Broadchurch: Series 1
"Broadchurch" is an eight-episode murder mystery centered around the small English town of Broadchurch, where a young boy's body is found on the beach. The body is identified as Danny Latimer, the son of the local plumber. The town unravels as the investigation into Danny's death moves forward, revealing the secrets and lies beneath the idyllic surface of Broadchurch. Ultimately, the show feels like a remix of a story we've all seen told countless times on shows like "Law & Order," "Twin Peaks" or "The Killing," but it still manages to be a mostly enthralling remix, albeit one with a somewhat offputting final episode.
A natural draw to the show, of course, is the presence of former "Doctor Who" star David Tennant. He plays Alec Hardy, the archetypal "mysterious detective" who enters Broadchurch from the outside and steals the promotion previously promised to Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman). Naturally, the two start out as rivals but slowly grow to appreciate their respective strengths and weaknesses. Tennant may be the main billing, but Colman steals the show. Her character's story is more involved, more complex due to her relationship with the town. Most of the time, Tennant just broods and occasionally reveals bits and pieces of his past. When we finally learn what caused him to come to Broadchurch, it's actually a little underwhelming, too late in the game to change anything.
The essential idea of "Broadchurch" is the idea that you can never really know anyone. Every member of the large ensemble cast has some sort of secret, and each episode focuses more or less on an individual member of the cast and how the investigation of Danny death reveals their sordid past. On the whole, most of these secrets are pretty predictable. You could just as well place them in the format of a preschooler's word-matching game.
Despite how standard everything feels, the ensemble cast is almost universally strong. Arthur Darvill, also of "Doctor Who" fame, is a standout as the local priest who claims to suffer from insomnia and has a questionable alibi for the night of Danny death. In fact, most of the cast have questionable alibis. The show does a decent job creating multiple suspects for the crime, although in doing so, it's pretty easy to figure out who the real culprit is — using process of elimination based on level of suspicious behavior.
Conventionally, in a small-town mystery like “Broadchurch,” the actual culprit is the least important part of the experience. The detective format is a wonderful, natural reason to focus on individual cast members on an episode-to-episode basis. It's not far from a soap opera. To that extent, “Broadchurch” succeeds. It's a fun ride. But I'd be remiss not to mention my feelings on the ending of the show. Avoiding spoilers, the most I can say, really, is that the core idea of "You can't trust anyone" is taken to its logical extreme. The whodunit that drives the show does have a concrete conclusion, but it's not exactly satisfying; instead, it's a little absurd and melodramatic. It doesn't feel like the detectives naturally reach the conclusion or that the murderer's identity does anything for the show's themes besides confirm the most cynical interpretation of small-town secrets. In the case of “Broadchurch,” it doesn't stick the landing. While this doesn't render the previous seven episodes of character drama inert, it does leave a bad taste in the mouth.
Ultimately, “Broadchurch” is a decent way to spend a gloomy Sunday afternoon. It's good, not great.
I reviewed the standard DVD release of the series. This release was a bit light on features, with just a featurette, some trailers and a few deleted scenes.