Our sinister fascination with the rape and murder of women
Comment: Violence against women pervades our TV screens, writes Kevin McKenna.
It starts, as it usually does, with a picture of sinister normality.
The young woman on the train is gently demonstrating to an elderly lady how the apps on her mobile device worked. Then she calls her parents to let them know that she will soon be arriving home. And even though there are no menacing male passengers elsewhere in the carriage shooting furtive glances from underneath a hooded tracksuit top you know she will soon be in peril.
The director is beginning expertly to build an atmosphere pulsing with menace. And because this is Scandinavian noir he doesn't need the low dissonance of a double bass to help him convey threat and jeopardy.
The woman leaves the train and enters a dimly-lit, concrete underpass (there is always an underpass) as she embarks on the last leg of her homeward journey.
Here, the director begins to toy with our emotions. Bad things happen to women who venture unaccompanied into underpasses, don't they, and so, any second now, we expected a hidden assailant to pounce.
But no; not yet... not just yet. Out the other side, she emerges. Her pace begins to quicken though, perhaps because she suddenly understands how vulnerable she has become.
And then... a shadow and the camera tracks her from behind.
Except it's not the camera; it's the eyes of her assailant. She panics now. She picks up the pace again but so does he. Then he strikes and, for a particle of a moment, there is the impression of a big cat leaping onto the back of its helpless prey.
There is a high, terrifying scream. The scene ends. There is silence and darkness and emptiness, because this is Scandinavian noir.
In the next scene her parents discover their daughter's mangled body and we know that she has been raped and killed. The entire segment couldn't have lasted longer than five minutes and there was no flesh; no prurient shots of skirt or thigh and no close-ups to convey what a women's eyes might look like in the throes of her violation.
For, this is Scandinavian noir and so this scene -- so tautly and expertly filmed and stripped utterly of artifice, will probably be tipped for a television drama award. It troubled me, though. For a few moments I felt a little less human; a little less male and a little more grubby.
Weeks later, I retain a detailed recollection of the scene; long after the point I have forgotten much of what happened in any Spielberg epic I have watched. Perhaps it's because I have two daughters of my own, but I don't think so. I have viewed many similar scenes of the female as prey in television dramas and none of them made me feel as uncomfortable as this one did.
Indeed, that fact in itself makes me feel uncomfortable; that it has taken me until this stage in my life to question the way that violence against women is routinely portrayed in television drama.
Actually, 'portrayed' is the wrong word here; 'celebrated' is a more accurate one and 'exulted' even more so. In the same way that no film can be made in Scotland without the presence of Peter Mullan so also does it seem that no crime production from Scandinavia is complete without the rape, torture and killing of women; the more the merrier.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson's magnificent, edgy and brutal slow-burner pointed the way ahead. Not far away from the centre of the plot, a broken and psychopathic male's distorted obsession with women must end with violence, often of a sexual nature and death.
Recent British small-screen dramas have striven, with varying degrees of success, to emulate the dark splendour of Scandinavian output. Inevitably, the female body count rises accordingly. Television critics applaud them for a welcome sense of realism and the rest of us lap them up because, well... violence against women in film and television drama has always been with us, hasn't it.
And as long as it's tastefully done and doesn't fetishise the act then everything is fine.
After all, it simply reflects society and, at a higher level, may even possess social advantages by highlighting the issue. If it's central to the plot then no one can interfere because this is Art and where Art is concerned there are no ethics or morals just the difference between good art and bad art.
That's what artists and their camp fluffers all tell us anyway and, because they have loosened themselves from the bonds of earthly decency, they are the sole arbiters in these matters. It's what Channel 4 comedians tell us when they defend each other for mocking people with Down's Syndrome.
Helen Mirren, one of the most successful and respected female actors that Britain has ever produced, is also troubled by violence against women on film and television.
In an interview with The Observer she referred to a comment by the playwright David Hare's assertion that he couldn't stand the body count in contemporary drama. "Most of those bodies are young women," she said. She also revealed that she had asked the director of the Red series of movies, in which she plays an assassin, that her character be spared the task of killing women.
The sadistic torture and killing of a female victim in The Fall, the acclaimed Northern Ireland crime series, set the tone for a brilliant work of television drama. Yet, you found yourself wondering if the excellence of the script and the high-tensile set-pieces would have lost anything by reducing some of the detail of the torture and violence visited on female characters.
In this and many other instances the female victim has no character to speak of anyway. Often we don't get to see if she was a mother, sister, partner or daughter. She is, quite literally, of no consequence other than being the meat that tempts us in.
Television types, of course, counter this by praising the much more complex roles that women are given in many of these dramas. In these we see strong, confident women in positions of influence making independent lifestyle choices. Their characters are more nuanced and emotionally diverse than ever before. They are icons and standard-bearers. They provide strong role models for young women and represent aspiration and success.
Yet, if this is true then what is the result of the frequent and persistent rape, torture, mutilation and death of women in drama series watched by tens of millions of people? "Some viewers may find some scenes in the following programme disturbing," we are all advised. 'Disturbing' is one emotional reaction. There are others.
And I'm not convinced that some men (and women) won't become desensitised and emotionally detached when yet another scene depicting the slow, gruelling, torture and death of another formless female victim is depicted.
The killing of women is not normal. The violent and prolonged killing of women is even less normal. Yet in prime-time television drama, one of the most influential and important mediums of mass communication, the violent killing of women is very normal. It is also now to be expected.
I am no expert analyst or critic of television and film drama; I am a mere consumer; a pub critic if you like. Nor do I possess any expertise or detailed knowledge of human behavioural psychology and the causes and effects of sights and sounds and experiences on immature or distorted consciences.
I am a middle-aged male who is disturbed that he hasn't contemplated much of this long before now.
Comment by Kevin McKenna, writer and broadcaster. Kevin is a former deputy editor of the Herald and executive editor of the Scottish Daily Mail. His journalism regularly appears in the Observer and the National.