Review: Broadchurch

Gracepoint is currently airing on American television, which seems as good an excuse as any to go back and watch the original Broadchurch. (For the record, I'm not adverse to American remakes of British shows – after all, it's what brought us Elementary. But in this case, the presence of David Tennant playing the same character in both versions makes the existence of Gracepoint particularly baffling).

But how's this for an unpopular opinion: I think that Broadchurch is a mediocre whodunit that gets away with its hugely predictable yet narratively underhanded tale by being exceptionally well filmed, acted and promoted. The more I think about the story's resolution, the more manipulated and disappointed I feel, though I can't help but be impressed by writer/creator Chris Chibnall's understanding of exactly what buttons to press and at what times in order to procure a deep emotional response from his audience. Not bad for the writer of some of the worst Doctor Who episodes and creator of the unlamented Camelot.

In comparison to those other disasters, Broadchurch is suspenseful and gripping and beautifully shot, anchored by a cast who know how to imbue their characters with relatability without losing the necessary edge of suspicion that makes them all potential killers. Direction is divided between James Strong and Euros Lyn, allowing for consistency in the portrayal of Broadchurch: claustrophobic rooms and expansive landscapes, shots filled with corners and mirrors, and an excess of people standing in mid-frame, staring ominously toward the camera.

The beauty of the Dorset coast is captured in various establishing shots of the cliffs and the waves endlessly breaking upon the shoreline, and the presence of David Tennant and Olivia Colman as co-leads naturally elevates any and all material.

For those who have been living under a rock since the show first aired, Broadchurch is set in a quiet coastal township where everyone knows everyone else – at least at face value. One morning Beth Latimer wakes up to find her eleven year old son Danny has already left the house. Since he has an early-morning paper run she doesn't immediately panic, but his lunchbox has been left behind and there's no sign of him at school. A few frantic phone calls later, and she's racing down the main street on foot after hearing that a body has been found at the beach.

It's Adult Fear played to agonizing perfection, a master class in how to do this trope right, capturing each step of Beth's dawning fear that something is very, very wrong. By this point the tight-knit atmosphere of the community has also been established, largely due to a fantastic Oner Shot that follows Mark Latimer down the main street on his way to work, extending pleasantries with nearly every other supporting character in the cast. 

For us at least, the death of a child is certainly a step up from all the dead women that usually kick-start crime dramas. There are many reasons which are considered perfectly understandable as to why a person would murder a woman, up to and including "she didn't want to date me, wah!", but a child? That fills us with level of outrage matched only by our potent curiosity as to who did the deed. From the moment we see Danny Latimer standing over the cliff-top in the opening shot, we are all collectively entranced.

Naturally the murder of a child in such a small community is a terrible shock, with knee-jerk reactions from frightened parents to irate business owners to suspicious busy-bodies eager to point fingers and dredge up scandal. And such close living quarters naturally means that every suspect will hoard their secrets close to their chest in order to maintain their standing in the township, sabotaging the on-going investigation as the police waste time trying to figure them all out.

The real hook is the location of the murder: this idyllic seaside community that has only one road leading in and out. The possibility of an outsider being responsible for Danny's death is virtually nil – partly because there's CT footage of Danny casually heading off down the main street in the middle of the night to some mysterious rendezvous, and partly because – well, what's the point of establishing a tiny pool of suspects if one of them isn't the killer?

In this sense, the show's tagline: "it could be anyone" stands it in good stead. The underlying horror of the piece is not that a child has been murdered, but that said child must have been living alongside his killer long before the murder took place. Following that thought process to its logical conclusion, and it's clear that the community is still harbouring Danny's killer in its midst.

