The Fall: Series Review

 

The Fall starring Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan offered a psychological game of cat and mouse in an intense crime thriller.

Although the series was intriguing from the start, I found the pacing slow in some episodes causing my interest to waver at times. Regardless, the payoff was worth it, as the final episode of season 2 upped the ante for Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson in her pursuit of serial killer Paul Spector.

Throughout the series, it seemed that Spector would never get caught and would continue his reign of terror against the brunette women of Belfast. But, in season 2, the police finally closed in on him. Fortunately for Rose Stagg, who Spector had kidnapped at the time, she didn’t become his next victim and was rescued in time.

I think the thing that bothered me the most was that I never fully understood Paul Spector’s motives for his obsession with murdering women. Was it a God complex that made him feel powerful because he held life and death in the palm of hands? Or did he just feel it made him superior to the ‘weaker’ sex?

It also surprised me that Katy, Spector’s teen babysitter/mistress wasn’t just some dizzy, love-struck teen but as much a sociopath as he was, making her his perfect partner in crime.

I also wondered about how Spector’s wife Sally could not sense that her husband harbored these sick and deadly urges.  Or maybe deep down she did but pushed it back into a far corner or her mind in order to make it easier to accept being married to a monster.

Then there’s Gibson and Spector and the underlining sexual tension that the show has hinted at since season 1. Stella Gibson might have viewed Paul Spector as a killer but maybe she was also fascinated by him too.

Watching The Fall had me thinking and questioning which I feel should be the goal of every television series. If viewers are just literal couch potatoes watching television without feeling or emotion, are they getting anything out of the show?