The Fall and the sub­tle pow­er of slow-burn storytelling

Over the past cou­ple of years, it has become evi­dent that the aver­age TV audi­ence favours an increas­ing­ly hur­ried and flashy approach to sto­ry­telling. The cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of TV and film fanat­ics thrives on the adren­a­line offered by high-speed car chas­es, extreme vio­lence and spe­cial effects, and one may even go as far as to sug­gest that this take on crime dra­mas direct­ly reflects the fast-paced world we are liv­ing in.

Who has the time to be bogged down by the intri­cate details and pro­found char­ac­ter stud­ies in shows like The Fall, when one can achieve instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion from breath­less episod­ic series like Per­son of Inter­est? But by build­ing an atmos­phere and an inti­mate rela­tion­ship with the cen­tral and even fringe char­ac­ters, these crime dra­mas allow us to get a lot more out of their world and giv­en storylines.

Instead of skirt­ing the super­fi­cial from episode to episode, The Fall throws us into the deep end, encour­ag­ing us to work along­side Detec­tive Stel­la Gib­son (Gillian Ander­son) in her plight to bring the truth to the sur­face. As is true for real-life cas­es and crime-solv­ing meth­ods, a murderer’s psy­chol­o­gy and motives can­not be sussed in a mat­ter of one day. The com­ple­tion of a com­plex puz­zle requires patience and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, many have lost the qui­et endurance nec­es­sary to fil­ter through the many pieces. This mon­key-mind afflic­tion caus­es many to miss out on qual­i­ty plot­lines and hyp­not­ic cinematography.

Per­haps the most mem­o­rable TV crime dra­mas of the ear­ly 2000s was The Wire. Cre­at­ed by for­mer police reporter David Simon, The Wire por­trays the socio-polit­i­cal cli­mate and the char­ac­ters of Bal­ti­more street-life with indis­putable authen­tic­i­ty. The show famil­iaris­es its audi­ence with the Bal­ti­more set­ting by ways of stun­ning back­drops, accu­rate street slang and pri­vate insight into the inner-work­ings of a city and its people.

Both sides of the crime spec­trum are rep­re­sent­ed in a man­ner that human­is­es even the most ruth­less amongst the core group of police offi­cers and hard­core thugs. By allow­ing view­ers to ful­ly under­stand the cir­cum­stances that land­ed Baltimore’s cor­ner boys and addicts in this posi­tion in the first place, and by giv­ing us a clear idea as to how the gov­ern­ment gets in the way of the police force’s attempts to clean up its com­mu­ni­ty, The Wire suc­ceed­ed in offer­ing an unusu­al pro­tag­o­nist: the very streets of a city steeped in crime, pover­ty and disillusionment.

When the actu­al loca­tion and set­ting of a show becomes every bit as impor­tant as the char­ac­ters brav­ing it, a series quick­ly takes on an inti­mate feel­ing that con­tributes to all aspects of the sto­ry­line. The Killing and True Detec­tive are the epit­o­me of shows adopt­ing atmos­phere as piv­otal characters.

Like Twin Peaks in the ear­ly ​’90s, these shows would not have mer­it­ed the same impact had it not been for the pow­er­ful involve­ment of its respec­tive envi­ron­ments. In True Detective’s first sea­son, the fog­gy, rur­al Louisiana set­ting was very much a part of Detec­tive Rust Cohle’s (Matthew McConaugh­ey) spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, in much the same way as the dense forests of British Colum­bia become a part of Detec­tive Sarah Linden’s (Mireille Enos) emo­tion­al land­scape. This strong focus on tone allows the viewer’s mind to slow down and absorb the char­ac­ters’ sur­round­ings in a lit­er­ary fashion.

The way each page in a book comes alive with descrip­tive nar­ra­tive, each episode of these shows enrich­es the over­all view­ing expe­ri­ence with sub­tle but cru­cial detail. Anoth­er recent show to strike a chill­ing­ly med­i­ta­tive tone from the get-go is HBO’s The Night Of. From its pilot episode all the way through to the sea­son finale, it man­aged to embody so much more than just its cen­tral char­ac­ters. From the vio­lent­ly claus­tro­pho­bic prison insti­tu­tion to Stone’s (John Tur­tur­ro) tor­tured feet – every­thing becomes essen­tial to the nature of its respec­tive sto­ry­lines and their final outcome.

When The Fall’s third sea­son came to an end last month, had it not been for the show’s abil­i­ty to uncov­er Gib­son and Spector’s (Jamie Dor­nan) psy­chol­o­gy and the obses­sion that dri­ves them at a real­is­tic pace, it would have fall­en flat. Where­as Spec­tor was free to exploit the advan­tages of an excitable, urban set­ting in pre­vi­ous sea­sons, this sea­son forced him to suc­cumb to safe, restrict­ed envi­ron­ments run by med­ical and author­i­ta­tive figures.

To the show’s cre­ator, Alan Cubitt, the change of back­drop and char­ac­ters pre­sent­ed a whole new play­ground of pos­si­bil­i­ties from which to explore the emo­tion­al jour­neys of all those affect­ed by Spector’s crimes. Sea­son open­er ​‘Silence and Suf­fer­ing’ served as a beau­ti­ful reminder of the nar­ra­tive that can be fil­tered out beneath seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed minu­ti­ae. By draw­ing the view­er into the doc­tors’ fight for Spector’s sur­vival, the show’s vil­lain is human­ised enough to allow him to fool us into sym­pa­this­ing with his scar­ring past and cur­rent situation.

Spector’s entire third sea­son sto­ry­line was one of uncer­tain­ty and mas­ter­mind­ed manip­u­la­tion, two key aspects of his char­ac­ters that could not have been estab­lished with the same kind of veloc­i­ty most crime dra­mas oper­ate on these days. With its third sea­son finale, The Fall proved that there is a lot more to be derived from slow-burn sto­ry­telling than there is from loud­ly sparkling visu­als and nar­ra­tive­ly emp­ty adrenaline-fixes.