We all have revenge fantasies. I know I do. Maybe you imagine some sort of “eye for an eye” comeuppance for someone who’s wronged either you or someone you love. Maybe you picture them begging for forgiveness, or engaging in a public humiliation ritual (just spitballing here), or being keenly aware of your immeasurable successes compared with their nonexistent ones. – the new Hulu crime thriller that people are currently talking about incessantly – takes the notion of the revenge fantasy to new extremes. Very loosely inspired by the 1987 film is about a woman who injects various men with fentanyl until they overdose, each of whom is somehow connected to a web of sex trafficking and abuse.

In many ways, is more of a straightforward crime series than the above makes it sound. We have two parallel stories: the serial killer, Catherine (played by a chameleonic Lola Petticrew) and the FBI agent Alice Black (played by a truly outstanding Emmy Rossum) trying to catch her. Catherine is hardly meticulous in her clear-up of the murders; she leaves witnesses, half-heartedly destroys evidence and barely considers the trail she might leave behind. But none of that is really her concern; all she seeks is cold, hard revenge. And she’s also keenly aware that the authorities, for the most part, are largely uninterested in delving into the darker corners of the world of rich and powerful men, specifically as it relates to sex crimes.

But is also not your average crime fare. There’s a tightness and a paciness that sets it apart from other thrillers. While similar series might leave various threads untied until the final act, dragging us down the garden path in the process, never presents us with a single scene or storyline that doesn’t serve a greater purpose. Each character acts quickly, and with clear intent, though their moves are often twisty and unpredictable. For those of us who are brain-rotted from constant phone-checking, is gripping enough that you’ll hardly tear your eyes away from the screen. I watched the entire series in one sitting – no small feat, considering its eight-episode runtime. I haven’t watched something this engrossing since , or back in 2021. (And there are similarities between and the latter.)

Greater than the cat and mouse manoeuvres of our co-leads is the role of trauma, and how profoundly it can alter the trajectory of people’s minds and lives. is clever and realistic in its depiction of PTSD. We learn that Alice has experienced her own set of traumatic events – abuse, neglect, homelessness, domestic violence – and how simply functioning can feel like an internal battle day-to-day. Her grizzled and whipsmart colleague, Nora (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), has her own traumas relating to the racism she’s experienced in the FBI, as well as years of investigating sex crimes, and now numbs the pain with drink. If all of this sounds a bit harrowing, it is, but navigates such themes with nuance and humour. We aren’t merely presented with predatory men, but the tangible ways in which their abuse creates a ripple effect. Their crimes are not a single act, but a haunting – and is an exorcism, of sorts, in motion.

There’s much to be said about being the first crime series made for a post-Epstein world – and the parallels between the plot and real life are impossible to miss (at one point, we see photos of teenage girls sitting next to much older, more powerful men, bringing to mind the many photos we’ve seen published of Epstein and his seemingly endless cohort). But don’t confuse this with a straightforward indictment of such abusers – nor dramatised trauma porn (crucially, such sex crimes are mostly just spoken about or eluded to; we’re not subjected to seeing them play out on screen). is much more interested in the machinery that enables such abuse – the murky eco-system carefully maintained from top to bottom – and the women who attempt to game the system, or dare push against those who sustain it.

It should come as no surprise that, in , you often end up siding with a serial killer. Early on, we learn that to win against dirty you have to play dirty (though, admittedly, Catherine takes it to… extremes). We also learn that there isn’t a huge chasm between Catherine and our FBI agent; one could have been the other, depending on how the cards fell. They share much of the same fury and, ultimately, so do we, watching from home.

Is Respectable Crime Drama At Its Addictive Best