Set in Belfast, The Fall follows the exploits of serial killer Paul Spector (Jamie Dorman), who is murdering young women in the city, and detective Stella Gibson, the head of the investigative team. Other characters revolve around our leads. These include: Katie (Aisling Franciosi), a 15-year-old Lolita-type who attaches herself to Paul, finding the murder of women to be a turn-on; Jim Burns (John Lynch), Stella’s immediate supervisor, who had an affair with her in the past and tries to drunkenly rape her during the series; Ned Callan (Nick Lee) the worst journalist in history; and Jimmy Tyler (Brian Milligan), the cartoonishly abusive husband of Liz (Séainín Brennan), one of Paul’s patients. Yes, patients, because Paul is a social worker/therapist. And extremely clever. And alluring to everyone, including Stella. Remind you of a certain movie and TV serial killer who is far more interesting and engaging?
The series looks good, with attractive cinematography and a subdued color palate with splashes of brightness to emphasize certain scenes and characters. It has a good cast and is well acted. On a technical level it’s a competent, even well-made, series.
The problem; it tells a hackneyed story and populates it with hateful characters. I like a good anti-hero. I like a good villain. However, it is difficult to enjoy a story in which every main character is a monster. Stella and Jim are the most egregious examples of this. While we expect our villain to be horrible – and Paul is – our protagonists are misanthropic, sex-obsessed jerks. Stella is portrayed as equating feminist empowerment with promiscuity (usually sleeping with co-workers), hating all men and, by the end of the series, falling for a serial killer who preys on women. Jim is portrayed as dumb, obsessed with Stella (who people are shown to find attractive, although it is unclear why, given her cold, dismissive personality) and ready to drunkenly rape her. There are, in fact, no sympathetic main characters who are male. At best, men are stupid, needing Stella to guide them. At worst, they are violent stereotypes like Jimmy, whose only purpose seems to be to show how every man is a misogynistic monster, not just the serial killer. He also serves as the deus ex machina in the offensively bad Season 2 finale.
The series doesn’t play gender favorites in presenting horrible characters. Woman are seen as serial killer groupies (Katie), clueless, enablers like Paul’s wife, Sally (Bronagh Waugh) or victims. While the dialogue in the series directly attacks men, the story makes it clear that everyone is horrible. While a few supporting characters are presented in a positive light (e.g., police officer Danielle Ferrington (Niamh McGrady)) the viewer is left with the distinct feeling that they are positive only because they are one-dimensional. Scratch the surface and you’ll find another sexually damaged collection of negative gender stereotypes.
The character problem is compounded by the hackneyed story being told. This is a standard police procedural/serial-killer plot with an abusive husband story-line tacked. The story says nothing original about the genre nor does it present the story it is telling in an original fashion. Compared to series like The Killing (which it closely resembles) and Hannibal, both of which feature damaged and conflicted characters as protagonists, but do so in the context of compelling storytelling, The Fall is an example of lazy, cliche-filled writing. The plot relies on dumb protagonists, a preternaturally smart and lucky antagonist and coincidence after coincidence to propel it forward. The Season 2 finale in particular relies on the latter to a degree that is offensive to the viewer. Jimmy, presumably being followed by every cop in Ireland after threatening his wife and a group of other battered women with a gun, manages to find Paul in the midst of a forest surrounded by cops and shoot him. This seems to be an excuse for the series’ final scene, Stella lovingly cradling Paul, calling for help with compassion in her voice, as he bleeds out. It is a dumb scene, that makes our protagonist out to be worse than our antagonist. He is an insane killer; what’s her excuse?A story does not always need a hero; but, it usually needs a character one can identify with. If it does not have this, then it needs to tell an interesting, original story or at least tell the story in an original or engaging fashion. When the story presents characters who are uniformly contemptible and fails to be anything more than tropes and stereotypes, it is not worth watching.
Not recommended.
