The Alienist

Right, I’m boring myself now with these tedious anecdotes about how I come to watch each of these shows.  It’s getting tedious, isn’t it?  Let’s just say the genesis of this one was some panicked mutual viewing when we had to find something we could both agree on and this seemed like it would do.  Someone somewhere had apparently told someone else that The Alienist was supposed to be quite good.  With episode one done, the perfectionist in me then had to pursue the remaining nine alone.

And now here we are, ready to see what snide remarks I can make about this piece of content, then.

I could begin by explaining the name, but each instalment opens with a solemn reminder that an alienist is a nineteenth century term for a psychiatrist/psychologist (not actually sure on the difference) sort of person.  There is nothing in this to do with extra-terrestrials; let’s just get that clear.  So who is this alienist doing all of the alien-ing?  Dr Laszlo Kreizler is our main character, played by Daniel Brühl (whose performance in Good Bye, Lenin! I’ve watched over and over in a former life as a student of German).  He’s a New York maverick, rebelling against many a public institution as he explores the human mind.  This somehow also means he does crime solving too, so when mutilated bodies start to appear, he leaps to centre stage.

But these aren’t just bodies.  They are the bodies of young boys.  And these aren’t just young boys, they are underage prostitutes.  And these aren’t just underage prostitutes, these are cross-dressing sex workers.  I’ll allow you a moment to recover from the shock on shock on shock while I ask: what is our obsession with killing prostitutes?  Every best-selling book and ratings-winning drama on normal telly seems to be about solving the crime of who offed all these local ladies of the night.  The Alienist has the added twists of being set in 1896 and purveying a special flavour of prostitute: anatomically male, young and gender-fluid.  This element compounds the already dark undertones of the drama’s gothic qualities, but it can also lead to quizzical looks from your housemates if they come into the room and the scene on the screen at that exact moment is underage boys in dresses seducing a grown man on a bed.  How do you answer those questions?

Everything is very period, though, so you’ve no chance of forgetting the historical setting.  Each scene is punctuated with a horse and carriage drawing up somewhere.  There are even chases exclusively on equine transport, which manage to feel a bit awkward.  The screen is constantly filled with hundreds of extras, painstakingly costumed and carefully doing things from the past, like walking along or pretending to have dialogue.  Not a single exchange of dialogue takes place without someone walking past a window in a hat, or a street urchin lurching into view.  You’ll ask yourself where all these extras come from.  I imagine TNT Studios is awash in hundreds of people ready to bring to life any tableau.  Some of these background artists look like they’ve wandered in from The Crown or Peaky Blinders.

But while the backdrop to The Alienist is exquisite, what’s happening just by the camera at the front there is sometimes a bit painful.  The main characters are all thoroughly humourless, only becoming more earnest in their humourlessness when something dramatic happens.  This lack of light to the constant shade can feel overbearing.  Add to that the fact that they’ve all felt the need to talk in strange accents, aspirating the wh in what and why (so they sound like Stewie Griffin saying cool whip in Family Guy) and slowly placing emphasis on everything.  Dakota Fanning, as Sara Howard, seems especially keen on maintaining this almost hypnotic approach to each line.  It’s best just to look at her hats, as she has one for every occasion: looking for bodies, chasing baddies, struggling to make buddies.  Her cruel treatment by the male employees of the NYPD feels under-explored as she blazes a trail for women who want to solve why people keep murdering prostitutes.  At least she is more interesting than Kreizler.

So, is this good content, or is it as boring as the introductory paragraph to one of my blogposts?  Well, it’s very well done.  Every effort has been made to impress on screen.  But, as with Netflix’s Altered Carbon, they appear to have tried to impress things on too much screen.  I know that sentence doesn’t even work, but I’m leaving it in anyway.  The story feels like it could be over in maybe three episodes, like a BBC or ITV drama special.  By drawing things out into this longer season, the pace is slowed, unnecessary detail is added in, diluting the effect of crucial detail, and the plot is lost among lots of padding, just like the characters are lost under layers of their own costumes.  If you love the gothic and the macabre, then this is a fine addition to that genre, but for it to break out as the next Netflix star, The Alienist could do with a bit more charm.  Maybe aliens really will land in series two.