There’s quite a lot wrong with Broadchurch (ITV, Mondays 9pm), the whodunnit set in a village of the damned on the English coast. It’s a village of the guilty, actually – for every character acts guiltily even when they’re alone and even when they’re innocent. Even the victim behaves as if she’s up to no good.
This season she is Trish, a 49-year-old victim of a violent sexual assault. The columnist Peter Hitchens has written furiously about the drama’s depiction of a subjective police force: they instantly believe her and treat anyone who refuses to help their inquiries as a likely culprit.
My problem with the show is that it’s become one plodding cliché after another. The first series of Broadchurch was a triumph of misdirection. The identity of the villain was truly shocking and caused you to re-examine your prejudices towards every character. But season two was a gross misfire and season three is really just a soap. How can you tell? In every scene someone is handing someone else a mug of tea. This is soap-style plotting. It says: the characters are in the middle of doing something and have stopped to share a little exposition.
I already have a theory about who did it and have written a name down on a piece of paper. I suspect that it’ll be a character who brings the three seasons full circle. If I’m wrong, then maybe there’s life in the old dog yet.
Whatever life could be said to exist in The Nightly Show (ITV, weekdays 10pm) needs to be extinguished, fast. Shoot it, throttle it, drown it – whatever it takes to put us out of our misery. This corpse of a chat show has pushed back News At Ten and is so amateurish that it looks like a university student broadcast. Week one was presented by David Walliams, who reportedly made £50,000 per episode. Walliams regularly fluffed his lines and spoke into the wrong camera. Week two, comedian John Bishop took over and proved uncomfortable with an autocue. Guests have included “stars” such as Martin Kemp and Rob Brydon. Orville the Duck was presumably unavailable.
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