Effy, arguably the most iconic character of the Skins saga as the whole, and the only one to bridge two generations of characters, is the first of three old characters to be re-visited in this “where are they now?” final series.
Set two years on from their separation in last week’s opening episode of Series 3, the four men – Baxter (John Simm), Quinn (Philip Glenister), Woody (Max Beesley) and Rick (Marc Warren) – have been exiled to South Africa under new names, and out of touch with their friends and family.
So now we know why the BBC was so quick to announce a second series. It was a warning shot, to prepare us for the idea that the momentum of The Fall would carry on past 5 episodes, and that we’d all be left craving some more of that sweet sweet darkness like the Monday night drama masochists we are.
Episode 9 of Game of Thrones has traditionally been the episode where – for want of a better phrase – shit goes down. The first season’s ‘Baelor’ saw the show’s central character and biggest star lose his head, while Season 2’s ‘Blackwater’ saw the astonishingly mounted battle of the Blackwater. This season’s ninth episode is titled ‘The Rains of Castamere’, and, well, with pun well and truly intended; this might be the most significant Game-changer yet!
Regret resonates across the fourth episode of The Fall like the sound of a gunshot down the corridors of Belfast’s police station.
French zombie drama. The words trip off the tongue like Gauloises smoke. Go on, say it again and try to resist a Parisian inflection and a nonchalant shrug. It’s alright.
So dark is The Fall that – at the show’s halfway point – we’re now fairly certain that its creator Allan Cubitt wrote it in a mixture of kitten blood and the tears of toddlers who’d dropped their ice cream.
The Fall seems dead set on setting itself apart from other crime shows. Not because we know who the murderer is – Columbo hung its raincoat on that particular chair 44 years ago – but because it’s so desperately grim that it makes its Danish contemporaries look as light-hearted as Murder, She Wrote. It’s a show so darned dark that it forces you to adjust the brightness settings in your own mind, as well as your telly.
The Cloister Bell will chime once more; The Doctor’s off to Trenzalore… Often, being a fan of Doctor Who, you have to park your fanboy gene somewhere the other side of Kasterborous. True, there’s no point loving the bones of a show if you’re not prepared to dissect it to death sometimes. But the critical … >
It’s almost cruelly emblematic really. That the most closely-guarded Doctor Who finale ever, one which concerns a great secret being discovered, should have its own secrets compromised. And by the ‘Great Intelligence’ that is the collective mind of the Internet no less, rather than the breathy malevolence of Richard E. Grant.