what the papers saID
“The acclaimed murder mystery set in a Dorset village last night reached a gripping denouement of bone-crunching tension and emotion. Wow, well they pulled it off – and more. The finale of ITV’s murder mystery Broadchurch delivered an extraordinarily rare double: a totally satisfying explanation of the killing, and a great dollop of grief to go with it… Broadchurch has gradually laid hold of the nation’s imagination, and by the start of the final instalment it had it in a vice-like grip… You can’t beat Coleman for realistic acting. As DI Hardy (David Tennant) told her the news, her face did more than crumple; it sucked into its skull. She denied it, she swore, she entered agony… After that acting master-class, the programme went on to do something rather brave. It asked us to be sorry for the paedophile… The plotting never erred, the pacing was superb, and it appealed to notions such as the unknowability of the human heart, and forgiveness. It has been a triumph.”
Serena Davies, The Daily Telegraph, 23 April 2013
“Step aside the dowager duchess. When the murder mystery Broadchurch came to an end on ITV last night, it confirmed its status as the channel’s biggest new drama hit for nearly a decade. The hunt for the killer of schoolboy Danny Latimer, led by two detectives gripped the nation played by former Doctor Who star David Tennant and Olivia Coleman, gripped the nation in a style redolent of “Who shot JR?”…With an average weekly audience of nearly 10 million, Broadchurch catapulted itself into ITV’s stop tier next to Coronation Street and Britain’s Got Talent.”
John Plunkett, The Guardian, 23 April 2013
“In deference to time-shifters, I have been instructed not to say exactly how the final episode of the best British TV thriller for years played out. But I will say that Broadchurch did not deny us the killer’s identity, and the revelation had a sickening inevitability. The writer Chris Chibnall said all along that Broadchurch, although it began with a murder of a teenage boy on a Dorset beach, was never intended as a whodunit, but as an examination of community. His finale kept faith with that. The murderer coughed before the first advert break, the narrative of Danny’s death contained neatly in the space before the next one. That left half an hour to examine the appalling effects of community and family. Just as the drama was not content to bypass the original grieving with a “sorry-for-your-loss”, it was not prepared to make its excuses and leave the town after Hardy, a role David Tennant has excelled in, made his arrest. The programme’s finest scenes followed it, permitting extraordinary acting by Olivia Coleman as DS Ellie Miller. Her transition from comic to dramatic actor appears so complete it is hard to imagine her ever again as Mrs Vicarage in Rev.”
Andrew Billen, The Times, 23 April 2013
“The ITV drama Broadchurch proves that when we put our minds to it, we can do TV whodunnits better than anyone. More plausible than Homeland and faster paced that the interminable The Killing, it was unmissable…”
Sandra Parsons, Daily Mail, 24 April 2013
“It was Joe! Of course it was. The stay-at-home, too-good-to-be-true home-husband of Olivia Colman’s supremely affable Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller. After suspecting every single cast member in turn during the course of a compelling and occasionally brilliant crime thriller that has been widely-touted as Britain’s answer to The Killing, viewers of ITV’s Broadchurch had been steered rather sharply towards Joe as chief suspect last week… With programme set to return to our screens, time perhaps will tell.”
Charlotte Philby, The Independent, 24 April 2013
“So, what are we going to fill our evenings with now, apart from the ceaseless boasting of those guessed the identity of Danny Latimer’s killer on Broadchurch weeks ago? The most audacious coup of ITV’s compelling whodunit was to reveal that, yes, it was the guy who seemed too good to be true… Broadchurch was beautifully paced and shot, lit and scored and slo-mo-ed as dramatically as an Eighties music video, and cast up to the hilt. Coleman is a shoe-in for a BAFTA… Tennant underplayed heroically… Let Chibnall bask in the deserving acclaim for a thoroughly expert slice of entertainment.”
Nick Curtis, Evening Standard, 23 April 2013
“It’s surely the mark of a truly impressive television series that the moment it finishes you realise you’re going to notice it’s absence. I was gripped from the first episode of Broadchurch… There were at least five award-winning performances in Broadchurch (I’ll be amazed if they’re not reflected in the National TV Awards)”
Fergus Kelly, Daily Express, 24 April 2013
“Take the phone off the hook, don’t answer the door… Yes after weeks of guessing, the wait is finally over as Broadchurch reaches its hotly anticipated conclusion… The nation hasn’t been gripped by a mystery of this scale since we were all trying to guess who Kat’s secret lover on Eastenders, and the beauty of this clever series is that it’s kept us scratching our heads until the very end… One thing’s for sure, the suspense is killing us.”
The Sun TV Mag, 20 April 2013
“By now, you either know who killed Danny Latimer or you have not been one of the 7m viewers who have made ITV’s Broadchurch the most cheering TV drama of the season. Cheering may seem an odd word to use in connection with a drama that features eight episodes saturated with a child murder, paedophilia allegations and horrifyingly policing…Broadchurch feels like a game-changer in British whodunnits…has learnt the lesson of The Killing and The Bridge, that can slow burn and dark trauma can grip an audience at least as surely as yet another corpse just before the ad break.”
The Guardian, 23 April 2013