The Irony Of Chris Chibnall For Me Is Not The Fact That He Is My Favorite Television/film Writer. A Lot

Broadchurch, with a mythological twist. Will probably be part 1 of a series, but one thing at a time. Also, I think I’ve written Mark Latimer as a truly depraved individual, and he’s starting to scare me.

‘The Book Thief’ tells the fictional story of a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany in 1939. When the story begins Liesel Meminger cannot read but by stealing an old copy of ‘A Gravedigger’s Handbook’ she convinces her foster father to teach her slowly how to read. Along the way Liesel begins to understand the awful and awesome power of words as a political world built on a dictator’s own words spells death and destruction for millions of people. The story itself is narrated by Death as he travels to and fro from place to place and the entire narrative is spun with a bleak, black sense of humor and sense of human understanding as Death spends his days living in the filth and destruction of wars and murders and, at rare moments, kindness and beauty even at the very end.

One of my favorite things about Broadchurch is that you always find something new that Chibnall has slipped in that’s a nod to some of the greats of British culture. Thomas Hardy not withstanding, one of my favorite moments actually came in S2, episode 1, when we see Alec being interviewed by Maggie and Ollie. At the point at which she points out the cliffs behind him and that they’re starting to crumble more and slide farther down we see him look behind him. 

We get a good look at the mess of the beach as the camera pans around his shoulder and we get a good glimpse of what it looks like to Alec himself too. What he mutters is that nod to one of England’s poets.

“Things fall apart” is just a small piece quoted from William Butler Yeats’ poem ‘, ‘The Second Coming’, the full stanza reading:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;    The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity.”

Yeats’s poem alludes to the poet’s belief that history runs in cycles of 2,000 years, and at the end of every cycle a new hierarchy would rule.

But Chibnall cleverly uses this line to show us just where his characters are following Joe’s arrest. Clearly nothing has gotten better. There’s still tension. People who have been best friends for years have had their friendships destroyed. Ellie has been estranged from her home, her town, and even her own son with the blame others have placed upon her.

And being the outsider, Alec can understand and see that perfectly. He’s still obsessed with Sandbrook and solving the case that had to have had split that town open at the seams. The irony of the situation of the cliffs starting to crumble away faster sets the tone of the story and understanding the poem from which Alec quoted is a clue as to how the story will go, I think.

“Mere anarchy” is the center of the storm and the guilty party himself: Joe Miller, and he sets up the whirlwind that threatens to flatten Broadchurch with his ‘not guilty’ plea. He fails to recognize his guilt in Danny’s death and tries to shift it onto others. In some ways he creates anarchy by refusing to stand up to what he has done wrong.

“The blood-dimmed tide” and “ceremony of innocence” can be nods to the victims of Sandbrook, Lisa Newberrie and Pippa Gillespie. Lisa dies with her blood all over the floor of the Ashworths’ home which in turn starts the Sandbrook case itself. For Ricky’s murder of Lisa, his daughter Pippa will pay the price. And of course the ceremony of innocence being “drowned” can only point to one thing:

“The best lack all conviction” can (mostly) be put towards Jocelyn Knight, who in the beginning of the story is apathetic to the trial of Joe and wants no part of the outside world. She’s lost her conviction in the light of her loss of eyesight and although she ultimately decides to take the Latimers’ case she starts it off unsure.

And of course Jocelyn’s hesitation and Mark’s secrets he keeps from the prosecution paves the way for the one who can only be labelled as the “worst with passionate intensity”:

Sharon Bishop really makes me mad. Let me say that.

At the end of the poem Yeats concludes by asking, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

The second series ends with Joe’s being found innocent and his banishment from the town but it appears that Ellie warning him away from his own sons is going to come full circle at some point soon.

What rough beast will be born from that?

Throughout all of my recent research into Ulysses S Grant and William T Sherman, I realized that we were never really taught in school about the Western Theatre of the Civil War; i.e., Grant’s mostly-successful campaigning around the States of Kentucky, and Tennessee, and Missouri. It’s his and others’ victories there that later helped win the Mississippi River and cut the Confederacy in two.

But what do we learn about in Social Studies/History? Gettysburg. Fort Sumter. Bull Run/Manassas. Antietam. In other words, the Eastern Theatre of the War. And those battles were dominated by incompetent Union commanders for a large majority of them: McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, McClellan again-- men who were more likely to retreat at the very cusp of victory than jump forward and seize the day. It’s bad enough learning about the Eastern Theatre that I remember saying to my parents that with such incompetent commanders the Union deserved to lose the Civil War.

I understand that History class has only so much time to teach students, and I understand that the Civil War is too big to teach in-depth, but why do we focus so much on McClellan and Lee, Hooker and Lee, Burnside and Lee, Meade and Lee, and brush over such an important part of the War as the Western Theatre? We effectively forget about Grant and Sherman until they’ve entered the Eastern campaign, let alone all of their fellow commanders and soldiers, and their years of fighting to take back and then keep the Mississippi in Union hands.

Martha Jones ✨

I think my love and adoration of the Twelfth Doctor can be summed up in the fact that he’s the only Doctor I can imagine who would, without a hint of fear or angst-ridden pathos, respond to a Dalek with an exasperated, eyerolling “Oh for fuck’s sake.”

The moment when one of your new favorite books references/reads like your absolute favorite poem. Dear God what is it with all these awesome parallels to Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’? My fangirling cannot be contained!

The more I watch Peter Capaldi the more I NEED him to make an appearance on Broadchurch.

Preferably as Alec’s dad. Think of the drama. And the eyebrows. And the loud Scottish angry outbursts.

Maybe I'm stating what is completely obvious and I'm just somehow missing it, but I don't think Ian has anything to do with Trish's raping. I think he's got a hand in distributing the pornography around for the kids to see, which is why he wanted that laptop so badly.