Your next box setKevin BaconReviewBacon’s weary FBI man locks horns with James Purefoy’s charismatic, serial-killing cult leader in this gruesome thriller

One minute in and five people have died. And that’s mild compared to what then unfolds in the course of two series. This isn’t too surprising really, given that The Following was created by Kevin Williamson, writer of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. The result is a refreshingly unsubtle stab-a-thon, with twists aplenty and heaps of gratuitous violence.

Ex-FBI agent Ryan Hardy, played with enjoyable weariness by Kevin Bacon, is desperately trying to capture the escaped serial killer, Joe Carroll, and return him to prison. But it quickly becomes clear that Carroll is not your ordinary killer. While incarcerated, he uses his Hannibal Lecter-like charisma to assemble like-minded maniacs into a cult, whose purpose is to create mayhem on the outside by slicing up as many innocent people as possible. Carroll is also bent on tormenting and, ultimately, destroying Hardy, who put him away – and then slept with his wife.

The full extent of Carroll’s psychopathic network isn’t revealed, so it’s hard to know who is and who isn’t a member: you can never tell if someone is simply hugging their best friend goodbye, or getting ready to perform a surprise appendectomy. It’s hard to see the violence coming – and all the more shocking when it does. In one scene, a Carroll devotee is reciting Edgar Allan Poe’s dark poem The Raven on a street corner. He then walks up behind a man at a hotdog stand and sets him on fire. What’s really troubling, though, is that there appears to be no motive for the attack, other than that it simply took his fancy.

The show’s big attraction, though, is James Purefoy as Carroll, a compelling mixture of focused charm and explosive impulse. One minute he’s charming the FBI badge off Hardy, the next, he’s raging about his “need to kill” and removing a young woman’s eyes from their sockets. Half the time Purefoy looks like he’s off to model Boden rollnecks, but that disarmingly suave demeanour only makes him more frightening. As Carroll says: “All I ever wanted was for my name to live for ever. I think I’ve probably accomplished that.”

The second season introduces us to another cult, led by the ruthless Lily Gray (Connie Nielsen). She is assisted by her deranged twin sons, who like to stage dinner parties where the guest of honour is a cadaver. Their aim – through a series of public atrocities, including stabbing all the passengers on a New York subway carriage – is to lure their hero Carroll out of hiding.

Hardy, meanwhile, has reached breaking point, and starts to contemplate a previously unthinkable course of action. In less assured hands, the part could become stale, but Bacon – whose dour character counterpoints Carroll’s excesses – is superb at frustrated anger. In one scene, he’s interrogating Carroll in jail. After indulging the madman and his teasing for a while, he walks over, grabs his hand and bends the fingers back until we hear them snap. Bacon’s face is mesmerising – unflinching even as the bones crack.

Series three has been given the green light, so expect the gore and the maniacs to get a whole lot worse.

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