Rob Breedlove’s suicide is the starter’s pistol for remorse to run through the penultimate episode of BBC Two’s dark Monday night of the soul and catch up with everyone in some form. Even our killer.

Only we the audience have nothing to regret, as we savour the darkness and the now trademark implication-heavy intercutting between scenes, in much the same way that Gillian Anderson’s Stella Gibson at one point savours a magic bottomless glass of scotch (sip after sip, it never empties!).

You can’t call any part of The Fall weak, but arguably the least defined element so far has been the Monroe/Olson/Breedlove corruption subplot. Its rumbled quietly in the background, acting more like staging to indicate the wider environment of unsavoury activity that Gibson must work in, rather than an actual plot we feel we have to pay attention to. It’s a shame, because as it comes to the fore here Michael McElhatton does some fantastic work in Detective Rob Breedlove’s final minutes. Too bad it’s too late to get McElhatton into Line of Duty (currently shooting its second series in Belfast) – we could just picture him hiding a gun in a filing cabinet.

Breedlove hiding a bullet in his brain actually turns out to be the least upsetting image of The Fall, but that’s no surprise by now. Paul Spector’s botched murder attempt is so prolonged and visceral that you can almost feel your teeth rattle in your head as he attacks his victim and her gentleman friend with robotic precision. Jamie Dornan’s performance has been so consistent that not once has Spector’s face betrayed the fact there’s an actor in there, piloting every motion and furious cold stare. Dornan has accomplished a tour de force of terror.

But it’s the simplest moment that’s the most affecting: witnessing Baby Girl Mitchell’s lifeless body being cradled by her mother. It’s a scene more carefully calibrated than its immediate shot to the gut nature suggests. Children, unborn or toddling around wearing evidence around their neck, are the only true innocents in The Fall simply by virtue of the fact they haven’t had chance to grow up yet and make mistakes like bedding with colleagues. Even Spector has room for them in his twisted vision, to the point that he admits to regretting killing Sarah Kay because she was pregnant.

So it’s fitting that as we predicted a child – his own child Olivia at that – may have helped commence his fall into police custody by using his own private confessional stationery (from the Basildon Bond ‘Crime Apology’ range, if we’re not mistaken) to draw a picture of, yep you guessed it, an unborn child. The possibility of the guilty brought down by the innocent. It’s a bit on the nose, but we like the poetic justice.

Or perhaps we’re speaking too soon. With just one episode remaining, will justice even manage to catch up to Spector in time?

Aired at 9pm on Monday 3 June 2013 on BBC Two.

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