TNT’s 1886 Procedural Series THE ALIENIST, Starring Luke Evans and Dakota Fanning

The Alienist is a new series that stars Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning, The show is based on the novel by Caleb Carr and created for TV by Cary Fukunaga. It will be about the early criminal profilers in 1896 and try to get into the mind of one of New York City’s first serial killers before they hunt him down.

“Instead of looking to cure a disease of the body, I look to help those who are suffering from illness of the mind,” Daniel Brühl’s Dr. Laszlo Kreizler says in the opening shots of the Alienist trailer. “Sometimes, society looks upon people as crazy. It may only mean that they are alienated from their own true natures.”

The Alienist is an early term for a criminal psychologist. But Dr. Kreizler can’t do the job on his own — he’s soon joined by newspaper illustrator John Moore (Evans) and aspiring police detective Sarah Howard (Fanning), as they form a unit to combine Kreizler’s psychology techniques with old-fashioned detective work.

The series is set during the Gilded Age, in which crime and butchered medical practices ran rampant.

The Alienist opens with a series of horrific murders of boy prostitutes that seize New York City. The police call upon criminal psychologist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) and newspaper illustrator John Moore (Evans) to lead the investigation in secret. They are joined by Sara Howard (Fanning), a headstrong secretary determined to become the city’s first female police detective.

The Alienist premieres on TNT on January 22, 2018.