A strange thing has happened to me over the last couple of months. I’ve found myself voluntarily watching ITV – truly choosing it, rather than just not being able to find the remote. I even had to learn how to use ITV’s on demand service. I can’t remember the last time I was this hooked on a TV programme, let alone one on three.
The reason for all this? Chris Chibnall’s Broadchurch. Eight episodes of extraordinarily plotted drama, so slow burning that it was hard to know if anything was ever going to happen to relieve the itchy feeling of not-knowing. At its heart, it was a simple and familiar story – a boy is found dead on a beach, and a tight-knit community struggles to cope with the difficult truths the ensuing investigation reveals. A linear narrative, no fancy tricks with dream sequences or convenient flashbacks, and slow, so slow. When the story finally came to an end (of sorts) in last night’s finale, it was filtered through performances of such astonishing power that I hardly dared to blink in case I missed a second – something I’ve found all too rare of late.
Olivia Colman single-handedly drove the drama to its denouement. Her facial expressions and tearful retching as she was told that her husband was the killer she had been hunting the whole time confirmed what I think we already knew – she’s one of the finest actresses around at the moment. The use of lots of steadicam shots and unconventional framing helped both her and David Tennant along – it’s easier to bring out the uncomfortable parallels in a narrative when the director is suggesting them visually as well. It was the little things like this that elevated this drama, and had me returning to a channel I usually forget exists. Little things like the inexplicable slug Olivia Colman stepped on when she returned to her family’s home, shattered by revelations of murder, to fetch toys for her children. Or the single tear that the previously rapacious journalist shed at the final police press conference announcing an arrest had been made. Or the final ambiguity of motive – the too-neat solution of paedophilia shunned in favour of a killer who just wanted his victim to be happy.
Part of what made Broadchurch such a compelling series was how topical it was, both in medium and subject. I bored my Twitter followers to death each week after a new element of the press intrusion narrative was revealed, the parallels with the Milly Dowler case and the various witness statements given to the Leveson Inquiry so fresh in my mind. As this piece by my colleague Rafael Behr threw into sharp relief, there is no public interest in a family’s grief, and yet the press keeps intruding and insisting it holds some kind of moral authority to do so. The sequence where photographers jostled at the churchyard gate to get snaps of the family of the murdered boy as they entered was all the more poignant because even as you watched it you knew that same scene has been acted out for real countless times.
The medium too was topical – as the final credits rolled, the continuity announcer informed viewers that we could “go to ITV’s Facebook and Twitter pages to see an exclusive extra scene”. Part of why I enjoyed Broadchurch was because of the community it developed on social media. Unlike almost all the other programmes I keep up with, I wanted to watch Broadchurch live so I could sit on the metaphorically large sofa and chat to other viewers while it was on. DVD boxsets and on-demand services are in many ways brilliant, but Broadchurch showed me that they are also often lonely. Sitting down at the same time every week, knowing that millions of others are doing the same, is still an excellent way to enjoy a programme.
It’s always telling when a show’s creator is interviewed as it is concluding, rather than when it starts. Publicity drives always happen before a book is published or a film is premiered in an attempt to drum up as many readers or viewers as possible, and then tail off afterwards. When the opposite happens, and the coverage crescendos towards the finale, it’s because the show is picking up fans organically as it goes and thus editors feel they must reflect that in their commissioning. This is particularly notable for this show, since “serious” original drama with “proper” actors is something the BBC has a reputation for, not ITV. But so it was with Broadchurch – it was no accident that Chibnall appeared on Radio 4’s flagship culture show Front Row last night, just a couple of hours before his finale aired. The viewers have spoken – Broadchurch will be back.
It was this last announcement that struck a slightly sour note. As Adam Sweeting over at theartsdesk.com has noted, the danger is that it be reduced to some kind of “Midsomer Murders-on-Sea”. I can only hope the second series won’t return me to my previous view of the third channel as merely a purveyor of football matches and things with Simon Cowell on. Because last night, for once, we were all watching ITV and it was great.
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