Reasons to watch The Fall

Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself (Whitman). Despite most recent post on several TV episodics that I've abandoned, for various reasons, we have decided to continue watching the Netflix series The Fall, at least through season 1. In this Belfast-set series a dour and determined Gillian Anderson gets assigned to the Belfast PD to lead the hunt for a serial killer who preys on professional women. Some aspects of the series are ridiculous, and I from the start just couldn't buy into a serial killer with such a Jekyll-Hyde personality: a good dad and socially committed worker (a grief or bereavement counselor, no less) by day and a deranged psychopath murderer at night; a really smart and devious criminal who, by the way, keeps souvenirs of each killing and stashes them in his young daughter's bedroom. Say, what? But over time this series did grow on me; I never believed it, but wanted to see how it would all turn out. The series breaks with convention in that we know from the outset who did it; like Crime and Punishment, it's about the how rather than the who or the what: how does Anderson and the PD track down the killer, and what effect does the tightening noose have on this deranged man? There are a number of subplots involving police corruption (and ties to one of the victims, which I still don't understand), and far too much dizzying cross-cutting between scenes taking place simultaneously, but a strong, strongly feminist Anderson carries the show and other time we learn more about the killer. The show carries on for at least 2 more seasons, so you can surmise that we won't or don't have all the answers at the conclusion of Season 1. All told, it's worth staying with the series, although it's not a portrait of cultures and communities in conflict, as in The Wire.