How Broadchurch was finally delivered from evil
HOW to wrap up a programme... probably best not heralding it in advance, that’s how.
The third and final series of this much-acclaimed cop drama starring the excellent David Tennant and his sidekick Olivia Colman, concluded with a nice bow tied around it and its characters and the inevitable shot of cliffs.
It was left to the Reverend Paul Coates to preach to his bulked-out congregation about love and good deeds in his last sermon before he left as the camera panned around the dysfunctional families. DI Hardy (Tennant) waxed lyrical after the sermon, saying that if he knew they were that good he would have come more often.
Really... is ‘love and good
deeds’ such a stretch to even the most limited vicar?
Of course Rev. Coates (Arthur Darvill) was by no means a limited vicar, having been a confidante to Miller’s husband Joe who killed a young boy, Danny Lattimer, in the first series. This destroys Danny’s family and in particular his father Mark (Andrew Buchan) who during the course of this series tries to kill himself, reunites with them and then takes himself off because it is too hurtful to stay.
The rest of our characters, some new, some old, try afresh to muck along with each other.
The backdrop is, of course, another tragic crime, this time, the rape of fifty-something mum Trish Winterman (Julie Hesmondhaigh).
The series built nicely to give us a line-up of suspects for this last episode: Ed, the garden centre manager and stalker, played superbly by Lenny Henry, Jim (Mark Bazeley), the seedy husband of Trish’s best friend, Ian (Charlie Higson), Trish’s paranoid ex, evasive taxi driver Clive (Sebastian Armesto) and spoiled rich kid Leo (Chris Mason). As ever, the writers sprang a surprise. Leo had groomed Clive’s gawky son Michael (Deon LeeWilliams) to commit the crime... hard to imagine.
Shame really for this excellent series to end on such a low. And here endeth the lesson.