If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

―Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

Three recent series, one from Britain’s ITV and two podcasts produced by NPR alumni, deal with the question: What drives a person to murder? We ask because we want to make sense of a world where evil happens, not just on a large and systemic level where we expect to find it, but especially when it reaches our small lives and shatters the intimacy of our communities.

Serial: Nice Guys Don’t Commit Murder

The first is podcast phenomenon Serial, where host Sarah Koenig investigated the case of Adnan Syed, a man convicted of murdering his girlfriend in 1999. Koenig’s assumption that normal people don’t commit murder seemed to drive the investigation, which kept circling around her conviction that Syed just doesn’t seem capable of something like that. This makes it one of the better moments in the show when Syed tells Koenig in episode 6 that she doesn’t really know him. He’s not saying she should doubt his story, but that she should base her case on the evidence, not whether he seems like a killer. And he has a point. No one can judge a person’s innocence or guilt based on how nice they seem.

Invisibilia: Evil Thoughts Aren’t Real

Another NPR-launched podcast, Invisibilia, spent its first episode examining where “dark” thoughts come from, using the story of a man who was plagued by violent thoughts after watching an ultraviolent movie. He tried to get rid of thoughts of murder, confessed them to his wife, sought counseling and was finally told to “sit with the thought” because . . . he’s not a killer.

At the end of the episode, the man’s therapist (who believes that most thoughts we have are “nonsense, they’re just synapses popping in our head and we shouldn’t take them seriously”) has the man take a knife to his wife’s neck and hold it there “as a form of evidence that even though [the man] has the opportunity to kill, he’s not going to do it.” The man’s takeaway? “I realized that I was not capable, or was not going to do it.”

The interviewer asks him when the moment was that he realized he was free, and his response is poignant: “I’ll never be free.” It’s heartbreaking because it’s true. Left to materialistic responses that deny the reality of things like thoughts, freedom is impossible. Only the truth can set free.

Broadchurch: Anybody’s Capable of Murder

Which brings us to Broadchurch, a slow-burning British detective drama now streaming on Netflix that raises the question in the first episode: who in this idyllic coastal town would murder a young boy? As Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller (played by Olivia Colman) says, “We don’t have these problems.” Detective Inspector Alec Hardy (played by David Tennant) is almost a Calvinist when he tells Miller that she needs to learn not to trust the goodness she assumes everyone shares:

Hardy: “Anybody’s capable of murder, given the right circumstances.”

Miller: “Most people have moral compasses.”

Hardy: “Compasses break. And murder gnaws at the soul.”

This argument plays out across eight taut episodes as the small community deals with the suspicion and media attention that follows the discovery of a child’s body on the beach.

The resulting moral drama produces one of the most Christian shows you can find (though not recommended for younger or more sensitive viewers). Characters wrestle with God, sometimes by directly assaulting the town vicar, and struggle each with their own failures, guilt and penance. When the murderer is finally revealed, the haunting question — how could you not know? — springs from the now shaken conviction that murderers are freaks of nature, aberrations who are clearly evil and different from everyone else. Such a belief leads us to think there should be signs, that only obviously evil people commit evil acts.

We are wrong, of course, and Solzhenitsyn is right: there is none righteous, no, not one who is free from all wickedness. Watching Broadchurch is a welcome corrective to any delusions we carry to the contrary.