The Watcher seemed like a solid idea on paper. It had the right materials: the ripped-from-The Cut true crime story set in an affluent commuter town with a preexisting sordid history. It had the right audience: worldly urbanites who have likely been strained of city life and who process their suburban ambivalence with Zillow-enabled yearning. And it had the right creative team: Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan of Glee, Ratched, and Dahmer — Monster. Combine that with the most overqualified cast assembled in one place, and you will likely have a morbid masterpiece of the streaming era.

And sure enough, The Watcher has brought the viewer numbers that have kept the limited series on Netflix’s Top 10 most-watched shows well after the week of its premiere. Of course, bringing the goods is distinct from keeping them because, much like the show’s central characters, the longer viewers stay with it, the more they come to realize what they bought into was not quite what they’d been sold.