'I was asleep before I met him and now I'm awake,' says Katie, setting the tone for how women are portrayed in this episode.

People have complained about the graphic sexual violence in The Fall, but this was necessary to the plot. Also, this is TV, so let's not pretend that if a good-looking man kills good-looking women that the camera will not linger on the sexual aspects. No, I haven't been bothered by the sexual aspects, but I did care about the maddeningly passive role allocated to most of the females. Even Gibson, the steely star, the strong woman, was silent for much of this episode, mainly listening into interviews via headphones, not saying a word. And when she did speak, it was in an increasingly low whisper.

It took 45 minutes before she finally stepped into action, taking a seat opposite her nemesis in a bleak interview room where there were but two spots of colour: Spector's blue jumpsuit and Gibson's scarlet jersey.

This was exquisite drama: no action or music, no interference or distraction. Just two characters in a room, like some nightmarish play. The camera gradually edged in closer till both of them were leaning, straining towards one another, speaking directly into the lens, to one another, to us.

'In what sense are you free?' asked Gibson, mocking Spector with languor. 'You felt empowered. Invincible, even. But you're under arrest.' The power was with her. Spector grabbed it back by taunting her with the diary entries about her father.

When she questioned him on his motivations he was surprisingly open, saying he killed because of 'something that separates you from the common herd….you're in a state of existential shock.' This almost precisely echoes Ian Brady's description of his elevated mental state after committing the Moors Murders. And when Spector leads the police out to the forest, this is another Ian Brady reference, mirroring the time he led the police onto the moors in the 1980s, with media helicopters in pursuit, in the search for Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett. This was a brave move, edging The Fall away from TV sex killings and moving it into the psychological and, of course, the real. Brady is still alive, ranting and complaining in his secure hospital. I believe the echoes of Brady were deliberate and, of course, Brady was paired with a passive, obsessive woman who did as she was bid.

As are most of the other women in The Fall: passive creatures, driven by emotion or infatuation to nourish and support the murderous male.

With little Olivia, 'all her instincts are telling her to protect him' whilst Katie lies for Spector out of romantic delusion. They're not driven by logic and reason but by loyalty and love.

The most passive of them all is Sally Ann, Spector's wife, a glum, lumpen woman, always lumbering around the kitchen in chunky woollens, pouring cereal for the children, wiping the table and willing to lie for the man she thought to be a paedophile just so her bland, stodgy homelife wouldn't be disturbed.

In The Fall, females will either lure you into killing them, or they'll clear up the mess when you do. They are passive. They sit at home waiting for you to break in, or they sit at home waiting for you to help put the children to bed. Or they wait for you to make a mistake so they can catch you. In this world, women are passive. The man strikes. The women react. And they react by dying or loving or weeping or calmly trying to arrest you.

What's the answer to this, then? A drama about a female serial killer? A drama with a dumpy female detective? The first wouldn't be realistic and the second wouldn't be glamorous.

But despite its women being highly sexual or maddeningly passive, with a drama as excellent as The Fall I'm going to be politically incorrect and say I couldn't care less about gender equality and the TV portrayal of women. An exciting, tense drama is not the place for such debates. Yes, I might have felt tetchy about wimpy Sally Ann or annoyed at the lovesick Katie, but when Rose Stagg flinched in the boot of that car, and when the shots rang out in the forest, I would have forgiven the writers anything. How very passive of me!