The Fall

Yes, I’ve fallen.  Into The Fall.  There was a sudden urge in me for something gritty and British.  Something grittish.  On Netflix’s autoplay function, the clip of this show answered my specifications perfectly: dashboard-shot footage of an approach to a crime scene, greyness everywhere, probably some drizzle, Gillian Anderson looking a bit grumpy.  Right, I thought, this is going to be the perfect blend of Line Of Duty and Happy Valley – everyone says it’s supposed to be very good.

The grip came very early on and I was soon anxious to get through as much of the three series as quickly as I could.  But what were we dealing with?  First of all, there was a location that was pretty new for me.  The Fall plays out in Northern Ireland and, more specifically, Belfast.  Now, I appreciate that even me saying that this programme fulfilled my need for something British can be interpreted as political – the whole place has been hotly contested as either Irish or part of the UK since way before my conception in the mid-eighties.  The Troubles were rarely out of the news in my childhood, and we even revisited them at A-Level when someone thought we should look at the cold cold poetry of Seamus Heaney, but there’s been a peace process for ages now.  Some would say for too long, so it’s a good job people voted for Brexit and we can all hurry back in time at the earliest opportunity.  It’s not like the year has already been a bit of a state.  Nevertheless, as the murders played out, I found myself deciding I really ought to visit Belfast at some point.

Aye, murder.  Here we are again, fuelling another British obsession: the details of how young women are murdered.  They’re not prostitutes this time, but successful career brunettes, targeted carefully by our killer, haunted and taunted until dispatched by slow strangulation.  This part of the story, dominating the first series, is taut with tension, from police not believing claims of home invasion, to the sleight of hand used to home in on the next victim.  The Northern Irish police force are refusing to acknowledge that a string of murders could be linked, flying in our Gillian as London-based Stella Gibson to investigate how previous operations have failed to yield results.

Anderson is enjoying something of a renaissance as a very British actor, even though she’s proper American.  Her X Files days still plague my nightmares (not her, but that ghost going down the stairs in the opening credits), but she’s given us pure joy in Sex Education and is currently on Thatcher duties in the latest lavish season of The Crown (the Diana years).  The Netflix blurb described her character as an ice queen, but there’s more to Gibson than perfect hair and some nice flowy blouses.  She stands up to the men around her.  She owns her sexuality.  She’s focused on her career.  We know she’s sensitive because, you know, she has a dream journal and that, but she’s a captivating hero and we urge her to succeed.  She even sleeps at work and, by season three, this seems to be taking its toll, as her voice establishes a distracting rasp.

Uncomfortably, she finds herself drawn to the killer as much as he to her.  The obsession tests the bounds not just of her professionalism, but also affects his murderous ambitions.  I don’t want to spoil who our main suspect is, so I’ll just now start to talk about Jamie Dornan as part of a completely unrelated matter.  He remains inscrutable throughout.  While his torso is for spurious reasons shown in varying states of undress at any excuse, working out why he is the way he is remains a mystery, its illumination only really beginning as we build to the final series’ climax.  As Paul Spector, he’s a loving dad (to his daughter at least) but a neglectful husband.  He alternates between leading on and spurning poor wee Katie Benedetto.  He stands up to yet is cowed by the likes of James Tyler.  It’s fitting that we never know whether we can believe him, even when he gives a firm yes in police interviews (never a yeah).

But, once the chase of Gibson’s cat to his mouse is more or less over, things slow down and settle a bit, such that the lack of momentum drove me to distraction.  In this lull, I started and finished The Staircase before forcing myself to return to the story.  I’m glad I did but, looking back at the sum of its parts, there are elements to its sprawlingly ambitious web of narratives that I wish we’d returned to or gained more closure on.  Corruption in the police force from series one fades away.  Supporting officers in the investigation get a bit of interesting characterisation before relegation to the background.  Our focus grows tighter and more claustrophobic culminating quite literally in Spector-on-Gibson action.

Join me, then, in taking a fall into The Fall.  If your second lockdown isn’t harrowing enough, this will surely contain enough gruesome themes to keep you in the house.  Just make sure you pop out if you find your bra laid out on the bed.

Derry Girls

“Oh, you should watch Derry Girls,” everyone said, “It’s so funny.”  Well, I did.  And it is.  My fame as a TV blogger has been spreading far and wide, resulting in an inundation of recommendations for things I should watch and write about.  A lot of the time I nod and smile, wondering if people realise these posts are more about me than any of the programmes in question, but the input is mostly welcome.  Like any normal person, I don’t always know which boxsets won’t let me down.  Peer-to-peer word of mouth comes in very handy.  I had totally missed the first series of Derry Girls when it premiered back in early 2018, and I still hadn’t sorted myself out in time for the second in March 2019.  If I’m honest, I don’t like watching things on Channel 4 that much.  It’s because I’m exposed to trails for their other shows and want to watch almost everything else, and we can all see that I already spend far too much time with telly.

