The Alienist arrives!

BY: Claire Connors

Based on the suspenseful best-selling novel by military historian and author Caleb Carr, The Alienist is finally being brought to the screen this fall thanks to TNT. It’s about time, considering the popular page-turner has been sitting on a shelf awaiting a Hollywood Greenlight since it hit bookstores in 1994.

Obsessed with family violence and its likely reoccurrence in future generations, Carr started researching the rich and dangerous history of his lower eastside neighborhood while mining the emotional fallout of his own father’s brutal behavior. (If you want a good rabbit hole to go down, google Carr’s father, Lucien Carr—what a story!)

Set at the turn of the 20th century, Carr weaves real-life characters of the time, such as JP Morgan, Jacob Riis, and Police Commissioner and future POTUS, Theodore Roosevelt, into a thrilling narrative set in the gilded era, when the very rich and very poor were separated by Houston Street. That treacherous part of lower Manhattan was compared to the depths of hell, teeming with crooks, drunks, heartless whores, and one ruthless serial killer responsible for the gruesome murders of boy prostitutes working in the neighborhood.

True Detective director Cary Fukanaga, who knows his way around a serial killer, is producing the 10-part series with Luke Evans starring as a New York Times crime reporter who teams up with the alienist—an antiquated term for a criminal psychologist.—played by Daniel Brühl. To keep an eye on their progress, police secretary—and intuitive fledgling criminologist—Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning) is added to the squad.

The first two episodes of the series, which is shooting in Budapest, are directed by Jakob Verbruggen, who helmed chapters in the gripping series, The Fall, London Spy, and Black Mirror. So we know we’re in for a real spine-tingler.