Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Catch Me A Killer’ On BritBox, A Drama About South Africa’s First Serial Killer Profiler

While criminal profiling has been used in earnest in the U.S. since the 1970s (and occasionally for decades before that), it wasn’t used to help law enforcement in South Africa until 1994. That’s when Micki Pistorius started helping agencies in that country by creating psychological profiles of serial killers (ironically, she’s the aunt of convicted murderer Oscar Pistorius). A new scripted series has a fictionalized version of Pistorius solving cases during her first years working with law enforcement.

CATCH ME A KILLER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “CAPE TOWN. 1994.” Two boys take turns pushing a shopping cart along train tracks.

The Gist: When the boys get to an underpass and rest, a car pulls up and the man inside asks the kids if they want to earn extra money moving boxes for him. One of the boys gets in; the other, more suspicious one, decides to stay where he is.

“PRETORIA.” Micki Pistorius (Charlotte Hope), a journalist-turned-psychologist, is giving a college lecture about the power dynamics serial killers have over their victims. The head of her department finds her and tells her that the police department in Cape Town want her to join a task force working The Station Strangler case. She thought that the trail had gone cold in that case two years prior, but there is a new report of a missing child and the department needs a new way to find people of interest, namely the psychological profiling she does. She’d be the first profiler to work with law enforcement on a case in South Africa.

When she gets to Cape Town, she’s escorted into the station by lead detective Chris Eksteen (Ivan Zimmerman). He’s the one who called for the use of a profiler instead of getting more detectives, as it seems that the task force hasn’t really come up with any new leads. Micki is given a trailer to use as an office and given the files of previous victims to go through. She goes with Eksteen to the beach where the first three bodies were found. As she tries to envision the bodies as they were found, she spots a small hand sticking out of the sand.

When the police bring in a person previously considered back in for questioning, Micki does the interview, taking the table out that was between her and the person of interest. After the interview, Micki knows he didn’t do it. This is when Eksteen’s boss, Colonel Cornelius Venter (Gavin Werner), blows a gasket; he didn’t ask for nor want a profiler, as he thinks more detectives is what the task force needed.

When another child is reported missing, and the protests against the cops increase, Micki tells the task force what she’s determined the psychological profile of the killer is. One big aspect is that the killer is precise, given the note he left with a victim correcting the media reports referring to the chronological order of the victims. Col. Vetner tells Micki that she’d better be right or else she’s going back to Pretoria and Eksteen will be out of a job.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Catch Me A Killer is based on a book of the same name, the true story of Micki Pistorius’ first case as a profiler. But the vibe of the scripted version of the story is similar to the American series Profiler.

Our Take: The format of Catch Me A Killer isn’t quite what you might think, and that’s a good thing. At first blush, it seems that the entire 11-episode first season will be about Micki Pistorius trying to solve the Station Strangler case. In fact, that is only the first two episodes; we get to see Pistorius deployed to various locations in South Africa, helping to solve cases with her relatively-novel profiling skills.

The format is important to mention, because it gives each case she’s solving more immediacy. We’re not going to follow too many dead ends or have to deal with red herrings. The series concentrates on how Pistorius brought a new way to help solve murders to law enforcement.

This also means that Charlotte Hope is the only constant through the show’s entire season, and her take on Pistorius is as a preternaturally calm and controlled person who has no problem challenging old-school cops like Col. Vetner while still having the ability to do her job. Hope depicts Pistorius as the type of person who sits barefoot surrounded by crime scene photos and files; whether that’s true or just a shortcut to show how Pistorius takes in evidence and comes to her conclusions is unclear, but it’s an interesting way to show her process.

What we’re curious about is if she’s going to get the similar resistance everywhere she goes, or if her reputation will start to engender trust in the law enforcement personnel she works with. We hope it’s the latter, as the formula of older male cops decrying her methods will get old quickly.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: The body of the missing boy is found, and Pistorius holds back tears as she examines the body.

Sleeper Star: Gavin Werner plays Col. Venter’s bluster very well.

Most Pilot-y Line: Micki buys a birthday cake for herself, and when she gets a call from Eksteen about new evidence being found, she takes the cake to the station. As Vetner is lecturing Micki, the detectives cut the cake and pass it around.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you think of Catch Me A Killer as less a biographical series and more as a police procedural, you’ll like it a whole lot better.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.