Nevertheless, the first series is on Netflix, while I was able to catch up on the second with Channel 4 On Demand.  I don’t know if it’s called All4 anymore, or if it went back to 4oD, or maybe it’s Catchy Uppy or something (and I should know really, given my job), but I do know they don’t frequency cap their ads on there.  I’ve seen the same McDonald’s spots upwards of ten times, yet I’m still unswerving from my lifelong vow never to consume food from that hellhole.  Their agency has literally wasted them around 5p on me.  The good news is, after all the award wins, Derry Girls will be back for a third series.  Let’s unpick what has made it so successful.

Silly Accents

For those that don’t know, Derry is in Northern Ireland, so most of the dialogue is in the famous local accent and dialect where “how now brown cow?” becomes “hurr nurr brurn curr?” though I was disappointed that my favourite ever Northern Irish word didn’t make an appearance: a friend from the same town grew up thinking that passing wind was called doing a roodie doodie (say it out loud in your best Northern Irish accent) until he, as an adult, realised it was actually just his family that did that.  Either way, I commented in my post on Nighty Night how the right accent can make everything seem funny.  Add a good old “so it is” on the end of each sentence and this Celtic turn compounds the effect even further.

Nostalgia

We’re not just in Derry, we’re in Derry in the 1990s.  Mobile phones weren’t yet a thing, PJ & Duncan hadn’t become Ant and Dec and double denim was still on its first time around.  Derry Girls plants you unmistakably in the decade, not just through the hair and fashion and (lack of) tech, but through a soundtrack that surprises and delights the viewer at every turn.  That’s if you’re old enough to remember.  If you’re not, then get out.  But who would have thought that Gina G’s Ooh Aah… Just A Little Bit would still sound like such a banger?  I’m sitting here with a Spotify playlist lifted directly from the show, wondering how on earth I bring about some sort of personal Ace of Base reunion tour.

The Hilarity of Sectarian Violence

The Troubles, at least to a Surrey schoolboy, always seemed a bit far off and endless – the kind of thing you tune out as it’s a bit overexposed: a bit like climate change, Brexit or Boris Johnson.  While teenage life is full of frustrations (see the post on The Inbetweeners), I can’t imagine the further paralysing effect of growing up in the midst of a conflict that claimed over 3,000 lives.  Our Derry Girls are of the Catholic persuasion (allowing easier pickings for jokes about priests, nuns and the Pope) but any real antipathy towards protestants is reserved for their parents and grandparents.  A protestant boy is as good a ride as any, at least according to Michelle.  If you’re not familiar with the Troubles, though, you can look forward to the whole thing being reignited for an unnecessary sequel, courtesy of our good pal Brexit.

Outstanding Characters

You’ll come to love the Derry Girls (and boy) but it’s Michelle that has all the best lines: “You can’t ring Childline every time your mother threatens to kill you.”  Her scrunchy perm and hoop earrings are mere accessories to her pursuit of the best craic no matter the consequences.  Cousin Orla, meanwhile, clinches it for the best individual accent, aided by the strangeness of her every utterance.  Our lead, Erin Quinn, has amazing timing, but her mouth never stops moving, while Clare spends most of each episode shrieking.  It’s actually the supporting cast I enjoy the most.  School swot, Jenny Joyce, is an instant favourite, with her delicious unstoppable smugness at every turn wonderfully foiled by Sister Michael’s utter disgust at her sycophancy.  Jenny’s assembly harmonies show a voice as weak as her two shoes are goodie.

But Erin and Orla’s family deliver the most laughs.  We’ve all been cornered by an Uncle Colm – a relation whose unending stories guarantee instant boredom.  We all know someone as self-centred as Aunt Sarah – the kind of person who wears white to a wedding.  And we all love a matriarch as domineering as Mary.  Erin’s mum truly is a domestic force to be reckoned with, often ending up an unwilling accomplice in the girls’ ill-advised misdemeanours.  She captures some major universal mum-isms that can be recognised among the Irish, the British and the world over.  She gets the names of new things wrong, mistakenly thinking that Take That are called This And That.  And she has strong sentiments about laundry, flying off the handle when someone suggests doing just a half load of washing because doing “A half load goes against everything I stand for.”  My own mother once matched this when I asked her innocently why she preferred Sainsbury’s over Tesco, to which she responded instantly, “I just hate everything Tesco stand for as a company.”  Fairly neutral then.

So, well done to Lisa McGee, the show’s writer and creator.  She’s added something to the national canon that’s so nuanced and local that I’m thrilled at the thought of other English-speaking countries struggling to work out what on earth is going in each episode.  Maybe someone’s told them they should watch Derry Girls because it’s so funny.  But they can’t.  It’s ours.