I’ve spent the last three days watching a TV series that should never have been made and which no one should see—but which is already today’s most-watched streaming show. I will admit that I watched it with feelings of fascination, revulsion, horror and outrage. A part of me was transfixed by the gut-twisting, grisly events in that story.

The series tells of a young American—let’s call him John—who murdered and dismembered 17 men and boys, mainly black or brown, mostly in the 1980s. In the gay bars he frequents, John is introverted, hesitant, shy and not much of a talker. He seduces his victims by befriending them and inviting them to his apartment, where he drugs them.