KILLER INSTINCTS

Melissa Roxburgh leads a team of elite investigators on the trail of the world’s scariest criminals in the gripping thriller The Hunting Party

- KATE HAHN

EVEN BEFORE THIS chilling new crime drama premieres, let's give it kudos for casting. As star Melissa Roxburgh confesses, the first time she faced off against an actor hired to play a psychotic mass murderer in a tense interrogation scene, she told him, "Ooh, if I met you on the street, I would run!" You can look forward to plenty of running (and shooting and outsmarting) for Roxburgh, who plays Bex Henderson, a former FBI profiler now leading a team tracking down serial killers who escaped when a top-secret prison was destroyed in a mysterious explosion.

Nicknamed "the Pit," the facility, which goes boom in the series premiere, was in a converted nuclear missile silo in Wyoming and housed hundreds whose supposed executions had been faked.

The series launches with 10 episodes, each of which covers the search for a different killer. In the opening hour, the hunt is on for a maniac who blinds women as revenge on his mother, who locked him in a dark basement. There's a government cover-up after the explosion, of course, and the inmates must be nabbed fast.

Bex is up to the task. Roxburgh compares her to Michaela Stone, the cop she portrayed on NBC/Netflix's Manifest (2018-23). "Bex is tenacious, stubborn, strong-willed. I carry a bit of stubbornness, so I can relate." The actress also connects to the role thanks to college studies in criminology, including a seminar analyzing the likes of Ed Gein and Ted Bundy.