LAST CHANCE SPOILER WARNING



But from this winning premise, the series follows a familiar – dare I say predictable – trajectory. When Mark Latimer's alibi for the night of his son's death doesn't check out, you know it's because he's cheating on his wife. When suspicion falls on Danny's employer Jack Marshall and the spectre of paedophilia rears its ugly head, you know it's going to end in a witch-hunt and a suicide. And the moment Ellie utters the words: "in your own house, how could you not know?" to a woman whose daughter was sexually abused by her husband... well, let's just say that the sentiment was a dead giveaway to any genre savvy viewers as to the identity of Danny's killer. As soon as I heard the sentiment I knew it would be echoed back at Ellie by the end of the show.

I've read other reviews that insist there is sufficient foreshadowing leading up to the reveal of Joe Miller as the culprit: that his behaviour becomes more erratic as the series goes on, that his careful skirting of the investigation is to divert attention from himself, but I personally don't buy it. It's common parlance in the filming of serial murder-mysteries that the final script is held back to avoid spoiler leakage, and Olivia Colman confirms in this interview that such was the case here. Matthew Gravelle's performance across the first seven episodes has no suggestion that he's harbouring any sort of strain or darkness within his psyche. He's a bit like Prince Hans from Frozen in that respect, though I let the actor off the hook for not having the required foreknowledge to hedge his performance accordingly.

And I can't help but feel that Joe was chosen as the killer not for any organic storytelling purposes, but because it would provide the biggest shock. There is very little in the way of concrete evidence that points to him as the killer, in fact it is down to sheer chance that Hardy suspects him at all, and ultimately it's Joe who turns himself in out of overwhelming guilt and exhaustion. As a mystery, the audience is bereft of any substantial clues. As a whodunit, the story cheats through omission.

In fairness, Broadchurch never really presented itself as a whodunit in the same vein as your average Agatha Christie novel. The emphasis is on character and setting, not plot.

So what remains is an examination of a community coping with the death of a child and the net of suspicion, grief, pain, recrimination and eventual healing that follows. There's just as much focus on the Latimers' struggle to cope with their son's murder as there is with the police investigation, and a major subplot involves the case's media attention and the way the press choose to handle it.

The strength of Broadchurch lies in the way it expands the ripple effect of the murder to involve a variety of different people and explore their viewpoints, as well as its refusal to slot any of its characters into strict good or bad categories. When we first meet reporter Karen Walker, there's little doubt that she's a headline chaser who comes to Broadchurch to milk Danny's death for all it's worth. We watch in disgust as she takes Danny's soft toy from the memorial on the beach and uses it to strike up a rapport with his sister Chloe, though we're also rather impressed by the way she effortlessly she manages to integrate herself into the family's confidence.

Yet later we discover that she had a personal and conscientious reason to invest herself in Danny's case, having crossed paths with DI Hardy in the past and nursing serious misgivings over his ability to handle the investigation. In a scene that was sadly deleted from the finished product, Hardy commends her on his attitude during Danny's wake.

Then there's Susan Wright (brilliantly portrayed by Pauline Quirke), a woman who seems grotesquely fascinated by Danny's death, a voyeuristic presence hovering on the fringes of the investigation who at one point makes a frightening threat to a woman alone in her office at night. Yet once her backstory is revealed it's impossible not to feel anything but sorrow for her.  

A psychic (not a flaky looking woman draped in shawls but a broad-shouldered male electrician) makes himself heard, insisting that he's been in contact with Danny and leaving enough ambiguity in his demeanour to make us really question whether he's for real or not. The manager of the local hotel is genuinely pleasant, attractive and friendly, though it transpires that she was messing around with a married man. The helpful priest attends Alcohols Anonymous meetings. The newspaper merchant has a sordid past.

No one is who they really seem, but in peeling back the layers they all become more three-dimensional instead of less.

The whole thing is grounded by the lead performances of David Tennant and Olivia Coleman. Of the two, I'd say that Coleman has the better deal, for despite his world-weary demeanour and the spectre of a failed case hanging over his head, Tennant's Alec Hardy is saddled by health problems that are so debilitating that it's frankly ludicrous that he'd be allowed to work at all, and a backstory that's absurdly self-defeating.

