TV Tuesday: The Fall

Book By Book

I am just back from a week in Vermont with my husband – camping, enjoying Vermont’s quaint towns, visiting bookstores, great food, and of course, lots of down time for reading! Since our sons left for college, and my husband and I are now often traveling on our own, we have established a new habit when camping. In the evening, we watch a TV episode on DVD on my laptop in our pop-up camper (before we go to bed for reading time). We’ve been working our way through Dexter, since we have all the seasons of that show on DVD (we gave them to my son years ago). You can read my review of the show at the link. We are now up to season 3.

Back here at home, in between the spring and summer network TV seasons, we’ve been enjoying some streaming shows, most recently The Fall, a very dark and creepy Irish detective show.

Gillian Anderson (of X-Files fame) stars as Stella Gibson, a cold-seeming Detective Superintendent who’s been sent to Belfast to review a case involving the murder of a young woman whose father is a prominent businessman in the community. While she’s there, another murder occurs, and Stella realizes there is a serial killer on the loose. Stella works the cases along with the local detectives, and in the first episode, we see a very different side of Stella as she boldly invites another detective back to her hotel room for a passionate night.

Meanwhile, viewers also see things from the perspective of the serial killer, Paul Spector, a seemingly normal family man who lives with his wife, a nurse who works in the NICU, and two small children. He’s an affectionate father at home but goes out at night and murders women in cold-blood, often posing their dead bodies in intimate ways. As Stella and the police force collect clues and get closer to Paul, his very controlled life starts to get more and more unbalanced, as his two lives threaten to collide.

This is a dark and compelling show, with a seriously high creep factor! To see Paul murder a woman and then, hours later, hug his little girl and tuck her into bed is absolutely chilling. Stella becomes more and more obsessed with the case, and Paul begins to pay attention to her as well. This show is unusual for a detective show, in that it involves a single case spread over time, rather than a new case in each episode (reminding me a bit of The Missing). The tension builds as Stella gets closer to identifying Paul, and Paul becomes more desperate to fulfill his sick needs and stay away from the police. The cast is all excellent, especially Gillian Anderson, with her cool exterior hiding a passionate center and Jamie Dornan as the super-creepy Paul. We also enjoyed seeing Archie Panjabi (aka Kalinda from The Good Wife) as the medical examiner.

As is typical with shows from the UK and Ireland, the seasons are short (just 5 episodes in the first season). We are into the second season now and are totally hooked…though we often watch The Fall first and then something a bit lighter before bed! All three seasons are available on Netflix or you can get the first two seasons on Amazon streaming for $1.99 an episode or $8.99 a season or on DVD (links below).

Have you seen The Fall yet?  Which detective shows do you enjoy?