@strangebedfellows said:

I hate it when a writer uses a character to push his/her own opinions - and this was obviously the case here. Strangely, the character chosen could have been left out of the plot entirely and wouldn't have been missed because he and his "troubled" ex-wife had virtually nothing to do with anything. This was also true of the - wait for it - gay female priest - and her illegal immigrant lover. Just to make sure that no gender was ignored we had a gay Archbishop too !! Tick all the boxes - right ? I am still wondering at the senseless note left by the pizza bar manageress and what impact it had on the case. Just to keep up with film fashion trends we also had the "heavily pregnant" D.I. who was far cleverer than her impressionable black male sidekick and who solved the case virtually unaided. of course to suit the writer's private agenda we had a victorious resolution for the immigrant woman. An implausible story which could have been improved upon and told in half the time with half the characters and none of the bias.

I also hate agenda driven movies and series. I am just over 10 minutes into the first episode now, and I wonder whether I should bother with this show. One thing which struck me right off was how the detective acted at the pizza place. She was on her way to investigate the murder, having just taken the call about it, and passed the pizza place on her way. She noticed it was open and doing business and that irked her. She had her driver turn the car around, she entered the pizza joint and announced that she was closing it down. One of their delivery people had been shot, so she ordered the business to close down (presumably until she gave the OK for them to reopen).

Now I don't know much about British law or how they work over there. But that seems very odd to me. The pizza place was not a crime scene. Why should those people not get the pizzas they paid for? That seems almost an arbitrary action, an abuse of power in fact.
What is the rationale for closing down that business? Is it to question the manager? (who seems to be hiding something) The manager could be questioned without closing down the business. I am guessing that the manager is involved in the plot to have the driver killed, and that the killing was probably motivated at least partly because of "racism" or some sort of "phobia". Those memes are SO overdone, I have seen SO many shows of this sort. I think I'm going to pass on this show.

[Did you see "The Fall" with Gillian Anderson? It was a good detective show about a serial killer, but it was also written to push a feminist message, with various dialogue segments hammering home various feminist grievances. Being male was described as a sort of birth defect at one point! The story itself was pretty good, and it was the emphasis of the show. But it was impossible to miss the heavy handed agenda when it was pushed. ]

Thanks for replying. I am a white British mature female and you make good points. I too, wondered at her attitude about the pizza shop - she had absolutely no authority to close that down as she had absolutely no evidence at that point that anybody therein had anything to do with the murder at all. (She wouldn't have been so high handed at McDonalds !!) I did watch "The Fall" and I did mostly enjoy it, but I agree that there was a lot of feminism pushed in it. Also that subdued drone that Anderson seems to have adopted vocally got on my nerves - hey, at least she wasn't "heavily pregnant" !! As a woman I agree with the concept of equality - but just that - the sexes should be treated equally - not one gender favoured in any way above another - because then we are back to inequality and no lessons have been learned. If you continue to watch it - it will probably annoy you a lot - but go on - I dare you. !!!

@strangebedfellows said:

Thanks for replying. I am a white British mature female and you make good points. I too, wondered at her attitude about the pizza shop - she had absolutely no authority to close that down as she had absolutely no evidence at that point that anybody therein had anything to do with the murder at all. (She wouldn't have been so high handed at McDonalds !!) I did watch "The Fall" and I did mostly enjoy it, but I agree that there was a lot of feminism pushed in it. Also that subdued drone that Anderson seems to have adopted vocally got on my nerves - hey, at least she wasn't "heavily pregnant" !! As a woman I agree with the concept of equality - but just that - the sexes should be treated equally - not one gender favoured in any way above another - because then we are back to inequality and no lessons have been learned. If you continue to watch it - it will probably annoy you a lot - but go on - I dare you. !!!

I'll have to mull over that challenge for a while, lol. I have seen a lot of shows recently which are heavy handed on pushing some agenda or other. I'm a bit burnt out on getting preached at during my entertainment time. I like to watch so I can escape from all that contentious, pejorative, or whiny drivel. There is too much of it in the news, which saturates television these days. But I may go back and finish the show once I have had a break from that stuff for a while.

Right, Gillian Anderson's 'subdued drone' (good description) was an irritating affectation, and overdone a bit. I am guessing she adopted it so she would not sound like a strident militant feminist while she talked like one. haha. But it doesn't really help. Because one cannot make some of the comments she made without a fair amount of anger and resentment bubbling below the surface, which makes her calm exterior seem incongruous. So it just seemed disingenuous. I mean, if I am angry about something it comes through in my voice and demeanor, even though I attempt to control myself. If I get angry, and then 'act' as if I'm not, doesn't that make me seem devious? At the least, I look like a child lying about getting caught doing something I shouldn't.

(I recall asking my wife (when we were still married) what was bothering her various times and her response was an obvious facade as she replied "nothing". And she was clearly upset with me over something. That went on for 3 months one time before she finally let me have it over something petty. Other times she would say she didn't want to talk about it then, and she would wait until I was at work and then call me to have a fight on the phone because she wanted me to feel uncomfortable having to talk about personal things in front of co workers. Sorry about relating personal things here. My point in bringing these issues up is just that I am unimpressed with people who manipulate by faking their emotions. In my experience this is done as a passive aggressive ploy, or to manipulate others. If it is done with enough skill perhaps it goes undetected at first. But the manipulated person learns, and probably subconsciously already knows, that the other person isn't dealing with them in good faith. And no progress is made this way (as you already said, in other words). It only prevents an honest discussion or a resolution. )

I watched The Fall all the way through because the main focus of the show was on the story, and I didn't find the sub messages that heavy handed. I don't mind hearing a feminist message per se. If I were a woman I am sure I would have strong feelings about inequities against women. I don't like the injustices I find in the world in general. But if the goal is to simply create different inequities, or to promote negative or pejorative stereotypes of men in general, I often wind up turning to something else. There seem to be some people who want to teach young women to adopt a "revenge" attitude. I think this is a manipulation of these women. Some political motivation is behind it; if large segments of the population can be reliably triggered to act in predictable ways, then those segments become political assets. Real solutions are not always the goal of those pushing the angry militant memes, I think.
But enough about that.

I like The Fall for the most part. And I will come back and watch this show after I take a break, just so we can compare notes if for no other reason.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the future !

I think the idea is to have a theme of 'fighting the system'. All of the secondary plot lines are concerned with that idea.

Is it good writing? I'm not sure. But I think 4 hours of a single minded focus on 'the case' would have been tedious.

I wasn't bothered by the secondary plots but I was bothered by the coincidental intersectionality of it all, which was unbelievable and contrived. The witness to the murder just happens to be the lover of the friend of the former husband of the woman whose house the guy was killed outside. And everyone knows each other. Hardly surprising that the case is solved in 3 days when every man and his dog are connected in some way.

But I don't see any 'agenda pushing' going on.