I started watching "The Fall" for two reasons: 1. As a huge X-Files fan, the work of Gillian Anderson is always kind of on my radar; & 2. It seemed to get very solid critical reviews/scores. Unfortunately, I will be bowing out after this first season. The reason? While perhaps espousing an interesting setup for a police procedural, I felt that the show was so often under-acted and sparsely directed that it became boring more times than not.
The basic setup for "The Fall" is that Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) is a serial killer who preys on a certain type of woman. He stalks them, captures them, and displays their bodies when finished with them. He then goes back to his wife and child at home. With the local police department unable to make any progress into the case, special investigator Stella Gibson (Anderson) is brought in to help catch the murderer.
I can easily see the two areas in which "The Fall" was supposed to stand out from its peers, but I felt that both of those areas were letdowns for me
The whole "serial killer with a family" motif. I feel like that concept has been done before, and Dornan either doesn't do a good enough job or isn't written in a way that is conducive to the part. While with his family he is extremely quiet, cold, and aloof, to the point where I wasn't able to "buy in" to the notion that he could ever be a normal family man. Also, never (in this first season, at least) are we given any motivation as to why Paul kills like he does. It just happens. Perhaps more explanations are coming, but for now it is frustrating being lost in terms of motive.
Police corruption & a female leading the force. When Dornan's character isn't the center of the action or investigation, the show deals quite a bit with the corruption of the police force and the new leadership provided by Stella. To me, much of the dialogue surrounding these topics feels forced and shoe-horned in (from time to time, Stella will give a speech about women's leadership that seems to come out of nowhere). The writers try to give Stella conflicts of her own (not making her a God-like figure in terms of morality/authority), but none of them really resonated with me during these five episodes. Like I said, much of this seemed forced.
As such, my journey with "The Fall" is going to end after these initial episodes, as the show has generated no desire in me to continue watching. I don't care enough about Paul's motives (and that promises to be a very deliberate process if touched on at all), while Anderson's Stella just isn't doing it for me in terms of either her investigative prowess or personal hardships. Perhaps hard-core fans of police procedurals will like this one more than me, but I was looking for more obvious drama or character development and wasn't seeing it much, if at all.