Amidst the hubbub of Arrested Development's return, people may have missed The Fall, which was released with far less fanfare on Netflix the day after Arrested Development. A BBC show that's only available to American viewers via Netflix, The Fall is a visceral and psychological thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat for five hours straight.
The show follows two characters simultaneously. One is Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson (played by the brilliant Gillian Anderson), a Metropolitan Police officer who has been called up to Belfast to help the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) review an unsolved murder case. Stella is an intelligent, incredibly capable woman who intimidates many of the men around her but takes no nonsense from anyone. Over the course of her review, she links up this murder with another case and identifies a pattern. The pattern of a serial killer. Which brings us to the second main character.
Paul Spector is a loving husband and father of two adorable kids. He is also a serial killer who has a penchant for stalking and killing brunette professional women in their homes. He strangles them slowly and then proceeds to pose them artistically, satisfying the tableaux he draws in his notebooks. Paul is played by Jamie Dornan (who you may know as Sheriff Graham on Once Upon A Time). He is an attractive man, which therefore makes him an even more terrifying prospect as a killer. We like our psychopaths to be visually identifiable as crazed lunatics, but no one would give a second thought to this good-looking man wandering the streets and bars of Belfast. He works as a grief counselor and seems to be an upstanding member of society, but of course, horrors lurk behind that facade.
Belfast plays a critical role in the show as well. As a hotbed of sectarian violence, it offers up characters who make life difficult for both the police and the killer. The PSNI are under extraordinary pressure from the public but also private individuals who have a high stake in covering up the details of certain cases. The show also brilliantly showcases gender politics. On the one hand, there's the overt hatred towards women and perverse sadism exhibited by Paul during his kills, but on the other hand are the millions of little ways that Stella is judged by her male colleagues in the especially conservative Northern Irish police force. Her sex life, her wardrobe, and her personality all come under harsh scrutiny simply because she is a woman. But her gender is also what gives her the fierce determination to pursue this serial killer of women.
The Fall will draw comparisons to Dexter, another show about a serial killer, but in this case, there's nothing likable about Paul Spector. He gets a kick out of killing young women and his interactions with the other women in his life are equally disturbing. Instead, the show's true hero is Stella Gibson and we need more women like her on TV. Lamentably, like all British shows, The Fall had a short initial run of just five episodes, but it will be back next year with a new season. And thus the hunt for a killer (and for a good TV show) continues.
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