10 Ridiculous TV Premises Everybody Fell For

For fans of the serial killer trope, one of the most fascinating in American popular culture, The Following should have been a clear winner.

It had what, on paper, seemed like a peerless high concept. The FBI estimates that there are as many as three hundred serial killers haunting the highways, cities and backwoods of America at any one time. Well, what if someone were to provide them with connections, with leadership?

It's only when you actually start watching The Following that you see what's wrong with it. Making every killer in the show a devotee of the same death cult nullifies the whole concept of profiling. Worse, it completely removes the unique selling point of the serial killer narrative: getting to grips with the fascinating, warped, idiosyncratic and individual psychologies involved.

Without that, The Following is just a succession of gruesome murders carried out by totally inconsequential henchmen, most if not all of whom are casually disposed of as they come between protagonist, lawman Ryan Hardy and his nemesis Joe Carroll.

You can see the writers and directors of the show struggling to create a propulsive, thrilling narrative... not realising that their own premise has shot them in the foot from the word go.

At least Criminal Minds, for all its procedural structure, gives us a different 'unsub' every week, detailing a different persona with unique motivations. A serial killer narrative following a succession of bland, blindly fanatical killers with nothing distinguishing one from the next is a poor entry in the genre.