Dramas like
Mouse

The same question, answered by method instead of by twist. Both are about sitting across from someone who has done the unthinkable and working out what is happening behind the face, and both refuse to make that comfortable. Difference: twelve slow episodes built out of interviews and archive work, so it explains killers without ever excusing one.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the first interview subject starts talking and the method becomes visible.

Two men circling each other, and both of them look guilty. Same structure of a hunt where the hunter is a suspect, and the same trick of making a small town feel like an accomplice. Difference: sixteen hours of atmosphere and character rather than plot mechanics, and it never reaches for a genetic explanation to close its argument.

Slow start Episode 3, the point at which you stop trusting both leads at once.

A hidden man, and the detective who lives with him. Same premise of a monster in a domestic setting and the same escalating dread of the moment the household finds out. Difference: it plays fair, never editing to mislead, and there is a real marriage at the centre, so the show has something to lose besides a twist.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the wife starts investigating her own husband. Episode 1 opens with a scene that is hard to sit through.

Cold cases, and the paperwork that solves them. Same interest in the profiler's job as a job, and the same structure of decades-old crime reopened by somebody nobody wants to listen to. Difference: the time-travel radio is a thriller device rather than a psychological one, and the cruelty is never staged for effect.

Hooks early Episode 1. The walkie-talkie premise is set up and paid off inside the first hour.

Everything Mouse feels, with the feeling surgically removed. Same fascination with a mind that processes violence differently from everyone in the room, and the same institutional obstruction. Difference: nothing supernatural, no serial-killer showmanship, and the enemy is a prosecutor's office rather than a person.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the first autopsy contradicts the official story.

A decades-long hunt for one killer, and a detective who ages into it. Same long game of a case that outlives the people working it, same small-city police work. Difference: it is warm and often funny, the time-slip is used for family rather than horror, and it is far kinder to the people inside it than this show would ever be.

Hooks early Episode 1. A 1986 detective lands in 2017 inside the first twenty minutes.