The Fall

Gillian Anderson as DSI Stella Gibson and Jamie Dornan as serial killer Paul Spector

We finished watching all three seasons last night on Netflix. It's not a great show, like an over-the-top James Bond or Tom Cruise thriller, but it was pretty good with lots of interesting bits. Gillian X-Files Anderson plays the lead detective, imported to Belfast from London to review a politically charged murder case and ends up running a task force to track down a serial killer.

The case is difficult because the killer, when he isn't killing people, appears to be an upright citizen of the community, a taxpayer, homeowner and a devoted family man. In other words, he's the favorite kind of killer to be found in a fictional story about murder, i.e. a psychopath.

Stella is a stone-faced hard-ass, which is kind of what you would expect of a woman, or even a man, with this kind of job. She does have sexual needs which she satisfies with various coppers. Well, we don't know if she is satisfied, she doesn't let on, but at least she is going through the motions.

There are some bits that were well done, better than I've seen before:

• the scene in the emergency room when a shooting victim is brought in. Lots of grisly detail.
• Stella asking for 1.5 million (pounds? Euros?) to fund the task force. First time I've heard someone put a price tag on something like this, in fiction or in real-life. Given that you want a fair number of competent people to spend their time looking for this guy, and it is liable to take a while, that might be a reasonable number.
• the number of people and cars involved in surreptitiously following someone. Law & Order sometimes makes mention of it in some of their cases, but here we see the entire army of coppers dodging around, working the radio, passing off surveillance from one follower to another.

There were a couple of small side stories that could have made an episode all by themselves, but were here just to flesh out the story and / or provide a little local color.

• The underage teenager who fixates on Paul as the love of her life. Is she a bad example, or do all teenagers go through a period of insanity? 
• a group of IRA thugs who show at the most inopportune moments.
• a children's home where a pedophile ring was uncovered some years ago. (There were a couple of such real-life cases.)

We started out paying attention to what was happening in the show, but by the time we got to the end it was the feeling I got that was important. Things are happening, but the whole tone / feel of the show was more significant. It was a lot like True Detective that way.