The final verdict on Broadchurch
As good as the first series? Nah. As bad as some people are saying? Of course not. Yes, there was a dip in the middle of the series, but it’s still about the same stresses and strains; it’s still about what the freshly scrubbed skin of respectability hides: corruption, distrust, deception. As Joe Miller himself put it: “Nobody’s innocent. Everybody’s hiding something.”
Some of the new characters have also worked well, especially the lawyer played by Charlotte Rampling with that Benson & Hedges voice. She has also helped to break a few primetime taboos, when she engaged in a little older lesbian smooching at the top of the cliff. Oh, that cliff. Other cliffs along the coast have been desperately trying to look big and moody in case they get the chance to be in series three.
What about in the inaccuracies in the series? Do they matter? Not really. Murder trials simply aren’t run like that, but Broadchurch is drama not fact so it’s fine. As for some of the other mistakes in the series, if the producers had done a wee bit more research by visiting a branch of Nando’s, they would have known you don’t get table service, but Broadchurch is about the broader sweep, it’s about moving the consequences of murder from the sidelines to the centre.
Tonight’s the last of the series, and now we know the jury’s verdict, Hardy (David Tennant) and Miller (Olivia Colman) are close to the truth behind the truth behind the truth. Most of this episode is the story of what happened before the first series, specifically the disappearance of a little girl investigated by Hardy. Miller thinks she’s on to something when she looks at the files again.
And the obvious question is: should there have been a second series and should there be a third? There will obviously be diminishing returns, a photocopy of a photocopy getting less brilliant than the original, but Chibnall is one of the best writers working in television. About 30 years ago, when he was a boy, he appeared on a discussion show to criticise the way television was written then. His main gripe was cliché, but he also wanted viewers to be challenged. Now that he’s a TV writer himself, he’s proved he can live up to his own creative ideals.