The Fall - misogyny in a veil of classiness? The BBC website that enables journalists to watch shows before they are screened warns television critics that their reviews should be spoiler-free. But in the case of The Fall, Allan Cubitt's controversial serial killer drama, the second series of which began on BBC2 last Thursday, what, really, is there to spoil? Am I giving anything away if I tell you that this week's episode - I've just watched it in the interests of fairness - begins with a shot in which DS Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) is dressed in an empire-line nightdress and a flapping silk dressing gown straight out of the latest campaign for Dior? Or that this is followed by a scene in which she stands in the shower, the water flowing over her face - over her parted lips - in close-up? Or that a section of the ensuing dialogue is concerned with the sexual fantasies of schoolgirls? Or that at one point we get a good, long glimpse of the tight-cheeked backside of Paul Spector, our unfeasibly attractive psychopath, in exactly the kind of underpants that Jamie Dornan, who plays him, might have worn in his previous career as a model? I don't think I am. In spite of Cubitt's recent admission that in the first series the camera may indeed have lingered for too long on "certain things," it's crystal clear to anyone who cares to tune in that The Fall is still in the business of glamorising violence against women by equating it not only with sex, but with sexual attractiveness. Yes, the first episode did not include any of those delicately lit, soft porn-like scenes in which Spector lays out the body of his latest victim. But then, he didn't have the chance to kill anyone this time around. Anderson still got to flash her (coffee-coloured, lace) bra at the camera and she still managed to look sexually aroused - flaming of cheek and bright of eye - at the merest mention of the killer. As she tottered around a crime scene in high heels, I had the strong feeling that Cubitt, now directing the series as well as writing it, had put out of his mind altogether the cries of misogyny that trailed the first series. And perhaps this is understandable. A hit is a hit, after all. Those sickened by the way The Fall makes a fetish of Spector's perversions have already long since stopped watching. Why, then, remove the very thing that also keeps its fans in thrall? It is perhaps for this reason that I'm more dismayed now by the critical reaction to the show than by The Fall itself. The nation's TV critics don't have any skin in this fight and yet still they continue to praise what should rightly be condemned, to attempt to justify intellectually what looks to many of us like a thing unremittingly warped. Reviewing the first episode, one insisted that the drama only mirrors what goes on every day in the real world ("Every three days, on average, a woman [in England and Wales] is killed by her current or former boyfriend or husband), accusing those of us who flinch from the show of wimpishness, even of irresponsibility ("There's no way to make palatable the truth about what men do to women"). Another urged us to put aside our doubts and simply enjoy the "interesting" contradictions in Spector's character ("Even "good" characters can indeed fall"). Another conceded that the camera is indeed Spector's voyeuristic "accomplice" and was probably up to no good in the matter of Gibson's bra. Even so, the accusations of misogyny are unfair. "No thriller on television is as gripping as this or as well acted," he wrote. And here's the rub. The series is well acted. Anderson is a study in control; Dornan's performance is breathtakingly understated. It's also well written, if you're able to ignore the improbabilities of the plot. But it's precisely this veil of classiness, this veneer of BBC2 sophistication, that brings on the sophistry. For all that it is strikingly nasty, The Fall is still subtle enough - sometimes, only remembering this or that bit of imagery afterwards, I've found myself eagerly complicit in its fevered prurience - to provide wriggle room for those who would defend it. Moody lighting, minimalist dialogue, the occasional pseudo-feminist nod to Gibson's position as a lone woman in authority: such things help to suggest that what The Fall offers is not entertainment but a serious inquiry into the nature of "aberrant masculinity." Not for the first time, critics and writers everywhere have been duped into equating a certain kind of good taste with higher moral virtue. In this case, they have mistaken committed performances and some natty dialogue for pure motives on the part of its makers and, by extension, its audience. This all seemed more than usually striking in a week that began with the demise of Dapper Laughs, the comic "character" whose "banter" consists mostly of "ironic" sexism and homophobia. (Sample quote: "Just show her your penis. If she cries, she's just playing hard to get.") A petition for the removal of his show Dapper Laughs: On the Pull on ITV2 having gathered 63,000 names, the series was cancelled last Monday. His creator Daniel O'Reilly was interviewed on Newsnight by Emily Maitlis. I do wonder about this. Why isn't Newsnight pushing Gillian Anderson to explain why criticism of The Fall makes her (we read) so irritable? Or asking Allan Cubitt what exactly he is saying, even if only subliminally, about violence against women? Was anything Dapper Laughs did on screen any worse than anything Paul Spector does? Is shouting abuse at a woman worse than strangling one? Both are fictional characters, even if the former's "irony" seems rather elusive to some of us. Both require us, or so we're told, to recognise the difference between misogyny and a portrayal of misogyny. In the end, I can't help feeling that Dapper is the less troubling. A "comic" character who isn't funny will only lead people to switch off; his buffoonery, however vile, attracted a relatively small audience (120,000). But a misogynistic sociopath who is devastatingly attractive, kind to children, prone to quoting Dante and Camus, and whose crimes we get to see in graphic detail, is a sick proposition indeed - and one enjoyed by 2.5m people to boot.