Broadchurch - Season 2, Episode 8 - Review

My review of last week's episode.

SPOILERS

Broadchurch - Season 2, Episode 7 - Review

My review of last week's episode

At the moment, I'm sitting here, wracking my brains to remember whether anything actually happened in this episode. Mostly stalling. The trial has never been more interminable than here, as people yell at each other, and Olivia Colman cries more, and the verdict is continually stalled. Drama. Drama. Drama. *snore*

Broadchurch - Season 2, Episode 6 - Review

My review of last week's episode

This episode is about dysfunctional couples. There are four of them. We now have a new media romance, as evil Abby Thompson jumps in bed with Olly (he's still a jerk) in order, it turns out, to gain information.

Couple number three are Cate and Ricky Gillespie, who, reunited by Ellie, quickly slip into bickering again. Number two is Tess and Alec. The latter has finally decided to make some decisions on the Brink of Death front, by having a pacemaker installed. It's not quite as abrupt as it was in Gracepoint, but this sudden turn of events is a bit anticlimactic. My impending exit from terminal medical thingy makes the whole show gain a sense of vague urgency, until producers think money and Tennant-Colman chemistry and decide to cancel my death because season three.

Broadchurch - Season 2, Episode 5 - Review

My review of last week's episode

Oh, all right. This episode has drawn me back to Broadchurch. It still has some of the same problems, but is blessedly free of some of the silliness of the second and third episodes. There's lots of the same: tense confrontations, unnecessary subplots, angry/distraught/happy/thoughtful people contrasted against a lovely sky, but it's a decent enough episode.

Broadchurch - Season 2, Episode 4 - Review

My review of last week's episode

Well, overall, a bit more reasonable than last week. Damning with faint praise? It's the best I can do.

Ellie has had her Worst Day Ever, so now it's Alec's turn. The episode starts as he has disturbing flashbacks to when he found Pippa Gillespie's body, which makes him cry like an increasingly boring character looking for sympathy. He also faces the prospect that he might have been wrong about the whole Sandbrook case and manages to alienate both his wife and his daughter and the murdered girl's dad, Ricky Gillespie, and Ollie (who's still a jerk).

Broadchurch - Season 2, Episode 3 - Review

My review of last week's episode.

There was a moment while watching this episode that I actually exclaimed, “Poor Ellie.” That pretty much sums it up. Last week, Chibnall was reaching, this week he lost balance completely. But by a curious magic (characters I’m attached to, music, setting, cinematography), I still can’t quite disregard the series.

The cliffhanger from last week resolves fairly quickly. After a brief quarrel with a strangely unhelpful Ellie, Alec drives off to find that Claire and Lee have retreated to her cottage. Why? Claire mutters something unconvincing. Lee knocks Alec down and is macho and generally Suspicious which is a good sign that he’s innocent. (Once again, I’m startled by how different James D’Arcy is in this role—even if he doesn’t have much to do but smirk in a sleazy fashion and show off his biceps.)

Broadchurch - Season 2, Episode 2 - Review

My review of last week's episode

Agh...did you have to do it like that?

Broadchurch hasn't been above sacrificing strict logic for melodrama, but, unlike other shows, it simply glows with heart - which makes it hard for me to count its flaws against it. Central to this is the teddy-bear herself, Ellie Miller. Colman is simply not aware she's on screen. She's not going to stretch any moment longer than it needs, and there's no affectation about her performance. Alec Hardy is a more conventional hero: the moody, broken, secretly noble knight in tarnished armor. His hesitations, staring nervously away to let the tension build, are more distracting than tense.

Broadchurch - Season 2, Episode 1 - Review

Given that I invested far more emotion in the first season of Broadchurch than I have in any TV show for years, it's fair to say that my expectations for the second season were extremely high. Sharpening my red pen, I glared at the laptop screen and just dared Chris Chibnall to ruin these characters so I would have something to complain about.

But despite a somewhat melodramatic, music-heavy opening, Broadchurch 2.0 is instantly compelling and nearly flawless. After the lukewarm Gracepoint, just the atmosphere alone is enough to evoke positive response, but Chibnall's writing is exceptional, and the acting is, as ever, superb.

I'd better go ahead and say that this will have spoilers not only for season 2, but also, necessarily, for season 1.

Gracepoint - Episode 2 - Review

My review of last week's episode.

Okay, the priest did it. My dad fingered the killer in the first episode of Broadchurch, and he has already cast judgment on Gracepoint.

If this is true, I will be very, very unable to express my feelings politely on this family blog.

It’s not really a spoiler to say that the priest was not the killer in Broadchurch. Instead, he provided the “moral compass” when everyone else’s had broken. Yes, he had a token motive, but just as an excuse to, in a key scene, bring him into conflict with the cynical, disillusioned Alec Hardy—now Emmett Carver. He was central to the hope that stood against the fragmentation of distrust and suspicion that threatened to destroy his community.

In this story, I predict that Reverend Paul Coates at least has a history with Beth Solano, which means his kindness to her has an ulterior motive. This annoys me to no end. I can’t complain too much about flawed priests (after all, I just finished The Power and the Glory), but this shift in dynamic could fatally undermine any efforts to refresh the foundational themes of Broadchurch. And that’s an issue.

Broadchurch - Season 1 Finale - Review

I know I've harped on the wonders of ITV's Broadchurch, but, to come clean, I wasn't quite as enamored at first. I loved the entire series up until the finale. [Spoilers ahead.]

Best of January/February 2014

[As a bit of an aid to refresh my memory when "Best of" lists come around next January, here's my pick of the month.]

Movies:

January's decision is tough, but the only 5-star review I gave was to Life is Beautiful, a funny, earnest Italian film set during WWII. My review.

As for February, it's a toss-up. I think entertainment wins the day (because yes, I am that shallow), so I choose Princess Mononoke over Lawrence of Arabia. The film is practically my first experience of Hiyao Miyazaki, and, though flawed, it's pretty incredible. My review.

TV:

This is pretty much a no-brainer - to January I happily give the gold to Broadchurch, an exquisitely made murder drama about the death of a young boy in a seaside town. My review.

As for February, I'm able to name Sherlock, since the last episode aired on the 3rd. (But if I did put it in January, I'd have to give Broadchurch the edge, by a bit.) I didn't agree with all the decisions made in Sherlock's third season, but still, it's good to be back. My reviews: The Empty Hearse, The Sign of Three, His Last Vow.

Hannah Long

Broadchurch Season 1 - Review

“A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret...that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!”
~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Can you think of any TV show that John McCain, Anderson Cooper, Judd Apatow, Stephen King, and WORLD Magazine all like? Look no farther.

Broadchurch isn't a murder mystery. Sure, there's a whodunit at the center of the plot, but that's not really what it's about. Instead of whisking in a clever clogs detective who then, having dispensed almost divine justice, sweeps cleanly out of the aftermath, Broadchurch places its two main characters, D.I. Alec Hardy and D.S. Ellie Miller, directly in the path of the storm. Yes, Hardy is an outsider, but his personal objectivity is less a luxury than a necessary curse which spreads to everyone connected to the tragedy. 

Broadchurch isn't a major metropolitan area; it's not even an enormous manor house (both notorious crime centers in Britain). Instead, it's a small town, and in small towns, murder shakes everything.