Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

The Fall: Series 1 Blu-ray Movie Review

Criminal Intimacy

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 11, 2016

If you think you've seen it all in serial killer stories, then you haven't seen The Fall, a British/Irish co-production that first aired on the BBC in May 2013. The show was so successful that the BBC commissioned a second series, which premiered in November 2014. A third (and reportedly final) series has just finished production. Part police procedural, part psychological thriller and part intense character study, The Fall features one of the most intriguing cases of co-dependence between cop and killer since Clarice Starling met Hannibal Lecter. But Starling was a novice who wore her heart on her sleeve. The female detective in The Fall is an experienced professional who turns out to be even more of an enigma than the killer she's tracking.

The Fall was created and written by Allan Cubitt, who is no stranger to mystery stories, having written the second installment of Prime Suspect and several Sherlock Holmes adaptations. But the mystery in The Fall isn't who did it or what happened, because Cubitt shows the audience everything that the police are working so hard to learn (or almost everything). The real question is what's going on behind the eyes of the two lead adversaries, one an inscrutable predator leaving a trail of victims and the other an equally inscrutable detective determined to stop him.

Acorn Media previously issued the first two series of The Fall on DVD, but it is now releasing them on Blu-ray in anticipation of the final episodes, which will appear later this year.

Gillian Anderson plays Det. Superintendent Stella Gibson of London's Metropolitan Police, an icy and laconic blonde who makes Anderson's more famous investigator on The X-Files seem bubbly by comparison. Gibson is dispatched to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to review a murder investigation that has remained unresolved for 28 days and is politically sensitive because the victim, an architect named Alice Monroe, was the daughter-in-law of a prominent politician (Ian McElhinney). Gibson's arrival is a matter of concern for the local cop in charge, Asst. Chief Constable Jim Burns (John Lynch). Not only does Burns resent having "the Met" look over his shoulder, but he also has history with Gibson from their earlier careers.

Alice Monroe's killer is a cipher named Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan, Fifty Shades of Grey). Much of Series 1 involves the gradual unwrapping of this deceptively ordinary individual who, as Gibson arrives, has already targeted his next victim, a solicitor named Sarah Kay (Laura Donnelly). As far as the world is concerned, Spector is a mild-mannered family man with a wife, Sally Ann (Bronagh Waugh), and two young children. He works as a "grief counselor", an occupation at which he seems to be exceptionally skilled. But when Spector is not comforting the bereaved or playing doting husband and father, he devotes all his energy to selecting, observing and stalking his victims, all of whom are young professional women of the same physical type. Spector attacks his targets at home and kills them in a ritualistic fashion driven by secret obsessions that only he understands. He sketches, photographs, records video and keeps elaborate journals about each victim, which he revisits as cherished memories. Spector's frequent quotations of Nietzsche suggest that he considers himself beyond any ordinary notion of morality, but as The Fall progresses, he turns out to have unexpected pockets of conscience.

It is Gibson who first realizes that the case under review is part of a larger pattern. Despite Burns's hesitation, she reclassifies Alice Monroe's death as the work of a serial murderer, shifting the investigative approach and summoning additional resources. Gibson's ability to profile the killer is both impressive and unsettling. It is as if she instantly senses a connection to him. She finds a friend and ally in the local pathologist, Dr. Reed Smith (Archie Panjabi), and she seems to take a mentor's interest in a young female constable (Niamh McGrady) who is first on the scene when one of Spector's victims is found, but otherwise Gibson remains consistently reserved and aloof from the team of local police under her command. When Gibson speaks, she is so deliberate that her words sound like they had to pass a security inspection before being allowed to leave her lips. Even her romantic involvements are detached and clinical, as she demonstrates when she picks up a young Belfast cop names James Olson (Ben Peel) for a one-night stand. The encounter has unexpected ramifications, and Gibson handles them with the same fierce detachment she brings to her work.

The Fall does not hold back in depicting Spector's crimes, but neither does it linger over the gory details. Its mounting sense of dread is created through the painstaking observation of people going about their business (for good or ill) and through a kind of obsessive counterpoint between Gibson's activities and Spector's. (A memorably creepy example is the sequence that opens Episode 2, "Darkness Visible", where Gibson's tryst with Olson is intercut with Spector's preparation of a victim's body to be displayed and photographed.) Writer Cubitt and director Jakob Verbruggen pay equally close attention to both the mechanics of police investigation and Spector's cautious and deliberate preparation for each kill. Cubitt's scripts also skillfully weave in subplots that end up tying back to the main investigation in unpredictable ways. One of them involves the estranged husband (Eugene O'Hare) of one of the victims, whose shady dealings may or may not relate to his wife's death. Another involves a couple being counseled by Spector following the death of their child, who find that their grief counselor has an agenda of his own. And then there's the Spectors' fifteen-year-old babysitter, Katie Benedetto (Aisling Franciosi), who develops a crush on Paul, apparently oblivious of the monster lurking behind his handsome face. (Or is she?)

Filmed on location, The Fall captures a shiny, modern Belfast that has (mostly) left the sectarian conflict of "the Troubles" behind it. This upbeat urban landscape filled with busy streets and modern architecture turns out to be an ideal location for a predator like Spector to hide in plain sight. Still, as Gibson is warned by her boss upon her arrival, Belfast isn't England, and the cerebral detective is required to re-qualify with a handgun and arm herself on the job. In the world of The Fall, violence erupts at the least expected moments.

The Fall: Series 1 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Series 1 of The Fall was shot on Alexa by Irish cinematographer Ruairí O'Brien (Five Minutes of Heaven). Acorn Media has distributed the episodes over two 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray discs, which feature a sharp and detailed image free of visible artifacts and a naturalistic palette that shifts according to the variety of locations where the show's events occur. Blacks are suitably dark, and contrast appears to be accurate. Bright colors are the exception, but when they occur (as in, e.g., the Spectors' kitchen), they are pleasingly saturated. Acorn has mastered Series 1 with an average bitrate of 22.49 Mbps, which is adequate for this digitally acquired production.

The Fall: Series 1 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Fall features a subtly atmospheric sound mix encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1. Although the show's main focus is on dialogue, subdued sounds of the environment have been carefully placed throughout the surround array, whether it's the distinctive clack of someone typing on a computer keyboard offscreen, the crowd in a shopping mall, or the beeps and pings of the medical gear in the neo-natal unit where Sally Ann Spector works. None of the Irish accents is particularly thick, but anyone whose ear finds them challenging can consult the English SDH subtitles. The moody, minimalist theme and score were principally composed by David Holmes, who scored the three Ocean's films for Steven Soderbergh, and who here contributes an essential component to The Fall's steadily tightening grip on the viewer.

The Fall: Series 1 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 12:56): Producer Julian Stevens describes the development and production of Series 1, with additional observations by director Jakob Verbruggen, Gillian Anderson, Jamie Dornan and various crew members.



• Bonus Trailers: At startup, disc 1 plays trailers for Acorn TV, The Field of Blood and Restless.

The Fall: Series 1 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

When Gibson learns that the coroner has two young daughters, she asks the thoughtful professional what advice she will give to keep them safe. With resignation, the doctor replies that she'll tell them to avoid "strange men". Then she thinks about it for a second and amends the proviso to "any man." As the show's biblical title suggests, The Fall's picture of humanity is a bleak one, especially in its portrayal of relations between men and women. Gibson's steely self-control appears to arise from her determination never to be a victim, but she pays a price for that independence. Highly recommended.