Most critics take to The Fall, and the praise gathers around two things: the decision to give the killer as much screen time as the detective, and the two leads who carry it. Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan are named in nearly every review, usually for how much they manage to say while doing almost nothing. The Guardian rates it among the strongest BBC dramas in years for its interest in the ordinariness of murder, and The Independent is gripped by the way the series mirrors cop and killer until the kinship becomes uncomfortable.
The reservations are about pace and padding. The AV Club finds it slow and weighed down by secondary plots it does not need, and The Telegraph thinks the killer is too styled, more poster than person. Otherwise the spread is narrow, with one dissent: Den of Geek argues the series adds nothing to the serial-killer genre and that Anderson is the only thing holding up thin writing.