Netflix's Crime Scene focuses on The Times Square Killer in trailer for the upcoming season

It seems as though Netflix is doubling down on its investment in the true crime mania with another season of Crime Scene, this time set in New York City. If you don’t recall, the first season focused on the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles and the unsolved disappearance of Elisa Lam, a young woman who stayed in the hotel that gained an infamous reputation for being dark and seedy.

With not much to go on from an evidence standpoint, they filled a lot of the four episodes with “fear inducing” scenes which mainly just criminalized and mystified substance abuse, mental illness, and poverty (as is unfortunately the trend).

The second season, titled Crime Scene: The Time Square Killer, will focus on the “lawless sexual playground” that was Times Square in the ‘70s and ‘80s—before it became a blaring eyesore of light up billboards and people in Elmo costumes.

The official logline for the series reads: “Season two begins as firemen respond to a call at a seedy hotel in the middle of Times Square in December 1979. What they discover among the smoke and ash shocks even the most seasoned NYC homicide detectives, triggering a hunt for a vicious serial killer who preyed upon sex workers operating within Times Square’s then-booming, anything-goes sex industry.”

The three-part series takes viewers deep into the investigation, detailing the social and systemic forces at play in a near-lawless area in the center of Manhattan that allowed multiple horrific crimes to go unnoticed for too long.

First season director, Emmy winner Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills), returns to direct the three episodes of The Times Square Killer.

“As a lifelong New Yorker, I’ve watched Times Square become the tourist mecca it is today—but many people have forgotten about the darker era of the late 1970’s and early 80’s when it was a near-lawless sexual playground that enabled predators to exploit sex workers, or worse,” Berlinger says in a statement.

This could get really dicey in its portrayal of sex workers, generalized poverty, and the failures of our justice system and other institutions, but maybe Berlinger can tackle these subjects with some tact.

Crime Scene: The Time Square Killer arrives on Netflix on December 29, right before everyone will gather in Times Square to watch the ball drop on New Years’ Eve.