But Coleman embodies Ellie Miller to perfection, making her 100% accessible and relatable to the audience. I recall a comment on Television Without Pity back when the show first aired, extolling Ellie's three-dimensionality by saying (paraphrased) "most female characters are too much of one thing or another, but Ellie just feels real." As depressing as that sentiment is when it comes to judging female characters, the fact remains that Coleman infuses Ellie with sincere warmth and weakness, coldness and strength, without going overboard in any one direction. She's a real person.

But the best part about their dynamic is that Hardy and Miller's relationship never really improves. They work grudgingly well together, with Hardy's rough attempts to harden Ellie up counterbalanced by Ellie's resentful mothering, and to say Hardy and Miller start out on the wrong foot is an understatement. Hardy arrives in Broadchurch to fill a job that was promised to Miller, and their first meeting occurs over the body of Danny on the beach, in which Hardy barks "shut [your emotions] off!" and "you really want to do that now?" when Miller mentions that he's taken her job.

It's one of those rare male/female team ups that's completely devoid of any UST, and though it all sounds like an utter disaster in regards to the gender dynamics, Tennant and Coleman somehow pull it off. Despite Ellie being highly emotional, and Hardy constantly criticizing her for her soft touch in the way she handles suspects, I never got the sense that she was mocked for being too "womanly". Perhaps it's because Ellie gives as good as she gets (at one point threatening to pee in a cup and throw it on him), perhaps because she's accorded the most profound character development over the course of the show, but the two of them operate as undoubtable equals from start to finish.

You can respect someone without liking them, just as you can love someone without understanding them, and just because they clearly can't stand each other doesn't mean they don't make a good team.

***

But ultimately, what this story is about is the veneration of children. Not the protection of them, but the idealization of them as a symbol of innocence and perfection; an attitude that not only leads to the death of one child, but the social crisis that follows.

Danny's death sends shockwaves throughout the community, and right from the start the shadow of paedophilia lingers over the entire investigation. This shadow is everywhere, soaked into the audience's reaction to every adult/child interaction, whether it be rumours of physical abuse between Danny and Mark, Hardy noting Reverent Paul touching Tom's knee in conversation, or everyone's attitude toward Jack Marshall when it becomes clear that he has a criminal record for underage sex.

Yet the pathologist almost immediately confirms that there is no sign of sexual tampering on Danny's body, and Joe Miller's true motivation behind his relationship with Danny is deliberately kept ambiguous. Though he claims "I was in love with him" and Danny tells him "I know what you want from me," it's Hardy who gets the final word on the matter in his conversation with Ellie:

Ellie: How could any adult be in love with an eleven year old boy? Is he a paedophile? Because he didn't do anything, and the pathologist said there was no record of abuse on Danny, either historical or recent, and I asked Tom and he said Joe never touched him, so what does that make him?

Hardy: Why do you need a category?

Ellie: I need to understand.

Hardy: Just because he didn't abuse either boy, it doesn't mean that he wouldn't have gone on to.

Ellie: It doesn't mean he would of either.

Hardy: No. We'll never be sure. He said he was in love, maybe he was romanticizing to justify what he felt, or maybe that's what it was. I mean, I don't have these answers – people are unknowable.

The fact remains that sexual abuse was not a factor in Danny's death, at least not directly. In fact, it is Joe's rage at Danny for making that implication that causes him to lose his temper and strangle him to death. When the truth comes out, he's frantic in his insistence that sexual abuse was not a factor. What then?

We're not meant to know, but Joe's attitude toward Danny – his infatuation, his fascination, his romanticizing, whatever you want to call it – is played out across many different characters and their interactions towards children.

