Broadchurch 17/04/2017

I know it’s been an inhuman length of time between the final episode of Broadchurch and this blog entry but I’ve been off work poorly and just haven’t had the energy or time to do it. I’ve been itching to though. I was off work for the Easter bank holiday and, despite having felt ill for days, I toyed with the idea of staying up late to blog but by the time the episode concluded, I was really not feeling well. Since then, I've been unable to look at a screen for longer than five minutes without getting a headache so apologies that a) this entry is disgustingly late and b) it may be badly written as I'm still feeling very sorry for myself.

As we all know, last Monday was the final ever episode of Broadchurch and while I felt strangely nostalgic as the final credits rolled, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed with the overall outcome of the “whodunit” storyline. For anyone who hasn’t caught up with the final episode or anyone intending to knuckle down and watch all three series for the first time, it’s probably wise you don’t read this entry as I don’t want to spoil anything for you.

My last blog entry centred around the penultimate episode of Broadchurch, which drew to a close as we learned some DNA had shown up on the sock found in the grounds of Axehampton. In my blog, I predicted that the DNA would be linked to the notoriously creepy taxi driver, Clive Lucas, and I was absolutely right. I also suspected that Clive’s stepson, Michael Lucas, was somehow involved with the attack and again, I was right. My overall guess was that Arthur Tamworth, the owner of Axehampton, was Trish’s attacker and unfortunately, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

It would seem that Chris Chibnall, the mastermind behind Broadchurch, quite simply had created the character of Arthur and his faithful canine companion in order for the dog to discover a vital piece of evidence. They had no other parts to play in the storyline. I have to say: I was disappointed. Surprised and disappointed. Similarly, with the character of the vicar and the woman from Tinder that Miller met for a date, Arthur’s character appeared surplus to requirements. Mentioned a handful of times. Seen occasionally. Seemingly words on a page which were eventually forgotten about. Lazy writing perhaps?

At times, it felt that Chibnall was too afraid that the audience would struggle to maintain an understanding of the previous series if familiar faces didn’t pop up now and again. This was why we were blessed with the somewhat unnecessary ins and outs of the Latimer family. Having said that, in between the harrowing scenes between Miller and Hardy and the self-confessed attacker (spoiler: it was young heartthrob Leo Humphries), there were some really nice moments between Beth and Mark Latimer.

Ultimately, they were accepting that their marriage had ended and we watched as Mark drove away into the sunset in his plumbing van, leaving us to wonder whether he was still suicidal or whether he was simply thoughtful and reminiscent of the years gone by. Rather like ourselves as the audience as we pondered over the three series.

Because the writer and directors and producers have all confirmed that there will be no further episodes of Broadchurch, it leaves an abundance of unanswered questions. That’s the beauty of a final ever episode. It leaves people asking and wondering about what would happen next. People formulate their own theories and others tend to swallow it whole, as there’s nothing else for them to believe.

As I’ve left it a week before writing about this episode, I’ve had time to sit on my questions before typing them out. I’ve followed the hashtags on Twitter and I’ve read what people have had to say. The majority of people were thoroughly impressed with the episode. I wasn’t. And it takes a lot for me to say that, believe me. I was willing them on as much as the next person. More so, probably. I have a lot of time for original British dramas. But I couldn’t help feeling slightly disappointed with what I felt were some questionable decisions.

So, as it would turn out, sixteen-year-old Michael Lucas was the person who raped Trish Winterman but he was essentially bullied into it by Leo, who appeared to have taken a shine to Michael after he saw his stepdad pushing him around during a football match. Over the coming weeks, Leo got closer to Michael, who appeared to idolise him, and eventually Leo worked out that Michael was a virgin. 

After introducing him to some presumably violent porn, Leo offered up his own girlfriend to Michael in a bid for him to gain some experience. The whole scene was very uncomfortable indeed, as neither party appeared thrilled about the prospect of sleeping with one another, and the very fact that it was Leo himself who had initiated it made everyone feel a bit sick.

