Broadchurch - S01E03.

Let's hope something actually happens this week, eh?

Episode 3 is as wonderfully constructed as ever. It has a beautiful score, stunning cinematography and breathtaking performances from the cast, especially Jodie Whittaker. These three elements, perfectly blended, manage to capture a visual sense of grief and I can actually enjoy these sequences now things are actually happening around it.

One of the biggest problems and it's inherent with all of these kind of shows is stuff does actually start to progress, they find some incriminating evidence against Mark and end up arresting him along with many more questions raised around it but we know that if Mark is getting arrested this early on...that it won't be him in the long run and unless some of the stuff introduced here ends up connecting to more important stuff later on, then this basically just counts as filler.

What certainly does progress and in a concrete way are the characters. In this one episode characters have whole arcs. For example we see Beth's spiralling depression as she is slipping further and further into a sense of chaos. We're left questioning who exactly Steve is and why he is praying on people with his apparent messages from the grave? Is he just sick or does he have a wider motive? We're left wondering what exactly happened with in the past with Hardy? Is he seriously ill?

Although by far I believe Colman stole the show this week. Although at the beginning I rolled my eyes at her and Hardy's continuous squabbling, it was actually fascinating to see how worn down she was by the end. She started the episode as wide-eyed, innocent and hopeful as she always is but by the end she was practically the opposite,  she seemed almost practically in the same place Hardy was. What was even more interesting is the show didn't choose to scream symbolism in our faces, this whole arc was delivered simply through throwaway lines and nuanced aspects of Colman's performance. The transition is subtle across the whole episode but Miller is a very different character at the end than she is at the beginning. It gave a real sense of reality to both her character and what is happening around her.

Worth a mention also is Karen, the journalist. Normally in police centred shows journalists are pantomime villains and although time will tell whether it's just a bullshit front, what is suggested in the episode at least is Karen may not seem as evil as she was first portrayed, slimy for sure but not evil. And it certainly changes how we probably initially perceived some of her interactions in the previous few episodes. It would certainly be an interesting twist later down the line if it turns out she is really the good guy here and Hardy is actually a villain because right now we can't really judge him on anything and if we grow to like him for the show to turn round and reveal that he did something very bad in the past then it could end up being very shocking.

Karen I think is a window into why Broadchurch works so well as a whole. Minus small atmospheric sequences, there is a lack of sensationalising. Thankfully most of these kinds of stories only ever enter our lives through the newspapers where we read dramatic headlines and unapologetically emotionally charged accounts of the events at the most poorest excuses for Journalism. A murdered child in a small tourist town is obviously the kind of horror story that triggers our strongest emotions and so seeing it all play out from the very epicentre, in such a human and almost dreary fashion gives a real reality to the events. And in turn it's what makes the whole thing so very engaging.

Episode 3 managed to find a great balance between all the things that worked in the last two episodes without more of the more glaring problems that crept up in episode 2. It managed to remain a rather plot light mood piece with dense atmosphere and a unique style but then also found ways to not be incredibly boring. For whatever reason they still don't really want the narrative to move forwards much yet but they chose to put the momentum the narrative should be having into the characters instead and considering how much the characters grow over the course of this single episode, I didn't really mind that plotwise we weren't much further ahead than when we started. It was a great episode.

Pros;

• Beautiful to look at. 
• Wonderful performances.
• Detailed character progression.
• Colman. 
• Maybe not deliberate but it plays with our perceptions and really reminds us of how little we know at this point, so maybe we should think twice before we start to try and figure everything out.
• It's so very human. 

Cons;

• Unless there is more to Mark a majority of this episode was just filler.

Think About It!

-Locke

What would you rate, 'Episode 3'?