Countdown to Thirteen: Broadchurch: Series 3, Episode 1 (2017)

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.