The plot
thickens, as they say. Just getting
warmed up, but you can tell it’s ramping up from here. (Note:
it’s going to be tough to talk about any serialized mystery show without
spoilers, but I’ll do my best to talk around it. While I will bring up different people under
suspicion from episode to episode, I’ll keep mum on whether the killer is someone
previously suspected and discarded or someone who hadn’t previously been on the
radar.)
After the
initial shock of the discovery of Danny’s body, the murder investigation is
getting underway. Hardy is hard at work
chasing leads, following an earlier account to someone seen arguing with Danny
and checking out an empty hut not far from the cliffs where it was made to look
like Danny fell. Although Ellie has her
head in the game, it’s hard for her to come to grips with the fact that one of
her neighbors might have killed Danny, and she bristles at Hardy’s cynicism and
suspicion. In the Latimer house,
everyone struggles to cope with the day-to-day, and secrets begin to be
revealed from various members of the family.
Definitely
not as good as the pilot, though that would have been a tall order. While the pilot is able to take its time
mainly setting the scene and setting up the mystery, this episode has to begin
the business of unraveling that, and it casts a pretty wide net. There’s no big focus yet in the
investigation, and several different minor angles are explored. What it does do well is continuing to flesh
out the character of the town itself. I
like the details of the overstretched police department, the rinky-dink local
newspaper bracing itself for the arrival of a mass of out-of-town reporters,
and assorted residents discussing the murder (both the empathetic – how
horrible it is for the family – and the more self-serving – what effect it will
have on the summer tourism?)
Jodie
Whittaker gets some big moments here, but I think she’s most effective in the
smaller ones. Not that I begrudge Beth
for screaming and breaking down – of course not. But for me, the moments where she gets me the
most are in quiet scenes showing her grief in subtle ways. In this episode, the scene in the grocery
store is by far the best. There’s so
much involved in it – her itching need to get out of the house and be normal
for two minutes, the sickening feeling of walking through the supermarket and
knowing that everyone’s watching “the woman whose son was killed,” and that
soft, pure moment where she sees Danny’s favorite cereal on the shelf and for a
second loses herself in it. Beth, like
the rest of her immediate family, has a secret, and she reveals it to one person
in this episode. While the specifics of
it are kind of soapy, the circumstances surrounding it make me entirely see why
it would be such a head trip right now.
It’s
always fun going back to a show you’ve seen before and discovering a face
that’s since become familiar to you.
Jack Ashton, who plays Tom on Call
the Midwife, has a brief appearance in this episode. (Jacob Anderson is also like that for me, by
the way. Although I would have first
seen Broadchurch after his initial
appearance on Game of Thrones, I
didn’t recognize him well enough at the time to know who he was. Now, every time I see him onscreen, I want to
shout, “Grey Worm!”)
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