FINAL TWIST
BROADCHURCH
BROADCHURCH creator Chris Chibnall has revealed that he changed the identity of the rapist at the last minute in TV’s biggest whodunit.
Millions tuned in last night to discover who carried out the brutal sex attack on Trish Winterman, played by former Coronation Street actress Julie Hesmondhalgh.
And it was 16-year-old schoolboy Michael Lucas (Deon Lee-Williams) who was finally unmasked. But the cabbie’s son did not act alone.
He was made to carry out the sex attack by the show’s real baddie – handsome fishing net firm manager and computer whizz Leo Humphries (Chris Mason), who floored poor Trish with a cricket bat.
Both were charged with her rape – but Humphries was also behind earlier rape offences in the area.
It meant Trish’s ex husband Ian Winterman (Charlie Higson), her obsessed shopkeeper boss Ed Burnett (Lenny Henry), seedy taxi driver Clive Lucas (Sebastian Armesto) and her best friend’s husband Jim Atwood (Mark Bazeley) were all finally in the clear.
Culprit
However, screenwriter Chibnall admits that the character whom he originally had in mind for the vicious sex crime was dispensed with.
Instead he came up with the duo behind the sickening crime.
Chibnall, off to run BBC’s Doctor Who next year, said: “I wrote episode one, draft one and I thought it was somebody.
“But then I was thinking about it and went: ‘Oh that’s how it should resolve.’ So it changed.”
Only a handful of people working on the show were allowed to know the identity of the culprit in the writer’s final version.
Broadchurch has gripped the nation for the past seven weeks making heroes of detectives Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller (David Tennant and Olivia Colman).
However, last night was also the end for Broadchurch after three series.
Chibnall says there will be no more stories from the fictional seaside town in Dorset.
He told Good Morning Britain yesterday: “This closes the story. There are no cliffhangers. It’s the end of the story.”