Broadchurch

I used to be a pretty big fan of crime dramas.  Granted, I never watched a show whose title was simply a mash-up of letters (JAG, NCIS, CSI), and I was usually more interested in the solving of the crimes than the personal lives of the characters, keeping me from getting pulled in by programs such as The Wire or The Shield.

Yes, I know, I missed out on some great television, but honestly, I don't really mind!

For a while I used to watch Law & Order and its spin-off Special Victims Unit (which I guess could be L&O:SVU but I hate that acronym), but the former went away and the latter became so completely contrived and far fetched I expected an episode to eventually take place in Narnia.

 My personal favorite series is Numb3rs, but there's a series I just watched recently that's completely changed my attitude towards these kinds of programs.

The show is Broadchurch, and it's possibly the best crime-based television show I've ever seen.

Now, there are lots of programs that attempt to depict the darker side of a sleepy little town.  Everything from Murder, She Wrote to Twin Peaks worked under this formula, where everybody has a secret and you never really know anybody else in town, but this is the first one I've seen in a very long time that had me gripped and believing it.

Starring David Tennant and Olivia Colman, the entire series takes place surrounding the murder investigation of an eleven year old boy found on the beach, exploring the ripples such a crime has on a town that even barely exists as a town, instead simply being a popular place for tourists to visit during the summer.

For those who are local Maine residents like me, think of it like Kennebunkport, where beyond the main street and a few sights to see there's really nothing remarkable.

Both actors do remarkable jobs in their roles, with David Tennant playing weary detective inspector fresh off a scandalous case and Olivia Colman as the eager detective sergeant who wanted Tennant's job and is appalled at the idea anybody in her town could do such a thing to a boy.

The rest of the cast also does remarkable jobs, and I found reactions and suspicion being cast to be completely believable.  Rather than the standard crime drama method of telling someone that a relative died and their having a two minute cry before talking calmly to the police and then continuing on their way, you see a family collapse after losing a member.  You see friends and neighbors doing their best to provide comfort while also seeking meaning in what happened.  The church plays a key role, with regular questions about why such a crime would happen to a boy, and nobody really being able to provide answers that give anybody true satisfaction.  You also see the connection the characters have, even if they aren't aware of how they're linked to each other.  Intertwining stories mingle like the threads in a knit sweater, and pulling one thread draws out others.  You travel from one small mystery to another, and the progression is (almost) completely believable, and watching as the lives of certain characters are torn apart under suspicion is gripping.  

There is one character whose involvement in the story was a bit fantastic, but I was completely willing to overlook it because he plays a pretty minor part.  (Whoops, spoiler alert I guess)

I have to give a special shout-out to the location shooting.  The major tourist attraction in Broadchurch is the beach, and there are regularly shots of the water as it either rolls in or slides out, and just shots of wide expanses.  There are few bright colors, so few that when you see some colored lights later in the series it feels jarring.  Clear blue skies seem dull, the beach sand is a darker shade of brown, and everything looks like it's not only sucking the color and life out of the surrounding area, but also the noise.  You start to notice more of the paint peeling, the cracked trailers, and the potholes in the roads as the series continues on, a clear indication of just how much of the polish of the town and its people are being stripped away as the investigation continues.

I found myself regularly mulling over the evidence in my head as the story continued, breaking down character motivations and watching for tiny background details.  I would immediately dismiss a character as being "too obvious" just to have them circle back around into my suspicions when they'd vanish for a short time and then resurface.  In the episode before the finale, my entire family and I were pitching ideas back and forth, trying to do our best to cobble together an answer with the details we had each pulled from the show.  It was a bit like the old story of the blind men who discover an elephant, and how each believes it to be something different based on the part they feel.  Details I had cobbled together were in stark contrast to details someone else had assembled, but every theory was equally plausible.

For the record, my theory was the correct one, but I'm not going to spoil anything major.

I think that's the true sign that this was a great series, in that after it was over I was still discussing the clues and evidence presented, discussing the motivations of characters who it turned out to not even be directly connected to the case, and pondering the potentials of the sequel series announced shortly after.

Now, David Tennant is going to be appearing in an American version of the show, to which I wonder: why?  Why do we need an "American" version of the show starring the same detective?  Is it just the same story all over again?  Is it supposed to be an "unofficial" sequel or an alternate reality?  Why couldn't a channel simply license the show to air on a basic cable network?  Are they afraid of the accents?

My advice is to go out and find the show now in its English glory and bask in the experience it provides.  It's honest, it never cheats you out of an answer (even when you feel it does, it makes up for it quickly and satisfies you), and it provides you with just as much evidence (even more) as the police allowing you to try to solve it without needing to be the next Monk and know some obtuse fact about something that identifies the killer.