Broadchurch - Recap: The Boy Who Lived

Credit: BBC America

It can also be equally draining to watch Ellie (Olivia Colman) straining to deny, to herself, that someone among this town of people she's known all her life could be capable of such a monstrous crime. Broadchurch is an idyllic little town, but the people are as flawed and insular as any other place in the world. As with any small town murder series, the citizens each have their own secrets, their own pasts that are clothed in mystery and regret. From one episode to the next, these secrets become instrumental to understanding the town of Broadchurch, even if the secrets themselves don't bring us any closer to finding out who actually killed Danny Latimer. His death matters, of course, but it's more of a means than an end. It's the journey that really matters here, as in any good mystery. With this second episode, Broadchurch continues to inspire confidence that said journey is going to be a worthwhile endeavor.

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What I find interesting about Broadchurch is that, unlike similar mystery series, I don't feel as though we actually need to know or care about the victim for the story to have resonance. Perhaps this is because Danny Latimer was just a boy, and the death of a child is inherently more affecting, whether we know the boy or not. We don't afford children the same capacity for independent decision-making as we would a teenager like, say, The Killing's Rosie Larsen. With Danny Latimer, our sympathy is ingrained due to his age and the fact that whatever happened to him was almost certainly the result of the killer taking advantage of his youth in some fashion, whether by preying on his naivete or by using friendship to lure the boy into a false sense of security. Of course, this is only conjecture, but it's still a huge part of the narrative, and although we don't really have much sense of who Danny Latimer was when he was alive, we can still feel for his death because of how intimately we've become acquainted with the Latimer family. This episode goes a long way in illustrating the alienating nature of grief, as Beth (Jodie Whittaker) goes into town for some snacks, and is the subject of vulture-like stares from the townspeople. Beth is no longer an individual with her own independent identity. She's now simply The Mother of the Boy Who Was Killed. She can't escape her grief because she's now defined by the act that caused it.

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Of course, Beth has an additional cause for concern outside of her son's death. As she reveals to local vicar Paul Coates (Arthur Darvill), she's pregnant. She found out two weeks ago and hasn't told anyone yet, and she's uncertain what she plans to do about the child just yet. Naturally, the anxieties for the Latimer family are only compounded as the episode goes on, as the police discover £500 taped under Danny's bed, in addition to cocaine in his sister's room. Chloe (Charlotte Beaumont) swears the coke isn't hers, and reveals she was holding it for Becca Fisher (Simone McAullay), the owner of the local hotel, who asked Chloe to obtain it for some guests who wanted to have a little bump. The cocaine isn't really what concerns Ellie (nor does she care where she got it from, as we learn that she got it from her boyfriend, Dean), as she's more interested in where the £500 came from. But Chloe genuinely doesn't know, and things get far more complicated for the Latimers when Mark (Andrew Buchan) refuses to account for his whereabouts on the night of Danny's death, coming up with a hilariously paper-thin alibi in which he was out drinking with a mate whose name he can't remember. He later employs his co-worker Nigel to lie for him, but his poker face is just as bad, prompting DI Alec Hardy (David Tennant) to further suspect Mark Latimer of his son's murder.

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Things are only made more difficult for Hardy by the profusion of shady characters in Broadchurch: news agent Jack Marshall (David Bradley) tells Hardy about an argument he witnessed Danny having with the local postman, who later claims innocence in the matter, though unconvincingly; there's also Susan Wright (Pauline Quirk), who possesses the keys to the seaside hut that served as the likely murder scene -- she also, surprisingly, has Danny Latimer's missing skateboard tucked away in her closet; and then there's phone engineer Steve Connelly (Will Mellor), who claims to receive "psychic messages" and insists that Danny's death had something to do with a boat. This all compounds Hardy's mysterious physical ailments, for which he pops several pills, which seemingly do little to help. He is determined to solve the case to redeem himself for something that happened while working a case in Sanbrook.

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However, much like Ellie, Hardy's one-track focus occasionally causes him to miss certain things, like the omnipresence of sketchy journalist Karen White (Vicky McClure), the increasing big-break desperation of reporter Olly Stevens (Jonathan Bailey), and the mysterious nature of Ellie's own son, Tom (Adam Wilson), a boy who is clearly hiding something, having deleted his texts and emails from Danny last week. Tom carries over much of his angst about Danny's death into this week, and in some ways, he's kind of a parallel to Mark Latimer. Both are suspicious figures in the case, and both lash out at symbols of fatherhood, as Tom rips his dad (Matthew Gravelle) for insisting that everything will be alright, while Mark Latimer attacks Reverend Coates for daring to speak to the media about Danny's death, claiming that his God left Danny to die. There's plenty of pathos to go around, as each character goes back to the misery buffet for second and third helpings. It can get a bit tiring, but the performances are so uniformly strong that it never really feels like a serious burden to the narrative, at least not at this early point in the story.

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Broadchurch exhibits that there is considerable complexity lurking beneath the surface of this investigation. The solution to Danny's death might eventually prove to be straightforward, but the odds are gradually beginning to suggest otherwise. But the case is less about answers, and more about closure for the characters who populate this town, and who've been irrevocably changed by what has happened.