Gillian Anderson, best known for playing Scully in The X Files is back on our telly in, what might actually turn out to be, the best BBC drama in a long time, The Fall.
A five-part series that follows the lives of two hunters with one story.
The first hunter is DSI Stella Gibson, Gillian Anderson's role, who arrives in Northern Ireland from the London Metropolitan Police to review an investigation in which the local police are under increased pressure to make an arrest in but there's one thing standing in their way. They have no suspects.
The second hunter is a serial predator, preying on the lives of women in Belfast, Northern Ireland. We know the identity of the killer right from the get go, Paul Spector, played by Jamie Dornan. Paul seems like every other man, he has two kids, a wife and a job, but it's what he gets up to when they're asleep that's at the centre of this drama. So rather than a whodunit like Broadchurch, it's much more of a 'will-they-stop-him'. Some people may think that by revealing the identity of the killer early on weakens the drama, but not in The Fall. Instead, the viewer is able to watch this cat and mouse game play out, knowing who it is all along, waiting for him to slip up and waiting for them to catch him.
Watching it, I felt that knowing the identity right from the start meant I didn't spend the best part of the hour suspecting others and wondering "Is it him?" or "It could be her" - instead, the questions I found myself asking were more along the lines of "What is his motive?" and "Will Stella ever suspect him?".As for Stella herself, I have a feeling that not all is what it seems. She seems like quite a mysterious character, one minute she's deadly serious and committed to the job, and the next she's keen to catch the eye of several men. Described by Anderson herself as an 'Independent Woman', it seems this lady is not one to be messed with.
Our serial killer, Paul, is sexually motivated and his first victim in Episode 1 is Sarah Kay, played by Laura Donnelly, a young solicitor who Paul becomes obsessed with and while on a night out, breaks into her house and has a good look through her underwear drawer. As the series goes on Spector continues to attack women and Gibson begins to find similarities to a case from 18 months ago and believes this to be the work of one man.
But as an outsider, will she be listened to or with the local team believe they know best? Only time will tell but I for one can't wait to tune in next week to see how the story unfolds and who is next on Spector's list. I really love the twist to the story, in that we know who the killer is. Will the two hunters ever meet? All these questions lead me to believe this will be a gripping BBC drama, and one of the best they've had in a long time.