Previous recaps: Episode 1 | Episode 2
SPOILERS follow for Episode 3 of Broadchurch Series 2:
Now that was just depressing.
Except for Beth’s awesomely uneventful birth at home. She would’ve had more post-birth euphoria without the pethidine, but I’m not surprised she needed it with Ellie there stressing the hell out of her.
Miller and Hardy
First we have a delightful tiff between the two of them, culminating in Ellie throwing her car keys at Hardy (“I hope you bloody well crash and have a heart attack while you are crashing!”).
That courtroom scene was shocking in its relentless insistence that Ellie and Hardy were/are having an affair. As the audience, we know it’s not true, but the evidence is so damning. The mixture of emotions on David Tennant’s face were simply perfect.
Bishop versus Knight
We’re slowly finding out more about these new characters. Sharon Bishop’s son is in prison—somewhere a very long drive away. Bishop has made another direct to the jugular strike with her examination of Ellie Miller on the stand, after first setting up via cross-examination of Alec Hardy that Ellie had access to the “family computer” where the emails between Danny and (apparently) Joe were found.
Meanwhile we discover that Jocelyn Knight has an elderly mother in care and she’s deeply in arrears with the bills. She requires Ben to read all the documentation onto audio for her (more hints that there might be something wrong with her vision, or perhaps she’s dyslexic). But then we have Jocelyn in a single-vehicle car crash. Things are not looking good for the prosecution.
Sandbrook
After making a complaint to the police and forcing poor Hardy to apologise to him in front of a uniformed police officer, Lee Ashworth rocks up at the blue lair and dumps a whole whack of evidence in Hardy’s lap. Apparently Ashworth’s been playing detective himself, and the clues he has found all point to the Gillespie brothers—the fathers of the missing/deceased girls.
Claire tells Ellie that Lee drugged her that night and she woke at 5AM to find him cleaning the whole house. This only serves to make Ellie suspicious of Claire, and she confronts Hardy—who admits he, too, has Claire on his list of suspects and was “protecting” her so she wouldn’t leave the country.
A thin episode, plot-wise, but Jocelyn’s car crash and the accusation of an affair between Ellie and Hardy ended it on a breathless note.
Next: Episode 4
