Most terrifying horror scenes to be seen
THE Daily Mail called The Fall (Monday, SoHo) ‘‘the most repulsive drama ever broadcast in Britain’’ – but this was not enough to put off what proved a record audience for BBC Two.
What’s so challenging about this show, now beginning its second season, is the confoundingly nuanced portrayal of a serial killer of women. Spector (Jamie Dornan) is seemingly genuinely compassionate, a doting and imaginative father and an effective bereavement counsellor whose clients and colleagues hold him in the highest regard.
That he also brutally murders women – and those scenes are some of the most terrifyingly choreographed horror scenes you’ll (hopefully) ever see – stokes the cat-and-mouse police story full of possibilities. This week, he tenderly led a child to the toilet in the dead of night, before terrorising her sleeping mother.
It’s this sort of contradictory but strangely credible detail that throws into uncomfortable relief the fact – common to decades of crime drama – that the sadistic terrorising of the vulnerable is the fulcrum of our entertainment.
This series is so vivid it tends to cut through our blunted sensibilities – and it knows that is what it’s doing and takes care to remind us. The sister of one of his victims complains this week how the murdered woman is now just another victim – public interest already relocated to the next one.
Murderers like this take away our humanity. Do TV shows like this help restore it or merely titillate?
There’s also a queasy thread of whether his wife, and a smitten young teen, are knowingly enabling Spector’s evasion of justice. None of this is easy to Where Eagles Dare, Sky Movie Classics, 8.30pm. A landmark action movie, written for the screen by Alistair McLean from his novel, featuring Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood as commandos charged with rescuing their brigadier from a Nazi-held Bavarian schloss in World War II. grapple with.
A further reason for The Fall’s hypnotic quality is Gillian Anderson’s performance as Stella Gibson, the inspector leading the investigation. She is a determinedly isolated figure, having been sent to Belfast to sort out a culture of police corruption.
Anderson’s acquired cutcrystal English accent is ideal for Gibson’s chilly persona, as is her ever-challenging demeanour. The whole Ice Queen/passiveaggressive power trip package is so flawless it might have been concocted at Weta Workshop, yet it’s entirely believable.
It is intensifying no end, since last series Spector outwitted what seemed certain apprehension, and is now free and clear. In an electrifying confrontation with Gibson last series, he tacitly acknowledged his guilt, saying he was now ready to stop.
But with superbly economical acting, Dornan transmits from the first few minutes of this season that Spector now finds he is far too proud of his progress to retire from the field. It’s about beating Gibson as much as it is about indulging his barbaric compulsions. Look away if you dare. This is such a fun album and so lovingly made, and all in the interests of simply taking mostly Kiwiwritten music to places it might never be heard, while performing on the least likely of instruments, the ukulele, so it would be churlish to criticise. Just a small quibble – where were the band members’ names in the insert? Best seen live, which I have done several times, I confess to shuffling along (we English don’t dance terribly well). They cajole the audience into singing along and when the audience is asked to play along, you’ll always see plenty of the ‘‘little flea’’ (as the ukulele is known in Hawaii) converts plucking along. And as they are on tour, I expect Dave Dobbyn’s Be Mine Tonight will be the crowd favourite. However, up there must be Counting the Beat, which, with the two Maori tracks, E Ipo and Hine e Hine, sounds as if it was first written for the uke. Lorde’s Team and Max Merrit’s Slippin’ Away lend themselves well to reinterpretation. Don’t send a Middleearth calendar overseas for Christmas. This is much better.