Photo Source: ITV
The plot thickened last week on Broadchurch. More suspects were added to the list as we learned more about what happened that Saturday night, as well as some surprising information on Trish.
Hardy and Miller spent the majority of the episode interviewing possible suspects and witnesses from Cath and Jim’s party. Some of this time added suspicion to people already on our list, while other suspects came out of the woodworks (We’ll get into those specifics in our suspect list below).
While Hardy and Miller worked on the case, Beth Latimer began working with Trish. Her job is to be a sort of support (not a counselor) to women who’ve been sexually assaulted. While getting to know her and supporting her, Beth also encouraged Trish to give her official recorded statement to the police. As Hardy put it, the longer they go without an official statement, the longer this rapist goes around without consequence. Finally, Hardy didn’t give her much choice and gave her a day and time to come in. This didn’t sit well with Beth or Miller, but he was adamant that they can’t progress without it. During her statement she admitted to taking Lucas’s cab to the party (whom she’s also been on sort of a date with). At the party she talked to a few men, but mostly women. She had about 7 drinks in total and not much food. Around 11, she went outside for a smoke and her husband came out and got on her about drinking too much and smoking, then he went back in, supposedly, and her attacker called her over and the rest is history.
The most interesting bit from her testimony is what came at the end, though. Miller asked her when she’d last had sex (before the attack), and after some hesitation, she admitted that she’d just had consensual, unprotected sex that morning before the party. When they asked who with, she hesitated again and said it was a stranger she met online. Now, that could be true, and she just hesitated because she was ashamed, or she could be covering something else up. I hate to discount any of a rape victim’s story, but Broadchurch is good at making everyone seem suspicious.
Elsewhere, the presence of Danny Latimer is never really gone, but people don’t really care about church and God anymore. Reverend Paul expressed his disappointment to Maggie while she complained to him about the Broadchurch Echo being shut down. He went further to say that he has more to offer people than just supporting them when they’re going through tough times. Just a few scenes later, we see Mark fixing something for Paul in the church, and he’s complained about how he’s always angry about Joe Miller and nothing he’s done has been able to help him. It seems like this anger is what caused his split with Beth. To me, it seemed to foreshadow Mark turning to God to help him move on.
With the majority of this week’s plot taken care of, let’s move on to our growing suspect list:
- Jim Atwood– He still seems shady as hell to me. I know he agreed to give DNA and gave a list of partygoers, but he got nervous when Hardy started looking at his stuff, and he sure had a lot of questions.
- Lucas the Cab Driver– shady cab driver from last week has shot all the way up to number 2 this week! We know he took Trish to the party. We know he’s driven her before. We know they went on a date and she turned him down after that (something he didn’t disclose to the police). And we know his radio went out at 10:30 and he didn’t go back to his station to get a new one. That’s a lot of creepy evidence right there.
- Ian Winterman– Trish’s husband (they’re separated) seems pretty bitter about her current behaviors. He claims that she’s been sleeping around and drinking and smoking a lot. He also admitted he got hammered at the party. This led me to believe that he couldn’t have done such a planned out assault, but then he refused to give DNA and was seen scrubbing his clothes and shoes. Shady.
- Ed Barnett– Trish’s boss who seems to be a real tool. Cath doesn’t like him either and Jim fought with him at the party. Of course, his daughter works with him at the station and she secretly went to warn him he’s being looked into as a suspect. ThEN, later that night, Trish received a text telling her to ‘Shut up or else’. Real Shady.
- Line and Rope Guy– Hardy and Miller went to him for rope samples and he was NOT cooperative. He could just be an entitled ass. Or he could be a rapist. He stays on the list for now.
As you can see, I used the word shady about a thousand times because that’s what this all is. Chris Chibnall and his gang of writers successfully make everyone look shady. So you just don’t know who it really could be. It’s safe to say, though, at this point, we probably HAVE been introduced to the culprit.