After getting drunk at Trish’s party, “swaggery little shit” Leo – who initially had his eye on Cath Atwood – spotted Trish in the garden and hit her over the head with a cricket bat. It’s worth pointing out here that Leo carried around some “essentials”, such as rope and a bat, whenever the mood took him so he was well prepared on the night of the party. Drunk and intimidating, he pressured a frightened and tearful Michael into raping Trish.

This was my first disappointment. Yes, I suspected that Michael was somehow involved (for me, it was the part where Hardy was shouting at him and two of his mates for the distribution of pictures of his daughter. Michael looked down the whole time, like a dog when it’s in trouble) but the circumstances of this particular scene were a little hard to digest. Michael was out of his comfort zone. He was with someone he didn’t really know and someone he didn’t trust. This person had forced him into an uncomfortable situation before and he had just watched this person knock a defenceless woman unconscious. All in all, he was a very frightened teenager. He was also drunk.

Thinking logistically, I don’t believe it was possible for him to gain, let alone sustain, an erection.

Throughout the series, Chibnall made it very clear to us that rape isn’t about sex; it’s about power. As such, if it had been Leo who was drunk and frightened, I could imagine that it would be easy for him to still sustain an erection because the situation itself would be arousing for him. But for a young lad, who has only ever had sex once in very uncomfortable circumstances, who doesn’t find rape appealing – then it wouldn’t be about power, would it? He had nothing to gain from raping Trish, unlike Leo who crowed about his crimes afterwards. Michael did not want to rape her. It was not about power for him.

So for him, it would have had to be about sex. Well, sex and a misguided sense of loyalty perhaps. And that’s what I didn’t buy into. Either Michael Lucas was a despicable human being or he was so blasé about his willy that he didn’t care where he put it. Nope. Uh-huh. No. Don’t buy into it for a second. Or was he so desperate to impress Leo that he would commit the ultimate crime, despite his body not obeying his requests? Nope. Don’t believe it.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what Chibnall was attempting to portray: that Leo was so frightening and so intimidating that Michael felt impelled to do as he asked for fear of repercussion. But again, let’s take it back to very crude basics. If he was that frightened and that intimidated (and that drunk), could he have physically carried out the act? Would his body not have betrayed him? I mean, I can think of situations where men’s bodies have let them down and the circumstances in hand were certainly very enjoyable!

And now, I’m going to tackle something that I think needs addressing and no one so far to my knowledge has addressed it. Michael Lucas was clearly gay. There. I’ve said it. It’s clear that the actor himself is gay. I Googled it to see if he had come out and couldn’t find anything but also saw that he’s only eighteen, so perhaps he hasn’t disclosed it. Perhaps Chibnall didn’t write it intentionally, but it was clear to me that the character was gay too. There was a scene between Michael and Leo, where Michael was just gazing at his idol, so taken with him that his responses remained monosyllabic.

Again, if Michael didn’t attack Trish for the powerful feeling it gave him, then what on earth was it about? If my understanding is correct and that Michael was gay, it wasn’t about sex either. And, again rather crudely, could he have sustained an erection? He was frightened, he was drunk, he was disgusted and he was being coerced into an act with a gender he wasn’t attracted to?

So, if we think about the fact that he gained an erection, sustained it enough to carry out the heinous crime and (presumably) climaxed from it, it’s pretty safe to say that although he was forced into it, he must have had some enjoyment from it, which I can’t and won’t accept.

I understand Michael was lonely and at an impressionable age and Leo had groomed him into behaving uncharacteristically, but I would’ve liked to have been convinced by this instead of having to cram the moments leading up to the attack into a fifteen-minute segment. With hindsight, it would have been better for the attacker to have been revealed at the end of the penultimate episode and for the whole of the final episode to have been dedicated to the reveal. Dare I say, it felt a little rushed.

All in all, it was a little hard to swallow.

It actually reminded me of a play I wrote a few years back. The story centred around a group of teenage girls, one of whom is constantly belittled by the leader of the pack, to the point where when she’s pushed and pushed and pushed, she snaps and eventually, under immense pressure to do so, she sets fire to another student. I entered the play for an award when I was twenty-two and it came third, which sounds terrific but there were only four plays to choose from, although it had been shortlisted to get to that stage, so it didn’t do too badly I suppose.

