American popular culture has always been fascinated by the concept of serial killers. Modern mass media only contribute to that with their representation of famous serial killers. Serial killers are common motifs in art as well – from real-life killers documentaries to fictional serial killers whose portrayals are often based on true events. The character of Paul Spector from the Irish TV series “The Fall” (2013-2016) is one such example where a fictional serial killer is inspired by a real-life case. Spector, whose persona was inspired by the American serial killer Dennis Rader, however, offers to some extent a different portrayal of the typical serial killer on the screen. Not only does the series provide a complex insight into Spector's character and what led him to become a killer but it also provokes the audience's sympathy for him which results in the substitution of the emotions towards the killer with those that are supposed to be felt for the victims. This final paper focuses on the sympathetic depiction of the psychopathic serial killer in the TV series The Fall with a special emphasis on the factors that contribute to such a standpoint. The paper aims at identifying the series' deviations from the typical portrayal of the serial killer only as the villain and how those deviations influence the audience's vision of the main character and serial killers in general. Spector's sympathetic portrayal in the series is analyzed with the help of Agnew's general strain theory, Bandura's social learning theory, Cohen and Felson's routine activity theory, and Hirschi's social bond/control theory that explain the motivation of serial killers as stemming from the subject's surrounding and their relationships with other people rather than their inner defect.