You could easily watch the first few minutes of Furious without knowing that it would turn out to be so special. It opens with a scene of pure horror: it’s Halloween night and a real monster is hiding among the pretend ones. A woman we come to know as Catherine Grace (an astonishingly good Lola Petticrew) is inside a man’s house, wearing a creepy kitten mask.
The man is in bad shape, crawling on the floor, gasping for air and begging for his life. Catherine is alternately chirpy and tender with him, but eventually, she loses her patience with his pleading. She takes a syringe filled with fentanyl out of a pencil case decorated with sparkly stickers and jewels and finishes the job.
So far, so creepy crime drama, but Furious is already hiding in plain sight, because the monster is not who we think it is. What looks as if it will be a cat-and-mouse story, in which a tenacious FBI agent hunts a twisted serial killer, quickly rips up any expectations. We learn that Catherine was trafficked into sex work as a teenager, and is now making her way through a kill list of predatory and powerful men.
Her life has been shaped by a conspiracy of abuse, violence, neglect and indifference. She has decided to take matters into her own broken hands. The case finds its way to the desk of Alice Black (Emmy Rossum, in the role of her life), a tough former NYPD homicide detective turned recent FBI recruit.
Her boss, Nora Washington (an equally excellent Quincy Tyler Bernstine), is the head of the sex crimes and crimes against children unit. She drinks to cope with the horrors she has to witness on a daily basis and is in possession of the darkest sense of humour on TV. She sees the potential, and pain, in Alice, and puts her to work.
But as the series progresses, we see what it demands of them both to pursue justice, when they are repeatedly told to step back and stand down. It is hard to think of a recent drama that has placed quite so much trust in the intelligence of its audience. Every character here is flawed.
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