BBC Two drama series The Fall has been hit with some criticism, with one person describing the show as an example of "brutal misogyny".
Credit: BBC
Writer and director Allan Cubitt spoke to press and said of the comments: "I don't think I did quite anticipate that [response], because I was always very clear about what I was setting out to do.
"The idea that I would explore male violence against women and refract that through the prism of a female central character [Stella Gibson] who would discourse on this theme endlessly, from a feminist point of view, was the thing that made me feel that I could go into the territory of depicting violence against women at all."
He added: "I didn't expect to be applauded for the fact that there is [only] one woman killed in The Fall. But I do think it's of note compared with so many other shows I see, where the body count is astronomical.
"You can watch one episode of Luther and see more female victims than you see across the entire run of The Fall. Series one of Spiral starts with a naked woman's body in a skip.
"But The Fall does something unusual - by virtue of spending 50% of its time with this individual [Paul Spector], and inevitably therefore I'm sort of humanising him on some level, much as I'm saying he is a malevolent force."
Cubitt concluded that those who criticise the show shouldn't assume that he and Spector share the same views, saying: "If you write a drama that tackles male misogyny, then there's always the danger that people are going to say that you're identifying with the misogynistic character in some kind of way - which I'm not!"
The Fall will return for its third and final series on Thursday, September 29 at 9pm on BBC Two.