Crime Log: The Fall, A Delicate Truth
There’s a couple of things on this week that will stimulate at least a couple of your five senses.
Gillian Anderson, her in the blouse, returns to television tonight in The Fall. She stars as DSI Stella Gibson in the first part of a new investigative thriller. Behold the blurb:
When a murder in Belfast remains unsolved, Gibson is brought in from the London Metropolitan Police to help catch the killer.
As Gibson travels across from London, we are introduced to the murderer himself: Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan). Spector’s dark fascination with a young solicitor Sarah Kay (Laura Donnelly) is in stark contrast to his home life, where he has two young children and a wife who loves him
As Gibson looks in to the investigation, she finds similarities to a case from 18 months ago. Believing them to be the work of one man, she’s convinced there is a serial killer lose in Belfast but her superiors at the police are unwilling to make the connection.
Meanwhile, that very serial killer is busy preparing for his next attack. As Spector stalks through Sarah’s empty house, the thrill of his crime clearly excites him. When Sarah arrives home she finds that Spector has left a disturbing calling card laid out on her bed.
For both Spector and Gibson, the hunt has begun.
The Fall is on BBC2 tonight at 9pm. If it’s a hit, I think the idea is to make some more. It’s written by Allan Cubitt, who adapted Martina Cole’s The Runaway for Sky, and has written episodes of Murphy’s Law and Prime Suspect.
Anderson is also due to join the cast of Hannibal in the US this week, as Dr. Lecter’s psychoanalyst. It’s a nice piece of meta-casting. X-Files creator Chris Carter always said that her Scully character was based on Clarice Starling from Silence Of The Lambs.
We discussed Hannibal last week, of course. It’s currently ‘on the bubble’ at NBC, which means it hasn’t been picked up for a second season yet, unlike a lot of other series that have received renewals. That’s a shame because I liked last week’s first episode on Sky Living very much, and apparently it gets better.
Meanwhile, for those of you who like to doze in bed of a night with BBC Radio 4 burbling in the background, this week’s Book At Bedtime is John le Carre‘s new book A Delicate Truth.
Damian Lewis - or as we call him in our house, that Brody from Homeland - reads this tale of a good man wrestling with his conscience. Let the blurb take the strain:
An undercover counter-operation in the British colony of Gibraltar, a middle-ranking man from the Foreign Office serving as ‘eyes on’ and reporting to an ambitious Minister; the aim to capture a jihadist arms-buyer, the success, assured.
But back in the UK a junior officer has his doubts and commits an unthinkable act. Three years on, he will find himself facing an impossible choice. In a journey that will take him from Cornwall to Wales via murky secrets in the depths of Whitehall, Toby Bell will try to find out the truth about the night on the Rock and bring it the attention and justice it deserves.
A Delicate Truth is on BBC Radio 4 every night this week at 10-45pm.
You may want to take a gander at this nice interview with le Carre here. He has some interesting things to say about the frustration he still feels at being branded the Cold War guy after all these years, and it’s clear that his writing is as important to him as it ever was.
