TV: Broadchurch 2.8 (Newsom)

review by Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

To the final episode then. Have we been here before, with the end of the previous series? It certainly has some things in common.

For starters, happily, it explains everything. The Sandbrook case is satisfyingly put to rest, with the actual events well told using flashbacks. There’s a grim sense of foreboding and the actual events feel nasty. The direction and music (especially, I’d imagine) make this as beautifully dangerous as it is compelling, with everything falling into place.

I was impressed with the explanation - a double murder, if that’s not spoiling things I hope - and it’s solid enough to hang a series on. However the cluing throughout the series has been pretty scattershot. It would have been far more fun to watch if there was a definite shape of the events before rather than lots of tiny hints, especially with being on telly rather than written on the page. Unlike the first series, there’s a very small range of suspects so I think there should have been more half-answers and actually piecing it all together (here, Hardy just badgers the suspects for two years until one of them cracks!). But that’s the way with these things: it’s about the feeling when you finally see the past events on screen, rather than a murder mystery style twist. But it explains everything really, including a reason for everyone’s reluctance to actually tell the truth! Clever - but I’d have appreciated it more if they’d drawn attention to it, and damn any armchair sleuths piecing it together after hours.

The second thing that made me think of Series One was that the answer to the big question was revealed - in this case, Joe Miller’s verdict - to make way for scenes showing the impact on the characters. This village storyline doesn’t quite go where you thought it would - there are lots of twists in this hour. But it feels played down a bit, especially the final ‘undramatic’ twist (not that I was expecting another murder mystery to be set up!). And of course, it’s overshadowed by the Sandbrook case. Disappointing or trying to be realistic? 

Actually I wouldn’t say this final episode is unsatisfying - we get answers and closure in this episode, which unfolds in a great way. The third thing that’s similar to last time is the very, very final ending. Everything’s wrapped up, everybody’s happy... so of course they’re making another series!

This must be the only show where you don’t want it to continue, eh? I’m sure it’ll be very watchable, whatever they have planned.

many thanks to

Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

TV: Broadchurch 2.7 (Newsom)

review by Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog) 

Penultimate episodes always kick up a gear, don’t they?

If anything this episode, there’s a new vigour to the whole episode, including the characters - well, Alec Hardy at least, as he (not so subtly) told Lee Ashworth. But also there’s some amazing camerawork this week, especially in the courtroom, where the big events and the big moments of tension are illustrated by swooping all over the place. It’s gorgeous and offsets the usual suspicious close-ups (still very impressive camerawork) that have become the series’s style.

The writer’s still kept some secrets back for a reveal in this episode - although I’m wondering with this drip-feed of secrets, how much will be revealed next week! Jocelyn and Maggie’s scenes were unexpected (if undermined for me by me wondering all these weeks how they knew each other, and whether I’d missed the fact they were sisters - I hadn’t). Mark Latimer’s plot continues with the sort-of-breakup with his wife continues to be a break from the norm, if not entirely gripping, and he’s definitely not helped by the defence seizing on him as a potential suspect. Lee and Claire come to blows again in a powerful, mad scene on the beach that must have been tough to film. And best of all story-wise, Alec and Ellie actually get round to interviewing a few other people and chasing up more leads about the Sandbrook case (although only one new person - what’s the betting he’s relevant?). If you’ve worked it all out yet then you’re far better at these things than I am, but I’m hoping the answer to it isn’t just one of the four main suspects that we keep seeing.

This episode, where things finally feel like they’re happening or just about to happen, is the best we’ve had in a while. I think overall the series - this one, not the last - is too long for this particular story. A six part series would have had more effect, less of a lull in the parts where there’s no investigation and no trial business. Which has been quite often, really...

The ending of this episode - seven episodes culmination remember! - will have you either have you howling or groaning depending if the magic has worn off yet - or both, as I did. Next time, then...

many thanks to

Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

TV: Broadchurch 2.6 (Newsom)

review by Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

If it’s funnies you’re after here, then I can’t do much better than the look at Broadchurch on Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe show last week. If you’ve been watching the series, or even if you haven’t, track it down. [view the full episode here]

And so to the sixth episode - we’re three quarters of the way through now, and things are finally sliding into place. It’s going in the right direction but feels a little too late, and we’re a little bit cheated.

The question really is: why isn’t this series working like the last one did?

Okay, there was the newness before, the reduced expectations people had. But I think there’s something missing this time around. The writing, well, it’s not that different a style and we’ve had more time to warm to these characters. It’s hardly the fault of the cast either - they’re all strong and each one lends class to it. This week I think Eve Myles in particular would have enjoyed filming her scenes - smashing plates, acting all sinister, girly, passionate, everything. Each of the lawyers has their own measured, meaty stories too. And Ellie and Alec are getting their own catharsis as the series goes along.

