Broadchurch Series 2 Episode 4 Review

So we open this episode finally seeing some emotion from Hardy. Or rather some venerable emotion from Hardy.

This is linked to the Sandbrook murders and the fact that he found the body of one of the girls and possibly nearly drowned recovering her from a river. The fact that he jumped in himself and didn’t have uniformed officers or the fire brigade do it is interesting, but I’ll get to that later.

We also get the long overdue introduction of DI Hardy’s wife and daughter. His wife is an interesting character. She’s either someone who snapped after years of being married to her boss (who seems like the kind of person to bring work place stress home with him) or she’s a partially burnt out copper unwilling to have another run at a failed case. The way that we’re not told about Hardy’s own possible affair, keeps the door open on whether she was retaliating or whether she was just unfaithful. This lines up further options in both their development. Hardy could have taken the blame for her screw up (not out of concern for their daughter) but out of guilt over destroying his own family. Her pathological rejection of him and her assumption that he ran away after the Sandbrook case could be her guilty conscience rationalising her actions not to mention her negligence in handling the case. Either way, half way through the series may not be the best time to introduce her, given the amount of character development involved with those arcs.

In the A-story, the prosecution concludes it’s case against Joe Miller, with Knight momentarily dropping her façade of respectability and throwing boxing metaphors at her junior. This in turn sees the usually confident Bishop privately rattled, but she does at least add more realism to the character. The way she sums up the defences’ job to her junior is particularly good.

“He did it”

“We don’t know that.”

As I said before, defence lawyers (primarily as a result of American shows) are usually portrayed as caricatures; using loopholes and such to let guilty men walk free. Bishop isn’t this, she’s aware that she’s dealing with people and the effect that she can have on their lives. She’s also aware of what will happen if Joe Miller is innocent and he goes to prison.

The other big thing to happen is the reconsideration of suspects for the Sandbrook case. Hardy begins to question himself and there’s grounds for it there. There’s clearly something else going on with Claire and Lee; some sort of agreement between them that she’s not told anyone about.

Overall, this is a pretty watchable episode; it’s mainly set up for the Sandbrook mystery and we get the impression that Knight is going to have some medical problems to deal with while trying to dismantle the defence case.

Supplemental Blog: crazy theory.

So DI Hardy discovered the body of first victim in the Sandbrook murders, but why didn’t he have any back up? Was this during a missing person’s search or did he just find her? What are the odds of a person who finds a body just happening to be a Murder detective?

So here’s the crazy theory: Alec Hardy is a serial killer.

What if he didn’t find that body? What if he nearly drowned while trying to dispose of it? He could have suffered some sort of cardiac problem (possibly the first) while dumping the body of his victim in the river. What is Bishop is right about the inconsistencies in procedure during Joe Miller’s arrest? Why would a Detective Inspector who’s been handling a case with complete professionalism not take the time to a uniformed officer to accompany him and witness the arrest of a suspect? As Bishop said, there is a period directly after the arrest that not even the audience knows about. There is plenty that Hardy could have done to coerce Joe into a confession.

As to Joe’s statement “I’m tired of hiding” perhaps he knew about Hardy; perhaps Hardy has something on him that was keeping him quiet and him saying that he’s tired of hiding is in relation to something that they both did.

Will this turn out to be the truth; probably not; but it’d be damn brave of Chris Chibnall if it did.