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Jun 27, 2017MartineVK rated this title 1.5 out of 5 stars
In the first episode of this second series Det. Stella Gibson says to her team "in order to do the terrible things he does, the killer dehumanizes his victims." The same could be said for creator, writer and director Allen Cubbit here in this overtly voyeuristic crime thriller. Though in real life, serial killers are almost exclusively found to be inadequates, Cubbit gives viewers a killer (played by former model Jamie Dornan) as a warm, successful family man, and then has us join him on his sadistic hobby of slowly murdering nubile brunettes. Aside from showing the women from the killer's point of view before he pounces (of course they are doing sexy things like undressing) Cubbit also shows the women as basically asking for it with their careless behaviour. In one scene Dornan's character meets a woman on a train. She puts a newspaper with a photofit of the suspected serial murderer down on the table between them. He picks it up and shows it to her. He asks if it looks like him. [It sure does.] What does she say? She says yes. Is she creeped out? No. Because hey, hot guy. Just a coincidence yeah? He then proceeds to draw a beard on the picture to match the beard he has grown since he committed the murder. He shows that to her. Again, she's not creeped out. In fact she tells him she lives near one of the victims. Better yet she shows him her drivers license that has her address on it. What might a real woman do, not a fantasy woman like the writer creates? Well she could excuse herself, go into the hallway or bathroom and call the police, saying "I think I've just spotted the murderer on a train." But Cubbit wants to show women as dumb-clucks, worthy of their victim status. In another scene, the killer visits in the hospital his one victim that avoided being murdered in the nick of time (a man intervened), pretending to be a therapist. Does she recognize his voice? Of course not. It's not like she would remember a detail that happened during her most terrifying moment on earth. And though she is supposedly suffering from PTSD, she tells this strange man incredibly intimate things. Of course she had posted sexy pictures of herself online, including a video saying she was into bondage and "had a high threshold for pain." She asks, "do you think he saw it and targeted me?" Well, dear viewer, what do you think? For laughs (yes, I'm being sarcastic) Cubbit mentions that a policeman that Det. Gibson slept with and was subsequently killed, was found with scratch marks on his back, that the pathologist suggests were made during sex. I can only think that Cubbit's idea of sex was formed in the '50s or '60s because that is SO backwards it's pathetic. There is so much misogyny here, it is hard to keep count. Professionally done (albeit incredibly slowly - so much less dialogue to write) but morally vacuous.