Bible Banning?

As reported by Huffington post, Aberystywth University is set to consider a proposal to remove Gideons Bibles from it’s student accommodation study bedrooms. This is following a survey by the Student Union in which found that only 4% of students believed that having the bible in their room was a “good idea.”

Well let me tell you now, I have never been so offended; so utterly outraged, by the response of Christian student Jessica Hearne, who used the excuse that the UK is a Christian country. The UK is in fact a country that guarantees freedom of religion to all; you are free to believe in whatever you choose or not believe in any of it. I am British and am not a Christian, nor am I Jewish, Muslim or any religion you could name. I find it completely it unacceptably rude for this young lady to suggest that my nationality has anything to do with any religion.

Her argument is also a colossal straw man. Let me sum it up basically “Only 4% of students living in university accommodation think that having a bible in their room is a good thing, so we’re going to consider removing them.”

“Well you can’t because we’re a Christian country.”

Do you see how irrelevant that response is? This isn’t about whether the UK’s national identity is intrinsically linked to one specific religion. This is about a survey that said, overall, students weren’t comfortable with a bible being put in their room without their consent. Also, in what way does removing the Gideons Bible from a student bedroom stop a devout Christian from practicing their religion. Seriously; I’ve never met a devout Christian who didn’t own their own copy of the bible.

The Christian Institute have also responded, stating that they find it hard to see how someone could be offended by a bible being in their room. This demonstrates a huge amount of arrogance on their part. Of course there’s no way that a symbol of our religion could possibly offend anyone; when has Christianity ever said or done anything offensive?

You want to be offended by the fact that your special book could be removed from student bedrooms; feel free. But don’t act like there’s a reason it shouldn’t be, especially in the face of evidence that only 4% of the people involved are behind you on that.

Broadchurch Series 2 Episode 5 Review.

So I was kind of right about the roots of the Knight and Bishop feud; still on the fence about the missing girl theory; as the furnace in this episode could just be a red herring.

So we’ve gone full on legal drama, with the main focus of this episode being Knight and Bishop dealing with their personal problems intersecting with the trial. Through this, we get some insight into their joint back story; with Bishop’s bitterness over Knight refusing to defend her son. Bishop completely drops her professional façade, when she finds out about her son being assaulted in prison. This is something she holds Knight responsible for, though Knight seems to be of the opinion that that case wasn’t worth defending. “A man died because of your son”  - this is a very effective piece of character development for both and finally shows Bishop reacting as a parent rather than a lawyer.

Bishop isn’t really shown in the best light however as her actions in the trial are now less for the benefit of her client and more for the sake of humiliating Knight. While effort is made to show Knight’s lack of empathy with parents, it’s Bishop who comes out worse off in terms of audience reaction (from me at least).  While Knight is taking pot shots at Bishop it’s not really over anything personal. Bishop (or rather her junior) makes an amateur mistake in calling an unreliable witness during their defence. This is the source of Knight’s mockery, while Bishop’s motivation is both personal and unprofessional. Bishop seems to be projecting her own screw-ups and her son’s peril onto Knight.

In the B story, the suspects for the Sandbrook murders are stacking up. It seems like the neighbours may have been involved in some sort of wife swap situation…erm ok…

Other than that, the big development is Miller and Hardy finding what could be the place where the missing body from the Sandbrook could have been burnt. Other than that everything else in this episode didn’t really interest me. Bishop trying to coerce Paul into being a character witness. She doesn’t seem to be aware that he’s not Rory any more so won’t be so much of a push over.

This episode is alright  - the legal drama is taking over, which I can see being a problem for some people. The problem is that everything else happening (with the exception the Sandbrook investyigation) doesn’t seem to be very interesting.

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.

Broadchurch Series 2 Episode 3 Review.

I’m calling it now, the missing girl in the Sandbrook murders killed her cousin and Lee Ashworth or his wife helped cover it up. And if I’m right about that, it’s going to be even more disappointing than the true identities of River Song and Missy put together.

So “everyone’s got something to hide” is the tag line for this series and as the new dynamic has been set up in episode 1 and the tone set in episode 2, we can now get down to business.

To delve into the legal side (briefly this time) the writers seem to have recruited a legal consultant between scripts as this week they know that witnesses aren’t supposed to be sitting around watching each others testimony. Ellie is forced to deal with the stress of being excluded from the courtroom, as her testimony may be needed. That’s all very well, but what happens when they want to inevitably cross examine Mark, who’s had the opportunity to see watch his wife’s testimony and line up his story with that?

The cliffhanger from last week’s B-story resolves itself pretty quickly. I don’t know about other people, but from my perspective Hardy is rapidly losing the high ground. Miller asked him in episode 1, why he was so sure the Ashworth killed the two girls from his previous case. He didn’t have an answer. We find out in this episode that Ashworth has been investigating the case himself and points out all the things that Hardy overlooked. He’s pretty well written; the way he goes about using official channels to make Hardy apologise to him is good way of quickly developing his character. This also gives an indication of how Hardy may have mistaken him for a killer, if this is the way he conducts himself. This kind of petty behaviour (ie “the policeman is bullying me”) is a character trait that could have caused a personal dislike from Hardy during the Sandbrook case.

