The Fascinating, Maddening End of <em>The Fall</em>

The Fall has never been subtle about the fact that its two primary characters, the police detective Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) and the serial killer Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan), are opposing sides of the same coin. Stella, all crisp white silk blouses and pale-blonde hair, is the yin to Paul’s yang, with his all-black combos, chunky sweaters, and implacable grimaces. Stella swims; Paul jogs. Stella is childless and romantically unattached; Paul is a married man with two young children. Stella hates misogyny; Paul hates, and murders, women.

That these two dueling forces have proven over three seasons to be, subverting the formula, has shown what can happen when a truly poisonous villain is paired with a woman, and in doing so, it’s become one of the most fascinating dramas on television. Stella isn’t a brilliant detective in spite of her gender but of it; both her acuity as a policewoman and her ability to infiltrate her suspect’s psyche hinge on the fact that she’s a woman. The third season, which was recently released in its entirety on Netflix, continues to probe the dynamics of the relationship between Stella and Paul. But for all its psychological, almost literary complexity, it loses much of its narrative steam. It’s that great 21st-century phenomenon: a show that’s more fun to think about than it is to watch.