Because I was a finalist, I was given very specific feedback on the play and, like with any feedback I got back then, I digested it and took it to heart. This is something I have been working on ever since. About three years later, I had someone say to my face in the bar after my play had been performed that I was disgusting and talentless and I laughed and carried on drinking my wine. I’ve learned to love criticism but I really struggled with it at first.

Anyway, the point I’m making is that the feedback I got was that the story wasn’t “entirely believable” as “no one would go to those lengths to impress a friend”. I was bitter about it for weeks, months even, as I huffed and puffed about what to do. Eventually, about three months later, I saw the person who gave the feedback in the bar after a play (I’m sensing a pattern here) and over a glass of wine, we talked about my play and what he thought had gone wrong.

I explained that the fire wasn’t because one character was attempting to impress another and that it was more about a power struggle incorporated with that feeling when you see someone do something awful to another person in a public place but you’re too scared to say anything for fear they’ll turn on you. Combining that with the crippling teenage anxiety of being friendless, I believed the character was genuinely capable of her crime.

By the end of the conversation, he understood the reasoning behind the play a lot more and was genuinely intrigued by how it came about. A few months later, there was a story in the papers about two teenage schoolgirls who’d killed their teacher and I sent him the article in a Facebook message, where each girl blamed the other for bullying. In a weird way, it was relieving to know that this type of thing actually happened but I’ve never forgotten that feedback and now if I’m watching something that I can’t buy into, I think about what they could have done to have strengthened it a bit more.

In terms of Broadchurch, perhaps we could’ve seen more of Leo and Michael’s friendship or maybe it could’ve ended with Michael saying he couldn’t rape Trish, so Leo pushed him out of the way and did it himself? Regardless, I’m not entirely convinced about the reveal of the true attacker and I felt more could have been done. An unpopular opinion, I know, but that’s just how I feel.

While I’m on the topic of unpopular opinions, I actually voiced what I’m about to say on Twitter and received public scrutiny in abundance, so here goes: I felt that Chibnall implied that porn was bad. Let’s be honest. We’re all grown ups here. Who hasn’t watched porn? Despite what you might say to your friends or to a prospective partner perhaps, we all watch it or have done at some point in our lives. It’s perfectly legal, assuming that the pornography you view is of consenting adults, and perfectly normal, given the fact that we currently live in a society where almost all of us possess a smart phone – and if you don’t, you’re considered to be the weird one.

I am twenty-seven years old. My teenage years took place in the early noughties. I am part of the internet generation. There is nothing that we don’t know about the internet. Last week, someone I used to work with uploaded a photo of a pair of tanned, slim legs propped up by a stunning turquoise pool with the caption “No Monday blues for me”. Picturesque, some might say. I, however, instantly recognised the photo as one shared by a very successful travel blogger not two days earlier. I screenshotted it and sent it over to my mate instantly on What’s App and we both had a giggle. She reverse Google image searched it and found a handful of other websites, mostly swimwear and travel sites, who had already stolen the image.

That’s the world we currently live in. Fast paced and dependent on technology. We’ve gone from chatting over MSN Messenger after school to dramatically rearranging our MySpace top eight to using a telephone to take a photo, using software to edit it and posting it somewhere with a variety of hashtags to gain an income. We are the internet generation. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

So, when Ellie Miller discovered her sixteen-year-old son was watching porn on his mobile phone and, horrified, she subsequently banned him from using it, then smashed it to smithereens when he continued, you’ll forgive me when I say I burst out laughing. Come on, Chibnall, you find me any sixteen-year-old lad who isn’t watching porn whenever he’s alone. In fact, you find me any sixteen-year-old lad who isn’t having sex whenever the opportunity arises. It’s a fact of life. People watch porn. It’s normal. I’m tempted to break the taboo here and say: it’s healthy. Again, I will reiterate here that I am talking about ordinary porn featuring consenting adults.

