Joe Has To Be Back For S3 - Blog Posts

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?