Murder on the beach

Ahdar

Broadchurch is an an interesting, but bleak crime drama rather in the vein of Twin Peaks and Veronica Mars when the main purpose of the series is to find out who killed someone; in this case, it is an 11-year old English boy named Danny Latimer. A small town on the UK coast is the setting. The Latimer family wakes up one morning without realizing that their small son has been killed and dumped on the beach. DS Ellie Miller's day is about to get a thousand times worse when she returns from vacation to find that her dream Detective Inspector job has been snatched away by Alec Hardy, a grouchy Scottish officer who was disgraced after he bungled a child murder investigation. To make matters even worse, Ellie discovers that her son's best friend has been murdered and her deadbeat sister is looking for more handouts. Ellie must deal with her grief over her son's friend, yet still remain impartial and professional. As the list of suspects grows, Ellie and Alec try to discover who would have wanted to kill an innocent boy. Is it his father with his notoriously bad temper? Could it be the local vicar, an outsider? Maybe the nasty woman at the caravan park? Danny's innocent young friend? Intrepid local reporter Ollie? Is the killer the elderly Jack Marshall? Or is it someone that no one would ever suspect?

The series is marred by one or two stylistic choices that invariably make the viewer burst out with WTF! (and not in a good way). First of all, we need to talk about the slow motion. Apparently, the director and the editors did not get the memo that slow motion should be used sparingly as it has long been the stuff of parody. Portions of Broadchurch are so rife with slow motion that they are more akin to some kind of weird child murder music video rather than an ITV mystery series. The music is also pretty overbearing and the song that rolls over the end credits is, quite frankly, cringe-inducing. Probably the worst though is the handful of melodramatic scenes where the viewer's credulity is stretched. There are only so many times before David Tennant can collapse dramatically in slow motion before it gets boring. Also, there was really no need to have David Bradley recite the Lord's Prayer in Episode 5. Mark Latimer's slow motion beach tantrum in the last episode is pretty bad, as is the cheesy scene where everyone lights bonfires on the beach. And what is up with the psychic? Why do otherwise down-to-earth crime shows persist in showing that psychics are legitimate?

score 5/10

Ahdar 29 March 2014

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2988726/