Before anyone starts preaching at me, I’ll say here and now that I understand the difference between ordinary porn and the type of porn that Leo Humphries was watching and distributing. Of course, the footage that he had captured of his own attacks was outrageous, illegal and disturbing. But I think Chibnall had a responsibility to his audience in demonstrating that not all pornography is outrageous and disturbing. He had a duty to highlight that not everyone who watches porn is watching violent, extreme porn and that watching porn doesn’t have to be a solo activity: it is a totally normal part of some couples’ relationships.

Miller was understandably upset when she discovered the porn on her son’s phone, particularly as the school had been so blasé about why they thought he was interested in it, but as far as we knew, the footage she stumbled across on this phone was ordinary porn. Not illegal. He was sixteen for crying out loud. Legally old enough to get married and have a family of his own.

I was expecting a scene between Miller and her son where she sat down and spoke to him about the different types of porn. We almost had this scene, where Miller, her son and her father were eating dinner and Ellie shut her father down when he spouted some misogynistic crap. That’s what I adored about her. She was a magnificent ambassador for saying what was needed when other people would be more concerned about remaining PC. I was a little disappointed that she was so closed minded about her son watching porn. What would she have done if she’d found a box of condoms in his room or, God forbid, walked in and found him kissing a girl?

What I will say is bravo to the cast and crew of Broadchurch for portraying a true depiction of rape. When I heard that the third series was focusing on a rape storyline, I thought it would be a young girl walking home from a night out where she takes a shortcut through a field and is raped and murdered. For the victim to still be very much alive and able to reveal her attacker at any time was a brave move, particularly for a drama series which has centred around a whodunit murder mystery for the past four years.

I thought it was impressive that the drama tackled any preconception about rape victims and rapists. Leo Humphries was a good-looking lad, in good shape and reasonably well spoken. He was popular, seemingly well liked and well educated. He was an excellent football player and a familiar face in the local community. The bottom line is: he was totally normal and, more importantly, he was cool.

Of course, we know that sex offenders come in all shapes and sizes, all ages and creeds, but again, I thought it was brave and impressive that Chibnall chose the best-looking bloke to be the monster. Leo didn’t fit with society’s views of a rapist. Society would typically depict Aaron Mayford to be the monster or any nearby bloke in a dirty raincoat.

Interestingly, Leo wasn’t the least bit remorseful for his crimes. He was smug, as he bragged to Miller and Hardy about his past crimes and smirked, chillingly, as he said “it was just sex”. But that was just it – it wasn’t sex. Not even remotely. But it was frightening how much he genuinely believed he had just had sex with these women; an alarming paradox to Brock Turner’s defence and attitude towards women.

As for the character of Trish, she was the same as you or I: a normal woman, who enjoyed a drink and a cigarette. She was no angel, having slept with her best mate’s husband. She was middle aged, normal looking, average build and leading a totally ordinary life. And that’s what was so important for the storyline. Horrifying though it is to face, anyone can be raped: whether they’re tall, small, fat, thin, stunning, normal, have a fabulous job, are on the dole, are blind drunk, are teetotal or are just walking in the garden at their best friend’s birthday party.

When the truth of the attack had been revealed to Trish, there was a moment which really stuck with me. Upon learning that she didn’t know the person who had raped her and that he didn’t know her, Trish said, “So, I was just unlucky?” It absolutely killed me. That was the bottom line. She really had been unlucky, as ridiculous as it sounds to liken being raped to losing your car keys. And that was what I loved the most about the entire series: it was a horrible and uncomfortable situation, but it could happen to anyone and according to the Rape Crisis UK website, eleven adults are raped in the UK every hour.

Now I understand why it was so important that a TV programme such as Broadchurch, which pulled in 8.7 million viewers on its final episode, portrayed a terrifyingly accurate portrayal of a rape. While the final episode may not have tickled my fancy a hundred percent, I have to admit that it satisfied our curiosities and it concluded in a way that didn’t make me want to rip my own hair out. It was oddly beautiful, just in a different way than I’d imagined.

So, what happens next?

Well, I’ve been hooked on Line of Duty and I’ve just started watching a brand new drama series, “Born to Kill” which started last week on Channel 4. I have a feeling I may blog about that one. If you see anything else you think I may like, let me know 😊 Thanks for reading! x