Here’s
the start of the third and final season of Broadchurch. First impressions – looks like it could be
pretty different and will possibly involve quite a bit less of the town
Broadchurch altogether. Some frustrating
parts, but I’m interested to see where things are going.
It’s now
been three years since Danny’s death.
Hardy and Ellie are still working together, and they’re called it to
investigate a rape in a nearby town. The
victim, Trish, struggles to provide details on her attacker, and the detectives
use care in trying to gather more information.
I’ll
start with things I like. I like that
Trish is a middle-aged woman that wouldn’t necessarily get singled out for her
looks – rape is about power, not sex, and there isn’t one look or “type” for a
victim. I really like Ellie’s
interactions with her, at the same time that I understand Hardy cautioning her
not to get too personally involved.
We’ve started to meet a few of the characters involved in this plot, and
they include a friend of Trish’s played by Sarah Parish, who I’ll always
remember as a giant spider empress from Doctor
Who but who I’ve since gotten to know as a pretty excellent Beatrice in a
modern-day adaptation of Much Ado about
Nothing.
A few
things, though. As much as I dislike it,
I absolutely understand the inclusion of someone at the police station who
suspects Trish might be making a false allegation – after all, rampant doubt
among far too many police officers is a major contributer to rape being so
underreported, and it would have been too sanguine of the show to have everyone
automatically believe her. However, it
bugs me that the only officer we see voicing that suspicion is a young Black
woman. Also, despite a lot of
sensitivity displayed when directly interacting with Trish, a lot of people are
hung up on the fact that she waited two
whole days before going to the police (seriously?), and I don’t like
Hardy’s preoccupation with determining whether or not the attacker was a
stranger, as if that’s the only way this rapist would pose an ongoing threat in
the area. Again, the attitudes
themselves are depressingly realistic, but I’m going to need to see them dealt
with if this storyline is going to work for me.
For a
while, I thought we might not be getting anything actually in Broadchurch at
all, spending the entire episode on Ellie, Hardy, and the investigation. However, towards the end, we do get a small
amount of Beth. Between seasons, she’s
gotten involved in work helping survivors, and while she has her worries about
whether or not she’s really cut out for it, it’s a development that promises to
tie her to the Trish storyline. So, even
though there’s very little of her here, it does seem that Jodie Whittaker will
play a good-sized role in what looks to be the A-plot of the season.
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