Countdown to Thirteen: Broadchurch: Series 1, Episode 6 (2013)

More of a middling episode for me.  I mean, stuff happens, there’s more drama, and there are some nice character moments with the Latimers, but it doesn’t all quite come together for me.  Just so-so (although, fair point, it does have one pretty substantially-creepy scene with a child and a potential suspect.)

As the town deals with the fallout of the events of the last episode, Hardy sets his sights on a new suspect.  This time, though, his suspicions seem to be at least as much about his own personal issues with the suspect as they are about actual reasons to believe this person is the killer – not his best moment, in my opinion.  While the police are doing their thing, all the Latimers struggle with figuring out the best way forward.

I’m not as much of a fan of the police stuff in this episode.  Like I said, it feels more wrapped up in Hardy’s issues than anything else, and it doesn’t seem as plausible to me.  However, this plotline does offer up some good acting, so there’s that.  The thread with Ellie’s son Tom and one of the prime suspects of the season (at least in terms of bringing the creep factor whenever they’re onscreen) is more interesting to me, and the tension in those scenes is built quite effectively.

The Latimer stuff is pretty good, too.  Beth still feels at an utter loss, and as she watches Mark return to work and their daughter Chloe return to school, she doesn’t know what to do with herself yet.  I like her plot here, finding a way to reach out to another mother of a murdered child.  It deals with Sandbrook, a previous botched case from Hardy’s semi-mysterious past, but it also deals heavily and unflinchingly with the magnitude of what Beth is going through.  The woman she meets doesn’t pull any punches about the size and scop of losing one’s child, but despite the bleakness and despair of it all, it’s still something of a comfort to Beth just to have someone who truly understands what she’s experiencing.  Even though Jodie Whittaker doesn’t have a huge role in this episode, she’s very effective in the scene between these two grieving mothers.