Or, put another way, Carroll is the showrunner, and Hardy is us, the viewer.

In other words: An open-ended game of Dungeons & Dragons, with Carroll functioning as Dungeon Master and Hardy as player. Now, Hardy must assay and solve this interactive experience, relying on the most unreliable of narrators, Carroll himself, for guidance.

The pilot left me thinking this: During the eight years of his incarceration, Carroll used the Internet to reach out into the world to create a living puzzle narrative, stage-managed and enacted by obsessive fans who have been warped by their fascination with human darkness. Regardless: Carroll – a former literature professor and artsy-fartsy failed novelist who views his crimes as works of art –strikes me as a very interesting guy with a lot on his mind about our culture. Whether that tale aspires to produce deep (if cracked) meaning or just lurid kicks is part of the point. It’s a cat-forced-to-play-with-mouse-to-catch-baby-mice thriller, set in an America made madly Gothic by a malevolent man who fancies himself a master storyteller with important things to say. The Following isn’t an epic cat-chases-mouse thriller, which is what I was expecting. It came at the end, when James Purefoy’s diabolical deviant Joe Carroll could have easily gotten away from Kevin Bacon’s haunted ex-FBI agent Ryan Hardy… but instead allowed himself to be captured, although not before activating a legion of lunatics made in his image to start slashing up the country… among other sinister things. I can identify the moment when The Following captured my imagination.

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