Chibnall on Broadchurch

Even though Chris Chibnall seems to have taken lessons from the Mighty Moff on how to keep informations to himself, EntertainmentWeekly has still managed to talk a bit about Broadchurch with him. Of course, if your only motivation to read that rather longish interview is to find some hints dealing with season 2, then save your time and don't read it. The only paragraph in which it gets mentioned reads: 

Literally, as I stand here talking to you now, I am standing one foot away — I’ve now moved, just for the theater of it — in front of the board which has the whole of the first episode plotted out on it. Every single bit of the first episode, I’m looking at now… And that’s all I’m gonna tell you. [...] We know what we’re doing. And I’m really excited about it. For people who are wondering, I promise we have interesting stories still to tell.

The biggest part of the interview features some fascinating production stories, explaining the idea behind certain scenes and why he wanted to do and to shoot some of them in a certain way.

The only point which some may think of as news is that Chibnall is going to be pretty much involved into the American remake.

I’ve written the first episode and I’ll be an executive producer on it. There’s a whole team coming into place on that, and Fox will decide whether they go forward with it. [...] I think there’s a really great opportunity to make something that is hopefully as good if not better than the British version. I’m very, very fascinated to see this story in a different landscape with an acting ensemble that’s just as strong but taken from really great American actors. The DNA of the original is absolutely intact and filtered through a new prism, so it should still feel just as vibrant, and interesting, and strange, and unique, and beautiful, but just in a different setting — and then it’s exploring the dramatic opportunities that that offers up. We’re not gonna do the terrible version. We’re gonna do a great version.

Thousand Little Secrets Part 7 & 8

'Broadchuch' starts to be one of the best crime series out there (and we're getting another season, whoo-hoo). And they're right to do so, because episode 7 and 8 were just awesome. It had pacing, it kept us thinking and finally the police started to investigate, something they could have done several episodes earlier. Still, the last two parts were pretty exciting, so let's forget about the really long-ish middle part.  And I for my part would have never guessed Danny's killer. So Chibnall did his best to compensate the audience for episode 2-6.

Maybe the most outstanding thing about 'Broadchurch' is that it did not end with the police getting the killer, as the big who-done-it mystery was resolved right after 15 minutes into the last episode. Because of this the biggest part of the final story was about how the people were coping with the fact that Joe committed the murder. And this is something you do not get to see often in a crime series. Besides, it was not too dramatical, at least not if you take the usual standards for crime-dramas into account. Even the most dramatic scene, when Ellie learns that it was her husband, was done in a rather realistic way. It fit. The emotion, the way her boss breaks the news to her, her refusing to believe it, and her reaction when she sees that it's true after all. You could see how the information was sinking in and numbing her. Or Danny's family. Well, actually it was numbing the whole community, somehow. In the end everything came down to an accident. Ironically, only minutes before killing Danny, Joe prevented him from committing suicide... By this, Chibnall didn't need to come up with a plausible motive. There simply wasn't one, which is the best explanation for a murder case, because it's the most difficult to investigate. To be fair, without Joe's confession there would have been a good chance of them never solving the case.

So, ITV agreed to a 2nd season. And I'm happy to hear that Chibnall had plans for this all along. Let's hope that him saying  "I mentioned that if people liked it, there was another very different story we could tell afterwards" does not mean that we'll get only one additional season. Well, I guess it's difficult to explain why all of a sudden Broadchurch's crime rate should rocket sky. They are a pretty small community after all, and an additional murder case (or another sort of crime) must have a huge impact on their statistics. Of course there's still the unsolved Sandbrook case which needs investigation, so that might be an option without affecting the local crime rate... But maybe Chibnall is also up to something else.

Anyway. 'Broadchurch' got me hooked. No matter what Chibnall's plans are for the future, he can be sure I'll be watching.