Review: Broadchurch Series 1-3

Blu-ray & DVD: Broadchurch Series 1-3 (2013-2017)

Please be aware that this review gives away major spoilers, so if you’ve yet to watch this series, view before reading!

Amazingly the popularity of the crime series didn’t begin with Nordic noir, and past series such as Minder, The Professionals, Cracker and Prime Suspect have been as good as anything the BBC, normally the ‘go to’ TV channel for epic series, offers.
ITVs production of Broadchurch was surprisingly successful and was the first series shown on British television for quite some time, which gripped the nation. Quite a statement, but true, there weren’t many people who were not gripped by the story of the murder of 11yr old Danny Latimer.

The Dorset scenery added a lot to the actual look of the programme with golden skies and languid beaches, underlining the fact that under all that beauty lurks horror, and with labyrinthine (yet discernable) plotting and incredible acting from a hugely talented and in fact HUGE cast spread over 8 (24 in all over 3 series) episodes, Broadchurch was in every sense of the word – ground breaking ‘event’ TV.
Telling the story of a murdered young boy, his family, their friends, colleagues, town residents we were thrown, week after week, a series of red herrings. Far from losing interest the pace and story kept a nation waiting till the last episode where all the jigsaw pieces fell together resulting in a surprising culprit and even dealt with the fallout for those involved.
Having said that, the programme makers did gloss over the ‘paedophile’ angle of this case. Joe Miller, husband of police detective Ellie and father of their 2 children admits to killing Danny because he ‘loved’ him. There is no mention of any sexual wrong doing and their relationship is portrayed as a sort of ‘pure’ one, where he is a sort of father figure to Danny. Could it be that depicting Joe killing Danny for a graphically sexual reason was taboo for the makers? I have always found this aspect of the story rather odd, almost as if finding out WHO the killer was is more important that WHY he killed him. That a grown man who had more or less groomed a child then murdered him with no real motive was strange and that no sexual abuse was involved was literally an over-cautious ‘Vanilla’ story.

The ensemble cast of : David Tennant as Detective Alec Hardy, Olivia Colman as Ellie Miller (the detectives who investigate the cases in series 1 – 3), Matthew Gravelle as Joe Miller (Ellie’s husband), Andrew Buchan as Mark Latimer, Jodie Whittaker as Beth Latimer (Danny’s parents), Carolyn Pickles as journalist Caroline Radcliffe, Charlotte Beaumont and Adam Wilson as the Latimer and Miller kids and Arthur Darvill as Vicar Paul Coates are a perfect fit, and although Colman has been flavour of the month for about 200 months now, appearing in everything (The Night Manager anyone?) she along with Buchan and Whittaker are the series heart, while Tennant (who is in my opinion a vastly underrated actor) gives the series a sense of stoic tenacity. Even the periphery players such as Davrill and Pickles have fully rounded characters.

Broadchurch was so successful; lightning in a bottle if you will that it was inevitable that a second series would be commissioned. This time it concentrated on the murderer of Danny being re-tried for his crime, and being found not guilty, causing a tidal wave of recriminations and interestingly also picks up on Alec Hardy’s first case, alluded to in series one. A case that went badly wrong, ended in disaster that ‘haunted’ the detective and led him to work so hard to find Danny’s killer in Series 1.
This is also a complicated story and unfortunately for me, lost some of its ‘sparkle’ from S1 as the main protagonist Claire Ripley played by Welsh actress Eve Myles was … incredibly annoying, and while that character was supposed to be manipulative, Myles’ acting bordered on histrionic, making some scenes painful to watch for me. The ‘shocking’ conclusion of Joe Miller who admitted in series 1 to murdering Danny being found innocent on re-trial was the high point of this series for me and that occurred halfway through. Despite the acting being great, and all the old characters back and extended, this didn’t offer much to me, so on finding out that series 3 was in the offing I was undecided as to whether I’d watch it.

But watch it I did! As part of RLJ’s release of all 3 Broadchurch series in one box set. Broadchurch 3, again featuring 8 episodes, sheers away from the central story of the Latimers, although they are still included. Beth is now a counsellor and her now ex-husband Mark are now periphery characters (and Mark is till after retribution from Joe Miller) the focus being on Harding and Miller and a set of new characters from Broadchurch who are all connected in some way to Julie Hesmondhalgh’s character of Trish Winterman.
Trish has been raped and the story revolves around who did it. Definitely not as complicated as the previous series 1 and 2 in story, this is more of a rambling whodunnit. Each week a succession of men who know Trish in some way are suspected until the penultimate episode practically all the men residing in Broadchurch are under suspicion.

The story itself is quite simple, and there are massive plot holes, characters seem to ‘disappear’ and plot lines literally remain unanswered, however the one huge plus to this series is Julie Hesmondhalgh, not so much for her acting which is okay in a rather difficult role, but rather the fact that she looks like a REAL WOMAN and choosing her to play this part was a brave decision by the makers, because in the words of the wonderful Sarah Parish’s Cath Atwood “Of all the women at that party, why would anyone rape you?” Which I am sure, a good 90% of people would have thought on viewing this programme, myself included. If the story is a little haphazard, and the ending not terribly satisfying as the culprits are a bit… boring, the one quite amazing thing this programme achieves is it does on reflection make you question your own expectations and ideas of rape, why it happens and the fallout.

The 3 series of Broadchurch are good TV, the first series being a real humdinger, the second and third not so much, but as a whole I would definitely enjoy a box set binge watch of it, especially if I’d never seen it and could watch each one in succession.

Review by Tina (co-host of 60 MinutesWith) from discs kindly supplied by Aim Publicity.