus and Stevie (Robert Wisdom and Matt Lintz). Desperate times are in need of desperate measures and the group of seven tries to lure out the murderer by putting Stevie as bait in a brothel.
After investigating different asylums around the east coast, they finally get the right lead and discover that the murders are occurring on holy days following the Christian calendar and the victims are always found near a place where water flows.
The 10 episode long season has the audience on the edge of their seat until the last episode where the murderer is revealed, along with what his reasons are to committing such crimes.
The killer is a man called Japheth Dury, who was mentally abused by his mother and called a bastard. He had a facial tic since the day he was born, which seems to be an effect of his social anxiety. The only friend he had was his older brother who trusted a friend to take care of Japheth., but this friend was not worthy of his trust. He raped Japheth. Alone and misunderstood, he took revenge into his own hands. He killed his parents and his rapist, Georg Beecham, and made up a new identity for himself and gave himself the name John Beecham. John, as in John the Baptist, wanted to purify his victims and Beecham, because he took over his behaviour.
Based on the best-selling 1994 novel of same name by Caleb Carr, The Alienist was filmed in Budapest and aired in the US on TNT in January 2018. The rights to the series landed with Netflix, and so it is available for streaming internationally.
The story is similar to the well-known murders committed by Jack the Ripper. The Alienist does well when portraying its history with a young New York full of immigrants who are hoping for a better life in the new world and a young Teddy Roosevelt, who later became the 26th president of the United States. It also shows how woman have been seen as the weaker gender and that a woman who wanted to be more than just a wife were not taken seriously. The series tries to demonstrate how the human brain functions and what drives us humans to behave the way we do, which made it incredibly interesting to watch.
Aside from the graphic murders, the series does veer off into a little romantic tangent. Kreizler sees that he would be always alone if he only focuses on studying peoples behaviour as well as Moore and Howard, whose families know each other for generations, and they understand that they are worthy of happiness. Everyone deals with their experiences differently and you have to take into account that society forms them as well. Everything that happens to us has an effect on our further actions. Kreizler’s fathers mood swings, Howard’s father depression, and Moore dealing with lost love and not admit that he still suffers.
As Sara Howard says, “we can let the pain haunt us or accept it and try to help others with our experience and find out what compels a man to do evil or good”.
The series stars Daniel Brühl (Rush), Dakota Fanning (The Runaways), Luke Evans (Beauty and The Beast 2017), Matt Lintz (Pixels), Martin McCreadie (Transformers: The Last Knight), Matthew Shear (The Boy Downstairs), Douglas Smith (Vinyl), and David Wilmot (Black Sails).
