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.
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