Hacker Cinema
Broadchurch
2013 · TV series · 3 seasons
Created by Chris Chibnall
The murder of a young boy in a small coastal town brings a media frenzy, which threatens to tear the community apart.
6 positive1 mixed3 neutralfrom 10 commenters
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10 comments on Hacker News
My take is quite different. EVERYONE in Broadchurch is at least nearly-criminally incompetent.
"Ooh, I'm an investigative detective in a homicide. I think I'll forget myself and beat up somebody in lockup!"
"What's that, evidence? I think I'll withhold it for minor personal reasons."
"Hey, there's a pedophile investigation going on. I think I'll lie about my 'alone time' with a teenage boy to EVERYONE, just to avoid arousing suspicion..."
Tennant's advantage is that, in season one, he's not emotionally tied up in this completely tangled small town. He's got some professional competencies over Miller, but not many.
This is directly relevant to my wife's and my reading of the David Tennant & Olivia Coleman vehicle Broadchurch.
David Tennant's character is notably very bad at his job; that's why he got exiled to a backwater town. He bungled his last case so badly it made national news. In an American police procedural, we would either have some mitigating explanation for his failure, or at least some gritty vice or personal demon that was the real reason he got demoted.
In Broadchurch, Tennant's character just sucks at his job. Every episode of the show conforms to a formula where he gets suspicious of one of the other characters in the show and we spend the episode wasting time while it's finally determined that the suspect of the week is actually innocent. I have to say, it makes for entertaining television. It also resulted in my wife and I chorusing aloud, every episode, "he's SO BAD at his job!!"
(Minor Broadchurch spoilers) At the end when he finally catches the big bad, it's not because of anything he did. A coincidence and some carelessness on the part of the big bad lead to the mystery being solved. Also, every other character on the show had already been ruled out.
Since watching it we've kept a lookout for protagonists who embody the "everyman in way over his head who accomplished virtually nothing himself" archetype. It's fun to know Adams held forth on the very subject.
I remember when the TV show Broadchurch came out, and David Tennant's character made tea in the microwave, and there was national uproar in Britain.
Later several scientific articles pointed out this is actually a better way to make tea.
This event, along with Brexit and Covid, will surely be recognised by historians as the beginning of the downfall of the UK
> because they don’t have a lot of great content actually imo.
At the rate I watch new TV/Web series, there are enough in Netflix right now to last me 2-3 years.
The recsys is shit.
After I search and manually add shows to my watchlist, I see them as recced and with 98% match.
I never see shows I would really like recced to me by the recsys.
I always find shows by word-of-mouth and by searching You.com (prev Google). I just search what I want. I see many lists appear on the results.
I take a mental note of series appearing in multiple lists and synopsis liked by me. This is how I discovered Broadchurch, Bosch, and Mozart in the Jungle.
I used to browse Reddit a lot (had to cut it due to lack of time) and watched shows and movies that came up a lot during free discussion or viral askreddits or some weekly threads.
This is how I discovered Clue (1982), Superbad, etc.
Weird article
> How much do we need to know about a TV detective to be invested in a whodunnit?
There are tons of shows that do exactly that. Turn on a random CBS procedural and you will get exactly that- 40 mins of by the numbers crime solving with a smartass quip thrown in every once in while.
On the other hand there are options for those who are bored by the repetitiveness of crime solving in these shows and get more invested when the characters in the show are full blown people not just vehicles for crimes to happen or be solved (say True Detective (Season 1) or Broadchurch).
I am sure there is a market for both these things and options for viewers that are interested in either option (or even both depending on their mood). Let the free market sort it all out. Not sure why the author of this article is so outraged.
> As one of the showrunners of Lost, Damon Lindelof was as responsible as anybody for the backstory epidemic, creating a time-hopping narrative tangle that concluded with a crushing disappointment.
> On his next show, The Leftovers, he learned his lesson and leaned into his characters’ reactions to the mysterious disappearance of 2% of humanity rather than the reasons for the event. Trauma was the cake rather than the icing, and therefore taken seriously. In becoming so comfortable with complexity and ambiguity, Lindelof made one of the finest shows of the decade.
Another strange argument, even if some people were disappointed by the LOST ending it was still one of the most popular shows of its era and is to this day considered to be one of the best shows ever made both in the critic and regular person circles.
On the other hand The Leftovers was widely panned in its first Season and was never a popular success. While it has its ardent fans, it's never going to come close to having the popular success or impact on tv as LOST did.
I like both shows. Like everything else it is not one or the other, you can have both and let people choose.
This entire article comes across as: "these are the things I like and anyone who likes what I don't like is wrong and everyone should only make art that fits my personal sensibilities" eventhough nothing is stopping the author to keep liking the things he likes and let others enjoy things they like. There is no shortage of content out there.
Regretfully I dont know any Dutch tv show. Your best bet are Nordic detective shows, they seem to produce a lot for some reason. Even Broadchurch, which is British, is good at portraying that kind of "I wont bite my tongue" person.
I agree with this. I really like the way European shows often allow each season to be standalone, if it ends on that season the story is fully wrapped up. Broadchurch is a good example of this. If the show ended after season 1 it was great, season 2 was good as well and if there is no season 3, then its not an issue, no dangling plotlines. Bodyguard was like this too.
Nobel, a Norwegian show was like this as well, 1 season and it was great, no more was needed. If there is another season awesome but nothing is lost plotwise.
These are all shows I found via netflix.
Top of the lake, broadchurch, sharp objects. Those are all tv series.
I liked "U Turn" https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0120399/ (set in small town Arizona)
I've heard good things about Shetland and Broadchurch, but I'm yet to watch them.
I signed up for that a year ago and everytime I am reminded of its existence, I kick myself for not using it more often. Especially a time like now when the TV shows my wife and I used to watch are not on and we are looking for something new.
Just finished Broadchurch over the holidays, very entertaining for those interested. BBC murder mystery