Broadchurch - Recap: Parental Guidance

Suspicion would most likely fall on the guy who looks most like Nigel in the dark, Ellie's husband, Joe (Matthew Gravelle). But that, too, seems a bit crazy to believe, if only because the show hasn't really given us any cause to suspect him. And again, maybe that's the point. We can't really know who killed him just yet, because we don't really know why he was killed. In the absence of motive, everyone remains a suspect, yet at the same time, nobody seems all that credible a suspect. That's part of the strength of Broadchurch's storytelling, since so much of the narrative hinges on the prejudices of the town, and the festering paranoia among the townspeople that perhaps they don't know each other as well as they'd like to think. It's a narrative through-line that carries over into tonight's solid hour.

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After collapsing last week, Hardy (David Tennant) refuses to remain in the hospital, despite Ellie's (Olivia Colman) anger and concern over his neglecting to reveal the nature of his condition. But Hardy is nothing if not defined by his determination to seeing this case through, and now that Susan Wright (Pauline Quirke) is in custody, they have a real shot at closing the case if what she tells them bears out. And it turns out she has a lot to reveal. The reason she was so secretive about her past? The same reason she didn't want editor Maggie Radcliffe (Carolyn Pickles) digging around in her personal life? She reveals that her husband, an electrician, used to have sex with the oldest of their two daughters, but she didn't know. The girl ended up "getting herself killed," and after a while, people started asking questions, at which point the police arrested the husband. The husband then lied and claimed that Susan had known about the abuse the entire time, prompting social services to take away her other daughter, as well as the child she had been pregnant with at the time: Nigel, whom she claims she saw disposing of Danny's body on the beach. "How could you not know?" Ellie asks her, in reference to her having had no knowledge of what was going on with her husband under her own roof, but the series thrives on showing just how little people know about what's going on in their own homes, as evidenced by the Latimers.

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The Latimers receive counseling from Reverend Coates (Arthur Darvill), and what follows is seven episodes' worth of barely-restrained hurt and aggression boiling to the surface. I'm convinced that there are very few actresses on TV right now who could pull off the balancing act that Jodie Whittaker has to achieve with the character of Beth. She has to be equal parts pained and angry, while never losing the audiences' sympathy. In that sense, she has to be sympathetic in her own right, and not simply because she lost a child. Yet she's able to make her character engaging by couching her emotions in very real places: the fear that she failed as a mother, that she's not good enough as a wife or a woman. On these latter points, Beth knows deep down that she's no failure, and that in some ways she's a much better woman than Mark (Andrew Buchan) is a man, yet she has to see these nagging doubts through if she's ever going to get over them. The exploration of her character in that scene is beautiful, as is Andrew Buchan's portrayal of Mark as a man who's trying to win back his family and atone for his own manifest failings. Even at this late stage of the season, Broadchurch has never once faltered as one of TV's best ensemble dramas.

As for the investigation, the bombshells aren't through for the Latimers. At dinner, Chloe's boyfriend, Dean, reveals that Danny had been going on excursions with him and Nige to catch animals. To add to the troubling nature of the secrets Danny kept from his family, Reverend Coates tells Hardy that Tom (Adam Wilson) and Danny weren't really best friends after all, as they hadn't been getting along in the weeks before Danny's murder. He gives Hardy Tom's smashed laptop, and we learn that there is retrievable data contained on the hard drive. Yet as Danny's mysteries slowly begin to unravel, so do Hardy's, as he finally gives in to Maggie, Karen and Olly, and agrees to an exclusive interview with the Echo to reveal the details of the Sanbrooke case.

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As it turns out, Hardy isn't the villain in the Sanbrooke case at all. He wasn't actually responsible for the loss of evidence that led to the release of the murderer, it was his wife, who was having an affair and lost the evidence while meeting with her beau. In order to prevent his daughter from seeing her mother's name smeared in the papers, Hardy took the blame and nearly destroyed his own career in the process. This note of noble sacrifice represents the overarching theme in this episode of protection. Beth feels as though she's failed to protect Danny, while Ellie asserts that she would do whatever it took to protect her son had he been in Danny's position. Even Susan Wright speaks to this theme, swearing that she didn't know what was being done to her own daughters, and blaming herself for her failure to prevent her ex-husband from doing his horrifying deed. Hardy has never been shown to be the most moral character on the show, but he has a clear-cut sense of right and wrong, and a determination to see right win the day. And so it is here, as he soldiers on in the investigation despite the threat of his cardiac arrhythmia. “I can still solve this. Otherwise, why am I still here?” he tells Ellie. With one more episode to go, he's more than likely going to have his chance at vindication.

More than any episode so far, this provided an exploration into the possible whys of Danny's murder, as much as the investigation into the culprit. I've said before that Broadchurch isn't really about the who or the why so much as the effect of the what, but it's hard to argue that the Danny Latimer case isn't among TV's more compelling crime mysteries. Episodes like these go a long way in furthering that notion.