{"id":17284,"date":"2015-03-01T20:04:44","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T10:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=17284"},"modified":"2015-03-01T20:06:58","modified_gmt":"2015-03-01T10:06:58","slug":"the-fall-season-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=17284","title":{"rendered":"The Fall – Season One"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tagtelevision\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

\"thefallseason1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Fall<\/em>
\nSeason One<\/h3>\nW<\/span>henever I visit the DVD section of the ABC Shop, I am reminded of the United Kingdom’s affinity for crime drama. \u00a0I have it on good authority that they produce five million cop shows a year, six million on leap years. \u00a0With such a deluge of content and with practically every variation of the murder mystery told, it often falls to the charisma of the crime solver and the killer to help a show stand out from its contemporaries.<\/p>\n

I discovered\u00a0The Fall\u00a0<\/em>on Netflix in January and it didn’t take me long to plough through the first season. \u00a0Partly because I enjoyed getting reacquainted with the wonderful Gillian Anderson who plays Superintendent Stella Gibson and partly because the season is all of five episodes in length.<\/p>\n

The Fall<\/em>\u00a0is produced by the BBC and has a lot of the edgy coolness of modern crime dramas like Luther<\/em> and\u00a0The Killing. \u00a0<\/em>The first season\u00a0covers the man hunt for the serial killer Paul Spector – a family man with a wife and kids who secretly sneaks out at night and performs elaborate murders of wealthy, brunette females. \u00a0Most of this investigative work handled by Gibson is done via psychoanalysis. \u00a0We seldom see her rolling up the sleeves and hunting for clues. \u00a0Instead you’re more likely to see her having a coffee in a cafe and thoughtfully mulling over the sexual desires of the killer at large.<\/p>\n

And sexuality is\u00a0The Fall<\/em>‘s ace in the hole. \u00a0Sex is an ever present topic and theme in\u00a0The Fall<\/em>. \u00a0Most obviously, it is the driving force for Spector in carrying out his murders. \u00a0He has developed a very particular, lethal fetish for dark haired women of a certain type. \u00a0But it doesn’t stop there. \u00a0Stella Gibson is a clinical and methodical character with an unflappable personality and this applies to her attitude to sex. \u00a0She beds co-workers and strangers with a sense of detachment that leaves devastated and love lorn men in her wake.<\/p>\n

This cavalier attitude to sex brings unwanted scrutiny upon Gibson when she sleeps with a married police officer who is murdered soon after but she brooks no hypocrisy. \u00a0When her superior Jim Burns reprimands her after the one night stand with the officer is leaked to the media, she points out that no blame is placed on the married officer who was complicit in the act and that Burns himself has slept with Gibson and still comes home to his wife every night. \u00a0Not surprisingly, Burns has little retort.<\/p>\n

A taboo sexual attraction is also likely to be the eventual undoing of Spector. \u00a0Although he goes to great lengths to cover his tracks, Spector is compromised by a family friend – a fifteen year old school girl named Katie who begins to suspect that Spector is the serial killer making headlines. \u00a0Instead of running to the police or confiding in anyone, she develops a fascination for him and develops a physical attraction to him. \u00a0It’s a clever twist to the tale. \u00a0Spector is calm, controlling and all powerful when he attacks his prey but he is flummoxed and unsure of what to do when faced with Katie.<\/p>\n

The first season of\u00a0The Fall<\/em> is a pleasure to watch although it is largely concerned with setting up the stakes and not so much in resolving anything conclusively. \u00a0Like the American version of\u00a0The Killing\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>before it, its quite possible that they could botch the pay off when the time comes. \u00a0I hope that doesn’t happen though. \u00a0Irrespective, its great to see Gillian Anderson back on TV and in such an interesting role. \u00a0All these years after\u00a0The X-Files<\/em>, she’s still got it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gillian Anderson stars as a detective in Belfast on the hunt for a serial killer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[974,2194,2195],"class_list":["post-17284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv","tag-bbc","tag-gillian-anderson","tag-jamie-dornan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17284"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17290,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17284\/revisions\/17290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}