New CBS Thriller Shines Light On Stalking Cases

MIAMI (CBSMiami) --A new CBS show will take viewers into the drama and danger of those dealing with stalkers.

"Stalker is, in my estimation, the scariest show on television," said actor Dylan McDermott , describing his one hour new psychological thriller.

Click here to watch Lisa Petrillo's report. 

McDermott and Maggie Que are detectives in the Threat Assessment Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department in the show Stalker.  Week after week the show will highlight the most frightening stalking incidents. Some are ripped straight from the headlines.

"There's a lot of people that become obsessed," McDermott said.

No one knows that better than Jeff Dunn, Chief Consultant to the show and officer in charge of the LAPD Threat Management Unit. Dunn has a team of  seven working on stalker cases and all have experiences in different areas of crime.

"I look for prior experience of people who have been working domestic violence cases. Perhaps experience in sexual assault cases because I think that expertise transfers very well with stalking victims. I also like computer experience because everything we deal with deals with some sort of cyber element to it whether its social media , or that sort if thing," said Dunn.

Dunn says one in four women will be stalked in their lifetime.

"The most common stalker is going to be an ex- girlfriend, boyfriend , ex-wife, etc. They get the feeling they were treated poorly. That's the most common," he said.

After that, it's the creepy stalking cases seen in the headlines, like Sandra Bullock's recent incident where the stalker was actually inside her home.

"Then you also have the celebrity stalking cases which are kind of a different animal altogether. In the high profile stalking cases there is a high incident of mental illness, "said Dunn.

Turning the scary subject of stalking into a weekly one hour psychological thriller is a challenge for all involved, but one, the actors say, couldn't be more timely.

"I love that CBS has decided to say we're going to take that same leap and dive into a subject matter that is scary, but it also is so topical and something that we really should be exploring right now," said Maggie.

"There's no such thing as too scary," said McDermott.

Stalker airs on CBS  on Wednesday nights at 10:00 p.m.

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