At the height of the #MeToo movement in 2018, something I read seared itself into my brain. “Men should be grateful that women are asking for equality. Not revenge.” For all the patronising tone at home, casual sexism at the workplace, catcalling on the street, groping in public transport, full-blown sexual assaults/attempts in most known/unknown corners of the city, the isolation and gaslighting that takes root after – I’ve often wondered why women still speak to men. In fact, why don’t they start their day by attacking the first man they meet? It’s an urge buried deep within Elizabeth Merriweather’s Furious – a first-rate serial killer mystery, which reveals itself as a reckoning of female rage at its most unvarnished, unbridled and intricate.For a serial killer show, Furious isn’t too pricey about revealing its killer. In fact, after seeing a drugged man crawling from the bathroom and tumbling down the stairs in the first scene, we’re introduced to a masked face sitting on the stoop of one of those brownstone apartments in New York City. It’s Halloween, the night when boundaries between the living and dead become most porous (or that’s what is believed). We see a girl in her 20s (Lola Petticrew) baby-talking to the drugged man moments before injecting him with a lethal dose of fentanyl. It’s a confounding choice at first, but one that begins to make sense as the show goes on. It’s not the who that is important here, as much as the why, how, and when.Hollywood has responded to the #MeToo movement, by serving up a variety of films (Promising Young Woman, She Said, Tár) examining consent and power dynamics in sexual/romantic relationships. Furious goes one step further by reacting to the post-Epstein era, and serves up a police procedural that is equal parts hair-raising, thought-provoking and cathartic.Former NYPD cop-turned-FBI agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) is another version of the haunted character, trying to do right by society. However, she doesn’t need the gnawing feeling of an unsolved case or the death of a spouse/child that turns her over to a bottle. We’re told she became a pariah among NYPD cops, when she told on her alcoholic and abusive boyfriend, Marshall (Jake Lacy) – a blue-eyed boy of the NYPD. Left to fend for herself, Alice transitions to the FBI, where she’s intent on joining the sex crimes unit. When evidence presents itself based on the murder that takes place in the first scene, Alice acts as a liaison between the FBI and the NYPD for the investigation, who all happen to be rich, influential white men.Furious does a lot of the staples of the police procedural, but the gaze is fiercely female. A scene that convinced me about the show’s subversive ways, is a straight-forward one where Alice meets Marshall’s ill mother (on his insistence). An intimate conversation suddenly takes a rude turn, when she starts coercing her to stop “spoiling her son’s career”. It feels like such a primal trust violation, one can’t help but side with Alice for wanting to torch this world.A screengrab from the trailer of ‘Furious’.Merriweather’s dense plot might be populated by many men, but it’s shouldered by four women. Alice reports to Nora Washington (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) – who overcame her race, along with her gender, to become a veteran at the FBI. Emma Easton (Hope Davis) is the daughter of billionaire Jay Easton (Peter McRobbie), who is presumed to be on the list of future victims of the killer. Lastly, the show rests on the incredibly young shoulders of Lola Petticrew, who plays Catherine – a survivor of sex trafficking, who is hunting the participants of a night after which her friend, Isabel, was found dead. Witnessing Petticrew deliver a performance that is unhinged, traumatised, manipulative, sweet and sincere, all in the span of a minute sometimes, reminded me of when I first watched Jodie Comer in Killing Eve without knowing anything about her.While being a fiercely feminist show, it also doesn’t gloss over the imperfections of its female characters. There’s a particularly uncomfortable sequence about Alice getting back at Marshall, after he reported her for drawing a gun on him. Nora, after finding out she was the cop who helped bury the case of Isabel’s death a dozen years ago, her first instinct is to sit on the information. Emma, who grew up around two pedophiles, is a victim, a mother-figure to her feeble father and a co-conspirator all at once, looking away in the hope of inheriting his billions. Catherine, unlike her male counterparts, is not glorified. The sense I got from her was a girl who had died so many deaths that she stopped fearing death altogether. As a result, she signs herself up for a suicide mission, where she might die at the hands of bigger, influential men. Or is shot by the cops on her trail.As much as it’s tightly acted, I got a sense that Furious is also a writer’s show. There are some haunting, wise lines handed to Nora. “We become inhuman to defend humanity,” she tells Alice at one point. In another, she talks about how she imagined growing muscular wings and would be “jumpy” before every raid – not knowing what lay behind the door. She could feel those wings melting, when a corrupt senior shuts her down and reports her for her alcohol dependency. How does one who sees the worst of society, protect the light within themselves? The light has been extinguished within Nora, and as much as she tries to coach Alice for the situation, she finds Alice is capable of more.As the finale drew to its shocking finale, I couldn’t help but grapple with the complicated world these characters are forced to inhabit. One I have the luxury to ignore, because it hasn’t hit close to home, yet. And yet, even in the midst of all this barbarity, the unspoken sisterhood between women (who are by no means paragons) broke me. In the world of Furious, some deaths become an act of liberation, handcuffs on the wrists assume the expression of care. And lest it be too neat an ending for the show’s messy world, it hints evil is neither created, nor destroyed. It only changes form. Sometimes, for righteous causes.*All episodes of ‘Furious’ are now streaming on JioHotstar