At times, watching Episode 2 of Allan Cubitt’s creation feels like an act of mental self-flagellation; a test to see how much provocative misery your brain can process before you run from the room, quivering and in search of a hug. And that is in no way a criticism. Too often on TV murder is a made glamorous by the absence of repercussions, and drama is created by half-empty coffee cups and how quickly a detective can stomp down a hall and shout at people. But The Fall is all too keen to remind you what many other crime dramas gloss over, as it deals with the aftermath of Sarah Kay’s murder in pathological detail.
The perverse erotic and fetishistic nature of Paul Spector’s crime is heightened by the intercutting between DSI Gibson (the glacial Gillian Anderson) enjoying some thoroughly workmanlike sex with Detective Sexybod, James Olson (Ben Peel). As Gibson and Olson share a moment of coitus with all the passion of two mannequins colliding in a shop window, we watch as Spector washes and places his victim’s corpse. The imagery is powerful, suggestive, provocative, and it’s only the start of our journey through the crime.
With an unflinching clinical gaze we follow Sarah’s body as it is analysed, bagged, rolled in and out of morgue drawers, autopsied, until finally presented on a slab for her father to see. They are scenes as mundane as the police work surrounding them, but all the more powerful for being so ordinary. As you watch it you’re not sure what’s more upsetting – the murder of a woman or the knowledge that we’re all treated like human luggage after death.
And just when you think that your amygdala has had all the despair wrung out of it, like an emotional lemon, Detective James Olson is shot dead in an act of gang revenge, right in front of his little boy. A moment of sudden savagery that reminds us the warning that Jim Burns (John Lynch) is always giving through his beard: this is Belfast, and revenge runs as thick as blood.
And that’s all before the episode’s final scenes and a moment of intense psychosexuality between Spector and the babysitter. But by that point we were spent, and longing for Newsnight to start and Jeremy Paxman’s weary expression to drape itself across our screen, just for a change of misery. But that’s a sign of how effective The Fall is. When you watch a show which deals with murder, you shouldn’t be able to come away from it feeling dead on the inside.
Aired at 9pm on Monday 20 May 2013 on BBC Two.
> Order The Fall on DVD on Amazon.
Watch the trailer…
What do you think of The Fall so far? Let us know below…