But I think it’s not the amount of story but the way it’s told. Maybe it’s a step too far; the first series twisted our expectations of the investigation, this second series tries to twist everything. As such, we’ve found out about Sandbrook the wrong way round, not getting the clearer picture straight away as you’d normally have in a story like this. And then there’s the trial and the villagers, which straddles being a résumé of the first series and a human study of what happens when you have to give evidence under a trial (the latest, fascinating example is the culmination of all the plots for Andrew Buchan’s Mark Latimer). It’s enough plot for the series, but perhaps not enough plots that many people would be invested in.

And finally, revisiting a lot of the story has the surprises taken out of it - the tension has been defused, the stakes aren’t anywhere near what they were. Sure, this episode has some ‘big’ moments (they’re sold as such anyway), but what were we meant to think after Hardy’s operation? Or after that final shot - we finally know something! - but it doesn’t make us any clearer at all with the full picture, not until next time. And this is after five previous episodes telling us very little indeed.

When you compare both to something like the BBC’s twisting, plot-filled eight-part series The Missing last year, this second series doesn’t feel as pacey or well-constructed. It’s been a bold move to continue it in the (apparent) direction the writer wanted it to go down, without too much reworking old storylines. Perhaps expecting it to match the drama was too hopeful then. But in terms of viewers, this can only really be a partial success.

many thanks to

Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

TV: Broadchurch 2.5 (Newsom)

review by Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

It’s back to Broadchurch in one of the most stylish episodes yet. There’s some very flashy shots this week: reflections in close-ups, high shots of driving, low shots on the beach, pulling focus on someone half a mile away. The most wonderful sunsets, rain and tears and puddles, glowing lights of a local fairground. It’s all gorgeous and feels ever so planned, almost too precise for a show that reportedly goes for the ‘first take’ - after all, that’s how they can film lots of lovely sunsets without the light changing. But then this show has always been this way, a ‘heightened’ atmosphere through a mixture of styles.

For the residents, it’s getting personal. More and more, the trial is pulling their lives inside out again. There are a few heartbreaking stories here as you’d expect, with regulars Jodie Whitaker, Andrew Buchan, Arthur Darvill, Charlotte Rampling (still a star) and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. And I want to raise a problem: even though they are heartbreaking scenes, often these scenes seem lost in the mix with the rest of the plot. Unlike the first series, where we often picked on a different person each week and have the characters react to it, there isn’t a strong focus to any of these episodes. They’re trying to strip the plots across the series, particularly the trial (which doesn’t offer us anything especially momentous this week), but it makes the series drag on if it’s the same stories every time. What it needs is a bit of a shakeup of the formula, and I don’t think we’ve had it yet.

A similar drag is happening in the Sandbrook case. It feels to me like so-called-clue piled upon clue, the standout suspect out of the four changing every advert break. I can’t make much sense of it - but then I said that when watching the last series! But the case is deepening. The ending is very much like The Killing in terms of a last-minute-investigation-twist and that gloomy un-Broadchurch like location. That scene was stripped down (with most of the dialogue sounding like it was added when editing) but perhaps it’s the odd twist we’ve all been searching for.

This episode is perhaps stolen by Ellie Miller yet again. Just like her, we’re ready to go through the clues and just try and solve this damned past case that’s haunting the series. But have the characters - and the show - pushed the format too far?

many thanks to

Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

TV: Broadchurch 2.4 (Newsom)

review by Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

Can you remember what happened back in 2013? Most TV takes the wise move of being relatively self-contained, not leaving things dangling at the end - or if so, reintroducing old plot strands that might be important. Broadchurch takes the brave move of assuming that most people can remember - even though the first series aired almost two years before this one. This episode in particular, where Alec goes back to Sandbrook and the residents in town give evidence at the murder trial, wastes little time in giving explanations. (It’s rare these days for series to be that interlinked - the only other that springs to mind is similar slow-paced investigation series The Fall on BBC Two.) In the age of boxsets, online catch-up and repeat runs on digital channels, perhaps the long breaks between series like this doesn’t mean as much.

It’s lucky then, that the first series was so memorable - you know that the surprise appearances and long held pay-offs are going to work well, as they do here. For starters there’s the long awaited appearance of Alec’s ex-wife, mentioned last time (and catching us off guard when she finally appears here - I didn’t imagine Lucy Cohu, though she’s an excellent choice). Then there are the residents of Broadchurch and their battles - themes that jump out for me this week are human behaviour in extraordinary circumstances, and the lies they tell in , both very much a part in last year’s crime investigation. In this episode all that’s kept to a minimum thanks to the other plot taking over this week: Sandbrook.

