A series that lets us in on the ambiguity of crime investigations - cases aren't always solved in 60 minutes or less

We're about halfway through the new Netflix series Mindhunters, and after a slow start the series does build in intensity and hold our attention. At first, the series seemed terribly meandering: focused on a 29-year-old FBI agent, Holden, who gets transferred out of his first assignment - hostage negotiating - and assigned to training of agents and police officers. Partly because of a young woman, a sociology grad student, whom he meets and begins dating, he becomes increasingly interested in learning about the psychology of pathological criminals, esp serial killers (those who attack women in particular). What's troubling about the first several episodes is that Holden has no real antagonist: there are passing efforts to make it seem that the FBI was resistant to pursing this new line of research, that there would be conflicts between H and various traditional forensic agents who focus on physical evidence, not mental states of being. But these antagonisms seem to vanish in thin air, and by episode 4 or so Holden and his somewhat crusty, older partner, Bill, seem to have the go-ahead to pursue their research (they are soon joined by a BU criminology professor, a woman, who seems at first a potential love interest but has her own back story). By this point, we're in for the ride and what this troika take on a few cases: interviewing a confessed serial killer to learn his story and his pathology, getting involved in a couple of local investigations of brutal murders. Although it's hard to accept that, even in the setting of this series (1977) the idea of looking at a killer's mental make-up was such a radical idea, what's good about the series is its ambiguity: In most such shows, and there are thousands, the cops/agents/specialists step in and solve the case (in 60 minutes or less). Here, the resolutions of the case are not always so clear, and may even end in failure or in a truculent DA refusing to recognize the "psychological" evidence and working out a plea deal w/ the wrong guy. So there's a lot of potential here, as we watch the 3 investigators in the inchoate stages of their work and watch them get better over time.