When Jack Marshall is discovered to have a criminal record as a sex offender, he's immediately at the top of the community's hit list (not helping his case in the audience's mind is that the actor is inevitably associated with the likes of Argus Filch and Walder Frey). When his secret past is revealed, we learn that his crime was to have a relationship with a seventeen year old girl while he was in his late thirties, and that his affection for the boys of the Sea Brigade is born out of losing his own son at a young age. As he beseeches Mark Latimer: "What sort of world is this, where it's wrong for a man to seek out affection?"

Susan Wright is another character who makes a suspicious overture toward a child, also because she presumably misses her own. Ellie's young son Tom is perhaps the only person she ever interacts with in a way that's not overtly hostile, and it's he that she entrusts with Danny's skateboard when she's ready to go to the police.

Hardy's dark secret is that he took the blame for his wife losing valuable evidence in the Sandbrook case – not for her sake, but to preserve her in the eyes of their daughter. And of course, there's the fact that Beth is pregnant. Though she initially rejects the thought of bringing a new baby into the world, she of course comes to accept the idea before the final credits roll.

Permeating this entire story is a love for children – though not necessarily a healthy love for them. Broadchurch reveres children, explores the desire for them, upholds the sanctity of them – though ironically, what little we know of Danny Latimer demonstrates that he was... well, a bit of a shit. There are really only three children of note in the drama: teenage Chloe (who has a boyfriend unbeknownst to her parents that acquired cocaine for her on at least one occasion), Tom (who was sending threatening texts to Danny before his death), and Danny himself, who was certainly troubled enough to get into fights with adults and sneak out of his bedroom at night for meetings with Joe.

Broadchurch is all about how people, from loving mothers to potential paedophiles, conceive children as pure and wholesome while simultaneously knowing next to nothing about who they really are as people.

The show is generally very heavy-handed in its use of the theme "you can never really know someone", but when it comes to the assorted adults' relationships with their children this idea of unknowability really hits home. In light of this, the show's biggest misstep is in the sappy scene at the end of the drama in which Beth catches a glimpse of Danny's spirit smiling at her through the flames of the memorial bonfire on the beach. Gimme a break. The concept of children being just as dark and secretive as the adult community was a powerful one, and somewhat undermined by such a trite conclusion.

Miscellaneous Observations:

My favourite line: "Bloody Twitter!" Amen.

Hey look, it's Dean from Harry Potter, now perhaps better known as Wes from How To Get Away With Murder:

It felt extremely strange to have a character in this drama called Becca Fisher since... that's my name. Okay, so nobody ever calls me "Becca", but it's clearly short for Rebecca Fisher – and that's me. I'm Rebecca Fisher. Weird.

Broadchurch excels at depicting moments of trauma amidst a backdrop of normality, or in conveying the sharp stabs of grief experienced by the family in the weeks following Danny's death. These range from a petitioner ignorantly accosting Mark as he heads toward the morgue to ID his son's body, to Beth touching a particular box of cereal in the grocery store (no explanations necessary), to Mark noticing the newspaper that reported his son's death being used as kindling in a neighbour's fireplace.

But perhaps my favourite shot would have to be when Beth meets up with the mother of another murdered child at a roadside cafeteria. The two women talk about their shared grief as behind them the cars whizz ever-on, carrying oblivious passengers past the café and on with their lives. What a fantastic image, one that sublimely encapsulates the mental state of both women.

There are a couple of Red Herrings that never get resolved: the power cut that occurs at the beginning of the first episode, and the argument Danny has with the local postman that's never explained (though apparently there's a deleted scene that reveals he scratched the postman's truck).

So that was Broadchurch, and I stand by my initial response to it. The show is superbly acted and produced, but as a whodunit it falls firmly into the unsatisfying realm of a Clueless Mystery. There is no evidence whatsoever pointing to Joe as the killer unless you can examine the unfolding story from a meta angle, allowing the show's themes and Arc Words ("how could you not know?") to provide contextual clues as to how things will pan out.

But as a portrayal of grief, a showcase of great performances, and a beautifully atmospheric drama, it's riveting.