We’ve seen bits of it in the last three episodes (this week marks the halfway point in the series) but here we get a much better picture of the questions, even if there are still not many answers. The characters there - two houses, four ‘suspects’ so far, are becoming more shady as we get to know them, even the lovely Eve Myles. The situation and the case feel quite real but the plot remains contrived, not helped by its place in this episode: Alec and Ellie drive halfway up the country together (where was Sandbrook meant to be set again?), spend half the episode interviewing people, and then return. It was never going to be easy to connect the two investigations - and yes, they’ve smuggled in a new murder mystery right under our noses - but it doesn’t feel like the characters have got anywhere fast. By the end, they only increasing their suspicions that Alec might be wrong about the (unsolved) case, but then we could have guessed that already.

The cast is strong as ever, with the latest additions to this series standing out in - of course you wouldn’t cast Shaun Dooley as a grieving dad and keep him to just a flashback. And I was surprised to see (in the ‘previously’ at the start of the episode) that, of course, the mother in the Sandbrook case visited Beth in the first series, before we even saw anything about the murder. And they’ve kept the same actress playing her - quietly clever work, tying both series together and bridging that sometimes wobbly series gap. I hadn’t realised at all that she had appeared before.

Which shows how much of the first series I remember!

many thanks to

Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

TV: Broadchurch 2.3 (Newsom)

review by Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

A second run of any drama series allows us a chance to see the characters in a new light, making new connections that didn’t get a showing last time around. One of the best things in this episode is Ellie and Beth Latimer clashing together - it feels like more scenes between them than last year, but then their relationship has changed. Local mums whose children are friends on its own is quite dull; when one of them loses their child then the imbalance becomes interesting; when one of them might have been complicit in that murder, it becomes really gripping. And all those layers are on show between Olivia Colman and Jodie Whittaker - not to mention the lovely moment between Colman and Charlotte Beaumont as the Latimer’s more open-minded daughter, saying out loud her mother’s hidden compassion. It’s very human and at the heart of this week’s episode, casting the characters in a new light this time, skewing our prejudices.

It’s not just characters but the show itself: the trial, especially the defence lawyers, allows the writer to almost be self referential when referring about past events - like Sherlock a few years ago, people’s speculation and comments is picked up here, whether deliberately or not. Here, the new characters comment on the murder investigation a bit like a casual viewer trying to catch up on an unrealistic TV series  - aren’t those two sleeping together? How well do you know what went on? Weren’t the police a bit over dramatic? Even with these questions about its plot-holes and unexplained back-story, the first series still seems solidly built, and yes, realistic - as it did when people reacted to it in 2013.

If the first series was the solid building then this series is the fancy extension - it’s similarly flashy, it’s important to the story, but it doesn’t quite feel necessary yet. The stakes are high (everything they worked for being overturned, our heroes’ lives falling apart, let alone the whole community, oh and another killer too) but they could be higher.

Olivia Colman is the star of the last scenes, her cross-examining is a real standout moment for her (though other characters have been joyous so far - David Tennant’s sarcasm earlier on, for instance). Keeping that performance but also in the acting category, Eve Myles is markedly different from what I’m used to seeing her as in the likes of Torchwood or Frankie - cheeky but with steel and bite behind it this time. For once, she might not be quite as loveable as normal - the show keeps one step ahead of us by pointing out what we’ve worked out in the days between the episodes. Maybe the Sandbrook case is a bit weirder than we imagined...

(And has anybody else noticed that out of the five or six new characters introduced, all but one of them are women - mostly professional women too? In a massive returning ITV drama - great stuff)

many thanks to

Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

TV: Broadchurch 2.2 (Newsom)

review by Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

It’s something you don’t realise that much until it stops. It’s there at every advert break in the first series, built into Broadchurch’s DNA: this show is built on reveals. The writer, Chris Chibnall, has said before that it wasn’t a ‘whodunnit’, but that that genre helped him portray a small community and explore its secrets.

In this episode, Jocelyn, the new prosecuting lawyer (Charlotte Rampling, on the side of the righteous so far), says that the community don’t have any secrets left to reveal. Everyone looks shifty at that point, but after the first series, it’s easy to agree with her. Is there more to know about the characters? And if not, then is it going to be surprising enough?

There were still a couple of enjoyably big moments in this episode, but only a couple. Compared with the first episode, this only made baby steps in the plot, but they were steps in the right directions. The burning question of the Sandbrook stalker was addressed, if not fully answered, and we got a good idea of how the trial will play out with the defence lawyer Sharon Bishop (Marianne Jean-Baptiste, playing a right cow at the moment) aggressively questioning the regular cast. The courtroom scenes played emotionally and pitched at an everyman level (“can she ask that?”) rather than pure standard legal drama, though hardly dumbing down. When the vital confession from the last series was thrown out (by Meera Syal, having a good time playing the Judge), everything from the first series feels like it’s fair game again.

