Hardy’s ongoing enthusiasm for living and working in Broadchurch is hard to fathom. Not only is his beloved daughter having a rotten time of it, but yet a-bloody-gain someone on his own team has done something to royally cock up a future prosecution.
It doesn’t help that Katie had marked herself out as a wee cow right from the start, with her snide little comments about Trish. She should really have been put on filing duty weeks ago, even before she revealed she was closely related to one of the main suspects.
Well OK, “main suspects” still includes 23 men. Unfortunately the handy rundown of them all was interrupted by Ed pummeling Jim and getting himself arrested. We only got as far as Ian, Jim, Clive (aka Lucas) and “twine boy”.
Hardy should be careful what he wishes for putting Miller in charge of bollockings. We established at the end of season one that she’s a bit too good at those, and it’s more than a bit ironic that she’s lecturing someone else about wanting to believe someone close to her had nothing to do with a serious crime.
I wondered at the start of this series if the rape crisis groups consulted were perhaps a little over-eager to praise the show’s depiction of their work, given they presumably hadn’t seen all of the episodes. I imagine many eyebrows were raised at the scene where Beth and her boss try to press-gang the third victim into talking to the police – after they’d already passed on some confidential information about the location of the attack.
Oh, and here comes Beth to harass her in the street. Great work, Beth.
“I really need you not to behave weirdly right now,” says Trish’s daughter to her dad, and she’s surely speaking on behalf of every woman within a 10-mile radius. And now here’s Miller’s dad – who I had pegged as a potental wrong ‘un weeks ago, please note – dismissing the reporting of rape as some kind of modern fad, and her son merrily acquiring more porn (Well done to Olivia Colman for doing her best to sell “where did you get that porn from?” as a question anyone might pose in 2017).
I thought for a minute Cath was going to apologise to Trish for the awful things she said in the last episode. But no. All she can think of is herself and her own feelings, just like everyone else. Trish doesn’t stoop to her level, making the briefest mutter about how she couldn’t please her husband before adding, simply: “You’re a girl on a till, same as me. It doesn’t matter who was Queen Bee in fifth year.” Ouch.
Meanwhile, Mark finally confronts Joe Miller face-to-face, Joe confesses everything about the night he killed Danny … and we don’t get to hear it. The Mark Latimer’s Revenge storyline has felt like a one-note distraction from the main drama of this series, and I never quite imagined that its conclusion would be so incredibly poignant.
Shona Craven 