Knight’s secrets are coming out, to the audience that is. It seems despite being such a good QC that she can prosecute on a murder trial without being appointed, she doesn’t have enough money to pay her mother’s care home bills. To add to that there’s something in her past that makes her fear tailgaters.

For the purpose of dramatic juxtaposition, Bishop is revealed to have a son in prison. This is the source of the rift between her and Knight. Did Knight throw the case while defending her son? Special props should go to Marianne Jean-Baptiste for this episode. She moves seamlessly from a sympathetic mother to merciless cross-examiner. This is a pretty accurate portrayal of her vocation. Too often in drama, barristers are treated like secondary villains. Bishop is a person; she might seem to be a nasty person when she’s doing her job, but that’s part of her job.

Overall, it’s going well, but I’ll be really pissed off if I’ve guessed the ending to the B-story already.

Broadchurch Season 2 Episodes 1&2 Review

So I’m a week behind on this, but whatever.

Broadchurch has returned and is picking up about nine months after Danny Latimer’s killer Joe Miller was caught. As I’m behind, I’m going to be skipping over most of Episode 1, as it was mostly about setting the new dynamic.

Eessentially, Chris Chibnall used episode 1 to shift the A-story of Broadchurch from a murder mystery into a courtroom drama, with Joe Miller disregarding his own confession and changing his plea to not guilty. This leads to the appointment of Sharon Bishop (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) as his defence counsel for a full trial. This in turn leads to the Latimers appointing Jocelyn Knight (Charlotte Rampling) as the prosecutor in the case, as for some unstated reason the Crown Prosecution Service didn’t seem interested in doing their job. I don’t know whether this is a misunderstanding on how a criminal trail works on the part of Chibnall or a deliberate move to keep the family drama aspect of the show alive. The two are immediately great in their parts, but there’s no explanation of how Knight was able to convince the CPS to let her prosecute on a high profile murder case when she apparently hasn’t practiced law for several years.

Anyway, onto episode 2. This is where things start to go down hill a little bit on the legal side. The B story about DI Hardy and DS Miller conducting an unofficial investigation into the Sanbrook murders is good drama, but the legal side falls down a bit.

Essentially, the point that it gets stuck on is that Joe Miller confessed on tape in a police interview. He’s pretty much done. However, in the style of an American drama, Bishop is able to have this confession ruled inadmissible as there’s no guarantee that the injuries he sustained (from his wife) weren’t part of the process used to obtain his confession. Of course, Knight points out that that confession was made before he was assaulted, which is proof that the CPS should have let someone else prosecute in this case. I mean if she was the amazing barrister everyone keeps saying she is, she could have pointed out that an application to exclude evidence should not be made in front of the jury. It might seem like I’m being unfair with that point, but consider how stupid it is for a judge to “order” a jury not to consider something they’ve been told about during the trial. It is impossible for the court to be certain that the jury will not consider a confession as part of their ruling once they have been made aware of it. For this reason, if a confession can be excluded it has to be done I such a way that the jury will never know about it. The jury in this case knows that Joe Miller confessed and the likelihood of a judge solemnly nodding and agreeing with Bishop is very slim, based on her failure to follow the correct procedure. To add to that her failure to attempt to have his confession excluded at a pre-trail hearing could easily endanger her client’s chances of a fair trial. In the case that the judge did agree that the confession was inadmissible, it’s likely that she’d be minded to replace the whole jury, necessitating a whole new trail. I mean I know that Bishop is being built up as some sort of mad skills, maverick uber-lawyer, but I don’t think she’d risk invalidating the whole trail on day one for the sake of a cheap shot at Knight.

Well that’s the heavy bit over, onto the child murder from DI Hardy’s past. The off-the-books and inevitably botched operation to catch the Sanbrook killer provides a good B-story, although I find the conclusion of episode 2 a bit contrived. I mean I get that Beth is a grieving mother, but suggesting that Ellie consciously beat up her child killing husband with the knowledge that it would give him a chance at trial, is a bit stupid. I don’t think anyone actually thinks like that. I’d get her being angry at her on the grounds that Ellie should know better than to beat up suspects, especially given what it’s done to the case against him. But that just shows how unnecessary it is to have Beth react the way she does with the reasoning she has. She has a perfectly good reason to be angry at Ellie; I don’t see why Chibnall feels like she would need to make up another one.

So yeah…I’m enjoying Broadchurch series 2, but I’m acutely aware that shifting to a court room drama comes with risks. The writers have to take care to be accurate. I’m not saying that they should jettison all drama form the sake of characters wearing the correct wigs. I’m saying that the majority of criminal court procedure in the UK is based solidly in common sense. A judge turning to  jury and saying “I order you not to think about X” is just plain stupid.