DEBORAH’S MUST-WATCH TV CLASSICS

THE FALL (2013) Netflix and RTE Player

This is a crime drama. There is a serial killer. But? This isn’t a whodunnit. It’s not a whodunnit because we know whodunnit, and we see whodunnit actually doing it, so it’s a whydunnit, all about motive, and it’s fantastically gripping, unexpected and creepy.

It stars Gillian Anderson, right, as Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, who arrives from the Met to conduct a review at a Belfast police station, where the police are getting nowhere on the murder of a young female architect. Ms Gibson, who is all pristine silky shirt and icy charisma, is busy acquainting herself with the case while, across town, we see the killer in his black balaclava prowling around the house of his next victim. He buries his face in her underwear – oh, it’s creepy! – and peels an orange in one, leaving a perfect spiral on the table. Yet the most cunning ploy is that our ‘perp’, as they say, is not an alienated loner. He’s Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan), a loving husband and father of two. When not otherwise occupied with strangling professional women, he may be seen at home, settling his children to sleep. He is also a bereavement counsellor who, in case you are not freaked out enough yet, draws a client as she weeps over her dead son.

It’s different, and beautifully performed. Anderson is sublime, almost otherworldly, while Dornan, once a top model and now a Hollywood star, matches her for icy charisma, and is also hot, which is unsettling. Two more series followed.