Trauma, Motive and the Post-Troubles Psychopath in The Fall

Abstract

This article discusses the depiction of the serial killer, Paul Spector, in the BBC/RTÉ television series The Fall (2013–2016). It complements existing scholarship on the series’ female detective by considering how Spector’s construction as a Gothic villain and victim of institutional abuse inflects The Fall’s positioning as a transnational genre production. It focuses on the use of Belfast as a setting, taking into account its historical positioning as a “Noir” city, and discusses the series’ spatial politics in the context of the city’s more recent history of sectarian divisions. It places the “explanation” for Spector’s criminal activities in the context of the narrativization of clerical sexual abuse as specifically associated with the Irish Catholic church, and outlines the narrative turns the series is forced to take to reach its generically inflected conclusion. The discussion focuses on seasons one and two of The Fall as the most significant in terms of meaning-making.