BBC's: The Fall, Review.

Wow, where has Gillian Anderson been? It seems like ages since the X Files ended. Well, it actually has been ages, but you wouldn't know it looking at her in The Fall. She's everything she used to be and then some as Belfast bound, homicide detective, Stella Gibson.

Belfast has a sordid history of crime, revolution, and corrupt police work. Bringing operation "music man" to a close would be extraordinarily difficult in the best of circumstances. But The Belfast PD have other things to worry about than a stalker serial killer. Things like dead cops. That's one of the more refreshing things about this series, the world doesn't stop for this case. In fact, half the show isn't about the police at all.

The Fall is more interested in a Columbo type plotting. In that, half the show is all about the murderer. And he is a trip. This is a career making performance for Jamie Dornan as Paul Spector. A grief consular, family man, stalker of successful and powerful black haired women, and strangler of aforementioned successful black haired women. One minute he's crusading for a battered wife's well being, the next he's painting a naked corpse's fingernails. Spector isn't a monster...or at least he isn't always a monster. He becomes the most three dimensional serial killer since Dexter Morgan. 

Its the little things about him that make him eerie. The way he condescendingly mimic's his boss's movements, how he's noticeably out of his wife's league (as a man who needs to control women, that can't mean nothing), the way he avoids bonding with his six year old daughter, the way he winds up bonding with his six year old daughter, and then there's the sketches he makes while he's supposed to be therapizing...yick!

Crrrrrrrreeper.

Anderson also does great work with her coolly smug, yet effortlessly awesome detective. Her brilliant case breaking deductions are made by sensible connections and not some throwaway line from a secondary character in a forced "OF COURSE IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!"scene. I'm very pleased with that.

The story is never a tense cat and mouse scenario. Instead its about both people (Anderson and Dornan) living their lives. Its a thriller that bides its time and never really resorts to jump scares or mad dashes to the killer's location. It lets the action  play out and speak for itself, almost like it was adapted from case notes. The Fall is fascinating precisely because it can be boring sometimes.

It can be a problem, though. There is plenty of dead air you can spend discussing the show to a friend and miss someone getting shot. Leaving both parties to scream "What the hell just happened?!" as you both scramble for the ps3 controller to wind it back. I mean, the police corruption story is interesting and all, but too often it feels like a segment from a spin off of the show's characters. It's not a useless appendage, but its obvious the writers couldn't come up with enough for the main cast to do.

Of course, that is the only complaint I can lodge at this show. Sometimes its not as interesting as it is at other times and that's true of everything. Including movies, beer, and chocolate (and also sex). The Fall is the second police drama in as many months to really blow my hair back. Its tense, terrifying, well written, and phenomenally acted. If rain-drenched and pensive UK police procedurals  are your thing then this will make you happier than a pig in poop. I cannot think of a better use of your time than this...except, of course, this.

Recommended Viewing:

   Columbo: Because it holds up surprisingly well and Peter Faulk was a treasure.

Thanks, Amap0la!

Once upon a Time: Because you won't find a better produced soap opera and Giancarlo Esposito shows up sometimes.

"No, I told you, NINE episodes."

    The X Files: Because duh.