But even these stand-out moments didn’t come out of the blue. Jocelyn warned earlier that the defence team might be going to use the odd police tactics exhibited at the end of last series against them (plea: but it made very good telly). The only left-field moment came at the end, when Sandbrook suspect Lee met his ex-wife Claire again - but to me, the piling up of drama for the cliffhanger (back to the house! an escape! the baby!) felt a bit too contrived.

All this shows that we’re in for the long haul - it is episode two in an eight episode series after all. I think your enthusiasm this week for Broadchurch might relate to your patience - and how watchable you think David Tennant is as Alec Hardy. He’s as prominent in this episode as ever, along with Olivia Colman as Ellie, only both have less to go on. And the dour tone still hangs over the whole thing, not helped by Alec’s surly mood and Ellie’s confusion with life, the humour toned black. It might not be as gripping as last week’s episode, but it hasn’t lost all of its mystery.

many thanks to

Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

TV: Broadchurch 2.1 (Newsom)

review by Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

It’s back! The every-award winning 2013 drama returns to ITV - under complete secrecy, as it happens. The channel decided to give as few details away as possible before the series started, instead wanting to keep the plot totally secret until viewers watched it for themselves - which in the days of countless trailers and RadioTimes.com is only to be applauded.

So I don’t want to spoil the amazing feeling of sitting down to watch something - a sequel! - and having no idea where it’s heading or how they’re continuing it. (If you haven’t watched it yet, then do so!) There was plenty of speculation at the time as to what the second series would be like. Surely not another murder? Well, no and yes, as it happens. When I heard that a lot of the same actors were appearing again, I was sceptical - would this be featuring yet another earth-shattering event to hit the town, cheapening the first? Well, again, yes and no.

I wouldn’t say it cheapens the first series, it extends it into a bigger story. Chris Chibnall confounds the critics by simply writing a direct sequel - what happens next in the realistic thriller, after the murderer’s been caught? They have to prove it. And some of the frankly stunning new cast names (Charlotte Rampling!) are playing lawyers, splendid. And then Broadchurch - and David Tennant’s character Alec Hardy - unearth their secrets yet again, revisiting old ground. As set-ups go, this one was unveiled perfectly, slowly drawing us back in over its running length - if somebody was to write a preview of it to entice viewers to watch it, they’d probably spoil the entire plot, so I’m glad they didn’t. And whilst there’s no murder in sight straight away (though I’d keep an eye on those bluebells), it’s absolutely the same show everybody flocked to back in 2013, even having the same director, writer, actors, location.

By keeping it exactly the same style of show, it feels even more natural a continuation - once the characters came back onto the screen, it seemed like they hadn’t been away. But it’s not just that - now series two is upon us, I’ve realised the two key ingredients to what makes Broadchurch the show it is, rather than the exceptional writing or the setting or, especially, a whodunit.

The first is that it’s edited like a music video at times, unlike almost any other mainstream drama. There’s barely any dialogue in some scenes. Instead there’s shots of people glowering at each other mysteriously, close-ups of details in the landscape, and music blaring at full volume. But what music! Olafur Arnalds’s moody soundtrack was praised in the last series, and shows up prominently again in this one. And really it makes the show and creates a lot of the atmosphere. It reaches a crescendo at every advert break every ten minutes, or sometimes after every scene. And why not? Other slow dramas have people boiling kettles or jogging in near silence, in a bid to make it seem more realistic. This one wants to make you feel.

And the second is, naturally, Olivia Colman - or rather, Olivia Colman’s character Ellie and her use of language. She swears. Her attitude in life involves swearing. When her and David Tennant’s characters are reunited in this episode, it becomes something else: funnier, for starters. Later, she tells him “your plan is shit” and “you’re a wanker”. And in a way she’s right, and we love her for it. And she’s so un-ITV. Ellie’s almost been our eyes and ears through the investigation of the first series, we’ve been through her journey too, which will make it all the more rewarding to see how she copes now.

The first series was all about seeing how one small town dealt with the murder investigation of one of its residents, with our suspicions lying on all of them at some point during it. The main focus was realism, something that is strongly in focus here. Gone is the grief, replaced in the parents by regret and anger and bitterness.

Not that you’ll regret watching this, I might add, it’s glorious. If the series keeps this up, it’ll be among the top dramas of the year - again. I was slightly surprised that, in showing the identity of the murderer again, this episode would literally spoil the whodunit of the first series. But then as the characters themselves say, everybody has heard of the story of the ‘boy on the beach’. Everybody saw the first series. And now everybody needs to see this.

many thanks to

Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)