The trailer for David Fincher’s eagerly awaited crime show MINDHUNTER has landed and, from the looks of things, we’re in firm Fincher territory. It opens with the stuttering sound of a 1970s fax machine spooling out a grainy black-and-white image – splayed legs, then a skirt, then a head hidden from view – before a nasal voice states: “It’s not easy butchering people. It’s hard work.”

Produced by Charlize Theron, the series follows Agent Ford (Jonathan Groff) as he and a colleague (Holt McCallany) interview imprisoned psychopaths and let cops in on their findings. “Serial … killers?” one baffled boss asks. “New terminology,” replies Ford.

Based on the 1997 crime classic by John Douglas, the FBI maverick on whom the Silence of the Lambs’ Agent Jack Crawford was modelled, Fincher’s odyssey explores the seminal years of criminal profiling, and the lengths those profilers went to understand their subject. “You want truffles?” asks Ford. “You gotta get in the dirt with the pigs.” Fincher knows what to do with a pared-down palette and a grating soundtrack, and these first tense scenes suggest there’s no end to that dirt.

MINDHUNTER is on Netflix from 13 October.

