Before I start, a massive tip of the hat to 24 Frames of Dreaming who has been writing detailed posts on Broadchurch. We've
chatted online and her ideas and mine have bounced off each other in all sorts
of interesting ways.
BEWARE SPOILERS!
Written after the 6th episode of the second
series. If you haven't viewed this far yet, STOP READING NOW.
Looking back, I loved the first series of Broadchurch because
of its sense of place. The series examined the relationships and secrets in a
small town through the lens of the investigation into the killing of young
Danny Latimer. The lead detective, DI Alec Hardy, was sitting on a big secret
of his own, the circumstances around the loss of vital evidence in his disastrous
"Sandbrook" case. Eventually Broadchurch's killer confessed and that
was that. Chris Chibnall, the author,
had created a town with characters that were interesting enough to keep me
asking questions long after the show ended. Would relationships heal and
survive? Would Sandbrook ever be solved? Would the killer's legal team try to
reduce the verdict to manslaughter?
At the start of series 2 Hardy
looks at the rubble from a cliff fall and says "Everything falls apart". And everything does. Doubt is cast on the
confession of Danny's killer and the Sandbrook suspect, Ashworth, is back in
town. This time I was fascinated by
recurrent themes and what they foreshadow or how they're misleading me.
Water
In the first series, Hardy's dreams were full of ominous seas. In this one, he is surrounded by the stuff, sometimes dreaming that he is drowning in a river.
About half way through series 2, he dreams for the first time about emerging from the water. This is immediately followed by a
understated little scene, where he says that he
is putting things right. In a subsequent dream, the water starts flowing away
from him. Maybe the 'tide' has turned.
In this series reflections are everywhere. I started really
noticing this just over half way through. Is this telling us that the two main
cases reflect each other? That subplots concerning other offenders tell us
something about where those cases are going? Or is it just misleading
eye-candy?
Isolated, staring men
Unkind comment has been made about the number of times you
see men, particularly Hardy and Ashworth, alone and staring into the distance.
The Broadchurch accused stares across the
courtroom from his lonely place in the dock. I think I can see a common
thread about them being controlled and isolated from others by the women in
their lives:
Women controlling men
All of those women seem to be more than capable of playing damsel in distress to get something they want. Clare only needs to
look at a man with big scared eyes for him to jump to attention. Her violence
when she doesn't get her own way is dramatic. A snivelling Ellie demanded that Hardy
give her access to someone she shouldn't have been near. She tells Claire to
have some self control but her own uncontrolled anger has had catastrophic
effects. Hardy's ex-wife is more subtle but she has certainly been prepared to
let him twist in the wind rather than admit that she might have done something wrong.
I feel that where the first story was about the male
suspects, this one is about controlling women.
I don't think it is any coincidence that the court proceedings are
controlled by three strong female characters.
That orange jacket
There's a lot of orange in both series, orange cliffs,
ginger tints in Hardy's hair, children's windmills and Ellie's orange coat. She seems to wear it
everywhere, even in the heat of the summer. I can't help recalling that, in the
first series, a witness saw the murdered boy arguing with the
'postman'. As I walk around my own small
town, I notice that postmen wear orange high viz jackets, the same colour as
Ellie's. Could the witness have made a mistake?
Did she argue with Danny?
Cate's books
The camera zooms into a photo of a murdered child on a
bookshelf. Being a bookworm, my attention is taken by the books including:
The most interesting is "Sorry" by Zoran Drvenkar. The narration shifts between different
people, one of whom is "You". Yes, You, the reader and You are
complicit in the crimes. According to The New Yorker review.
"As the novel progresses, we learn that you possess a
fully fleshed history and reasons for your actions that, even if they provide
some justification, grow more hazy and ambiguous as the narrative flies along. What
I mean to say is, while you have your reasons, you’re not let off the hook.
Which is as it should be, for at the core of “Sorry” is the question of guilt
and absolution."
Maybe You will find yourself buying into some awful sequence
of events because You sympathise with how the guilty party got there.
Or maybe they are just books.
Words echoing and repeating
In the first series, Ellie's words "How could you not know" bit back. I wonder if Hardy's "Don't Trust" will do the same. He trusts very few people - maybe one of those few will have done something dreadful.
Whatever the answers are, I am fascinated by Broadchurch
because the author has left so many little clues and trails that I know that he
is playing games with me. I want to beat him by figuring out the mystery before
he tells me the answer, but I suspect I won't.
