Broadchurch

[Alec Hardy's] partnership with the disillusioned Miller, whose help he needs more than he would like to admit, provides the fractious core for an affecting personal and legal drama. [2 Mar 2015, p.12]

The British crime drama's second season immediately reconnects you with everything emotionally riveting about the first one, the raw performances by Olivia Coleman as Ellie Miller; the gruff turn by David Tennant as Det. Alec Hardy; an array of supporting players bringing to life a complex portrait of collective grief.... Cause for worry: the setup for the second mystery, about a case from Hardy's past, clunks. [6 Mar 2015, p.75]

Mostly it’s great to see Tennant and Colman try to put back the pieces of the wrecked lives of Hardy and Miller.

The new season doesn't live up to the original, admittedly, but it's still far above imitators, including Fox's unnecessary remake, "Gracepoint."

While there are still some improbable elements--would the nephew of the killer, Olly Stevens (Jonathan Bailey), really still be allowed to cover a relative's trial?--Broadchurch remains a tense, engrossing drama.

The show no longer has that compelling air of discovery about it, since we know many of the characters well. But still, all of the small-town tensions and relationship undercurrents remain as direct and immediate and engaging as ever.

Season 2 is, from the start, an entirely messier, more contingent affair, enjoyable in a different and, to me, more appealing way.

Fortunately, Broadchurch, created and written by Chris Chibnall, still excels most frequently as a character study--to a notable degree, of all its major characters, who are sketched with vividness and, in almost every case, sympathy and poignance.

The old plot was better than the new ones and that Broadchurch worked much better as a mystery than as a courtroom drama.... The cast, with new members Charlotte Rampling, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, James D'Arcy and Eve Myles, is still wonderful, and the series still has much to offer.

It’s pretty smart and doubly engaging.

The writer has essentially kept just enough from the first season to get away with still calling this Broadchurch while morphing it into what almost feels like an entirely different show. There’s risk in that, but it’s diminished considerably by the actors who have come aboard.

Those who find unremitting gloom too much to bear will be cheered to know that the show’s complicated mysteries and interpersonal dramas may provide sporadic relief. Whether the storytelling will be as good as the acting is too early to say.

The new elements and mostly the performances make it worth staying around to see what other secrets lurk within.

The score is over-heated, the dialogue is more melodramatic, and someone could make a drinking game out of people standing on beaches or cliffs in the wind looking pensive. What saves Broadchurch this season and is likely to keep people from jumping off the bandwagon is the cast, especially the new additions.

The plot threads don't weave a very riveting picture, but Broadchurch Season 2 benefits tremendously from Colman, who remains the heart of the show.

Where the original series had a clear through line and a strong sense of the grief that surrounds murder, the new Broadchurch unsuccessfully juggles several more plots and characters, grafting an older case onto the (surprisingly still ongoing) Latimer case.