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.

Sex Education

If you’ve ever wondered where all the ugly jackets in the world have gone, I can now reveal their whereabouts to you.  They’ve been hoarded by the costume department of Sex Education.  Don’t worry, I’m about to say a whole load of nice things about this show, but let’s just dwell on the programme’s aesthetic before we really get into things.  Every character, from an eccentric older patient in an abortion clinic, to the fundamentalist protestors outside, is clad in the sort of coat you’ll remember from embarrassing (actual, not digital) photos from your eighties or nineties childhood (people with childhoods any later shouldn’t really be reading this as I don’t know what to say to them).  The colours clash, the shoulders box up beyond human anatomy, the sleeves tease you with mysteries.  If you’re going to embrace bad taste, though, then you might as well own it.

I’m reminded of a costume hire company in the ski resort of Morzine where I was lucky enough to be taken on a jolly with work.  For our ironic night out, a van load of dated onesies was brought to the chalet and laid out on the pool table; we were invited to make our selections amidst the inescapably recognisable odour of jumble sale.  Our criteria were simple: the more garish, the better.  In these extravagant (and warm) disguises, we could be amplified versions of ourselves, dancing on podiums, recreating the video to I’m A Slave 4 U by Britney Spears or photographing ourselves draped over petrol pumps in the snow.  It was as if the outfits came with added character.  That evening around the pool table is how I imagine jacket selection day during the filming of Sex Education.  These were the same bad-taste onesies, they just had the legs and crotches cut off (thereby making them jackets obviously).

But it works.  Sex Education takes place in a version of Britain where everyone wears these jackets (and a whole host of other eye-catching items).  Moordale Secondary School teems with teens who are at home balancing irony with style in order to create a look and feel that is at once real and yet an enhancement of reality.  The office Netflix chat around the show was universal: everyone should watch it because it’s great.  But the second comment was always a reference to the fact this UK-based comedy-drama seemed to unfold in an American high school transplanted from the USA to South Wales.  Regular readers will know that the high school is one of my favourite settings for TV (see posts on The OC and Teen Wolf) but I would argue that Moordale is actually a mid-Atlantic fusion.  Sure, there are letterman jackets for the swim team and wide corridors filled with big US-style lockers, but these just serve to signpost and facilitate the setting, the relationships and the storylines.  The characters inhabiting this setting are as bloody British as spending two years failing to get a Brexit deal (so let’s please remain).  My school didn’t have a pool, and our shoebox lockers were just places where we forgot a packed lunch of sandwiches over the Easter holidays.

In fact, Moordale Secondary seems to be what we would call a sixth form college.  We’re not told much about its setting – there’s no named town to host us (like Riverdale).  It’s rural, which, based on my Surrey youth, means everything is too far apart to walk and you need your folks to cart you about until you pass your driving test, but the characters dash about in the dark between each other’s homes without too much difficulty.  Why my mind focused on the transportation practicalities is a reflection of my own anxieties, and it’s not interesting for me to write about here, so I don’t even know why you’re reading this bit.  Let’s instead focus on the British countryside looking breath-taking and cinematic – our nation of crap towns hasn’t looked this good on camera since The End Of The F***ing World.

Even that observation isn’t important.  So, now for the main bit: Moordale is packed with a young community of sexually active students whose enthusiasm for fornication (for the most part) is only outstripped by their cluelessness.  Our link into this world is our hero, Otis, whose disgust at sexual acts is at odds with his mum’s occupation: she is a sex therapist, practising what she preaches with a parade of casual (and cringe) lovers.  Played by Gillian Anderson, Dr Jean F. Milburn might know her away around a phallic ornament (the house is dripping in them) but she’s as lost at raising a modern teen as any parent would be.  Nevertheless, her vocation rubs off, with Sex Education’s premise being that her son ends up charging his academic cohort (a delicious piece of jargon, courtesy of my old headmistress) for his own brand of sex therapy.  His virginity is no barrier to imparting his teachings on scissoring, gag reflexes and ejaculation.  And if you’re wincing at those sexual terms, then this isn’t the show for you.  Bonking appears on screen every few minutes, with frank discussion of it filling most of the rest of the time.  Brits are prudishly reserved when it comes to open conversation about slap and/or tickle, but we’re also obsessed with it.  Sex Education treads this balance beautifully, celebrating sexual diversity, inexperience and experimentation in all its silly sloppiness.  After all, it is our vagina (reference to episode five).

Navigating this hormonal onslaught alongside Otis, his fellow students are all a source of constant joy in their own ways.  Rather than box-ticking a series of high school tropes, their genuine uniqueness brings grit and proximity to Sex Education’s colourful costumes.  You root for them all.  Audiences will fall in love with Eric, Otis’s best friend who doesn’t let being average at French horn (not a euphemism) hold back his extravagant wardrobe choices, but I was charmed by Aimee, a member of Moordale’s own Mean Girls, The Untouchables, who finally learns to put herself first.  I also want to mention Lily, not just for her erotic alien fiction, but also her combinations of rollnecks and bumbags.  I can’t leave out Maeve and Jackson either, but I’ll finish on Adam, the bullies-get-bullied bad boy and chest-hairiest teen whose last-episode resolution will either blow you away (literally) or prove correct suspicions you’ll have had since his first appearance.

I haven’t been this saddened by finishing a show since the end of Parks & Recreation, but thank goodness news already abounds of a second series getting commissioned.  If the rumours of 40 million streams are true, then I can just hear the LOLs echoing out around the world.  Get yourself sex educated.  Just don’t focus too much on the jackets.