In 2015, skydiver Victoria Cilliers suffered serious injuries when both her primary and reserve parachutes mysteriously failed on an otherwise routine jump. The subsequent police investigation revealed that her serially unfaithful husband Emile was behind the attempted murder. The story went stratospheric, with sensational headlines to match (who could forget the fascination with “boobaholic” Emile’s sex “obsession”?) Since then, the case has been subject to several true crime treatments: first in Netflix ’s 2018 The Parachute Murder Plot, then 2020’s podcast No Strings Attached, and as of tonight, Channel 4’s The Fall: Skydive Murder Plot .
As we heard about the creeping horror of Emile’s behaviour, and the inner conflict his coercive control spurred in Victoria, it was clear why theirs is a story that’s been told again and again. Suburban, superficially idyllic — the Cilliers tap into our fascination with relationships that look perfect but hide dark secrets behind closed doors. While our appetite for true crime shows no signs of letting up, in 2024 we’re finally starting to question the ethics of raking over horrifying incidents – often the murders of women – for our slack-jawed entertainment.
Programmes need to find fresh angles to bypass our newfound moral scruples, and considering the case’s extensive publicity, The Fall was under more pressure than most to innovate. Here, a twist on the genre’s overplayed convention of reconstructing the.
