TV #64 of 2021:
Broadchurch, season 3
This last run of Broadchurch is its strongest yet, although it’s a bit of a departure in two key ways. First, the central case is a rape, which of necessity entails a different sort of investigation than the child murder of previous seasons. And second, an entirely new cast of characters is on hand as the victim, witnesses, and suspects, instead of anyone already familiar to the audience or our detective surrogates. We do still check in on the Latimer family — especially Beth, now working as a grief and trauma counselor — and to a lesser extent Maggie and Paul, but for the most part, the community that has been built up beforehand is essentially absent.
To a degree, that cuts against the verisimilitude of the piece, since the setting no longer feels quite like the same small town where everyone must know one another. On its own terms, however, this is a powerful miniseries uncovering the dark sexist underbelly of the area, with far too many of the men at least passively complicit in the overall miasma of degradation. Teenagers are storing pornographic videos on their phones and circulating stolen nude photos of a classmate. Adults are stalking the women in their lives, or cheating on their partners, or keeping pinup models displayed at work, and largely not caring that their lies are obstructing the progress of the police. The writers aren’t saying all men are awful — Hardy, for instance, remains his abrasively stalwart self — but they’re emphasizing the uncomfortable reality that such acts of violence are generally predicated on a base culture of male entitlement.
I’m pretty satisfied with the solution to this mystery, too. It’s less predictable than the year before, but with enough clues to appear better supported than the answer to the initial Danny plot. It probably helps that the string of unsavory individuals who get dragged in for questioning all seem like they could have reasonably committed the crime, so that the question of motive can be somewhat set aside in favor of sifting through murky evidence for opportunity. That structure keeps me guessing throughout, and makes it easy as ever to root for our protagonists as champions of the abused. I’ll miss the pair of them and their prickly-yet-respectful dynamic, but I’m glad they’re going out on top of their game.
[Content warning for a suicide attempt.]
This season: ★★★★☆
Overall series: ★★★☆☆
Seasons ranked: 3 > 1 > 2
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