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This analysis of the community and its institutions in Broadchurch has shown that the series makes full use of the range of traditional characters, motifs, and plot elements of crime drama and crime fiction in order to dramatise the process of change the town is facing. The institutions whose representation has been explored previously, i.e. the types of institutions and the ways in which they become involved in the plot, are part of these conventions. In the following, I will analyse more specifically how the crimes themselves, the murderers, and the constellation, self-conception, and behaviour of the investigating officers emphasise and negotiate social change. Throughout the first series, the media and the police point out again and again how the murder “may have changed [the] town forever (S1/E5, 00:03), how it may “run a crack through the community” (S1/E8, 00:33), and that the “investigation has left its mark on a close-knit town” (S1/E8, 00:37). In fact, the crime and investigation are a means to bring to light cracks and marks that are already in place – or, as both the detectives and the townspeople fear, the crimes themselves might be manifestations of a general cultural coarsening and brutalisation, a sign that traditional values and moral guidelines of social behaviour are on the wane.

Visually, the series often uses a technique that seems to highlight the opposition between the crimes and the setting, presenting beautiful and serene views of nature, which in their purity and calm create an eerie contrast to the crimes that have been committed there. In the first series, these are mainly the cliffs, the beach and the sea; in the third one, the well-kept lawns and greenery of Axehampton House make it hard to believe that Trish should have been raped in this place.1 The camera work makes the most of this contrast, at one point slowly moving away from the crime scene until the humans are no longer visible and all that remains is the impression of green nature – and, of course, the knowledge of what has happened there, and the voice of Alec calling the forensics team (S3/E1, 00:28). In the case of Axehampton House, the series plays with further contrasts beside this first one of natural beauty and human depravation: secondly, there is also an element of class, as the manor house represents a refined, highly cultured social sphere whose ideals of good manners and restraint do not coincide with the violence of rape. This sphere is long gone, as the series emphasises – the ‘lord of the manor’ rents out the house for parties, and all that is left of the old upper-class lifestyle are his childhood memories and some old cricket bats.2 Thirdly, Axehampton house also introduces intertextual associations with ‘golden age’ crime fiction, in which crime often penetrates the splendid world of the country house (see Knight 78). The way in which the manor house is presented as a crime scene in Broadchurch can be seen as an ironic nod towards this classic tradition, indicating that times have indeed changed both for manor houses and for crime fiction.3 That the crime in question is not murder, but rape, is highly significant in this context, since the classic tradition would never have presented a sexual assault as the central crime; the highly aestheticised, old-fashioned, and somatophobic genre of crime fiction needed its body gone and safely buried.

Broadchurch, too, only comes up with this – in the classic tradition of the whodunit4 – rather atypical type of crime in the third series, which is part of a general progression within the series towards a more pressing sense of social change. The crime in the first series is of a far more traditional kind: it is murder, and the murderer is part of the victim’s closest circle of family, neighbours, and friends. Danny is the friend of Joe’s son Tom, and Joe and Danny have developed a close relationship by themselves, a purely platonic one, as Joe insists. He kills Danny on impulse when the boy wants to end their secret meetings and confronts him with the accusation that he, Joe, wants a more physical relationship. All of this is shown in retrospect with the information “59 days earlier” while Joe is confessing the murder to Alec (S1/E8, 00:13), a technique that suggests that his confession is true. The killing escapes general categories, both for the murderer himself – “If I can’t understand it, why should you?” (S1/E8, 00:23) – and also for Ellie in her dual role as both detective and wife of the killer. When she asks Alec, “Is he a paedophile?”, he helplessly and unhelpfully replies: “Why do you need a category?” (S1/E8, 00:43) and adds: “I don’t have these answers. I don’t. People are unknowable.” (S1/E8, 00:44) Joe claims that it was essentially a positive bond that he shared with Danny: “I only ever cared for him.” (S1/E8, 00:40) It is a puzzling crime full of contrasts: before his confession to the murder, Joe is presented throughout as a nice person, well integrated, caring, and loving, and the basis for the crime was a sense of love. However, there are, of course, sexual implications and suggestions at the psychological manipulation of a child. Besides, Joe brutally strangles the boy, professionally hides every trace, and successfully keeps up a façade of innocence for weeks. All of these actions add sober calculation and rationality to the emotion and spontaneity of the crime.

Mark Lawson perceives this as a lack of “psychological plausibility”, the “one big flaw” in Broadchurch, both in series one and three, and he ascribes it to the conventions of crime fiction, in which “the eventual villain often has to be someone whose means and motives have been least clearly shown to the viewer”. This is certainly one way of accounting for the strangely incongruous solution of Joe as murderer. However, this incongruity also has a deeply disturbing effect, which may be its most important raison d’être: the crime comes from the very heart of the community and is driven by emotions and personal bonds. Because of this, it is a ‘communal’ murder in the sense of Tönnies’ ‘communal society’, and thus it is only fitting that the rational, modern, ‘abstract’ court in series two cannot administer justice as it befits the community; this is done by the townspeople themselves when they send Joe into exile (S2/E8, 00:42). Joe’s development during the second series, his detachment from his own deed and his refusal to take responsibility for his actions can be seen as representative of the threat that hangs over Broadchurch; the possible loss of its essential will and move towards the arbitrary will, which makes the individual decide on his or her most profitable course of action within a given situation, putting aside general moral principles and the interests of the community.

Following this progression, the crimes in series three are clearly ‘abstract’ ones: the rapist chooses his victims randomly, without any personal connection, simply based on opportunity. As Trish flatly remarks when she learns the truth: “So I was just unlucky.” (S3/E8, 00:40) The rapist, Leo, is addicted to pornography, which, as has already been delineated, is an epitome of abstract, impersonal relations. His methods are based on rational planning, calculation, and efficiency. His motivation – besides the sexual gratification – is a feeling of power and control (S3/E8, 00:36), i.e. personal gain without any sense of give and take or balancing as it is part of any power relation in a community, where an increase of power is always accompanied by an increase of responsibility for those less powerful. In Trish’s case, the situation is more complicated because the actual rapist is Michael Lucas, a sixteen-year-old who has been manipulated into the deed by Leo. Interestingly, Leo claims that he did it because he felt sorry for Michael (S3/E8, 00:35), which amounts to the travesty of a true personal bond, while in fact the deed seems to have been driven by the need for power and control, just as Leo’s direct rapes. Leo begins to take young Michael under his wings as a reaction to Michael’s being bullied by his stepfather Clive (Sebastian Armesto) (S3/E8 00:23). Respect for the elders and traditional hierarchies are a cornerstone of the communal society, and Leo represents a break with this society – he is officially a part of it and plays on the local football team, but in his attitudes and secret actions he defies its values completely. This moral change profoundly affects the detectives. Early in the case, Alec confesses: “Murder I can make sense of. But these sexual offences…” (S2/E2, 00:20), and when the case is solved, he tries to reassure himself and Ellie by claiming: “He is not what men are. He is an aberration.” (S3/E8, 00:37) This reassurance opens up the central questions rather than solving them: if Leo is an aberration, what is the norm, and is it really still the same? The recurring motif of pornography and its moral implications seem to point against it.

While the crimes are thus employed to emphasise both the ‘dark sides’ of the community as is inherent to the genre, and a more profound change towards an abstract society, the detectives represent a more optimistic attempt to reconcile the old with the new, to acknowledge change while retaining the moral core of the community. This is not obvious from the start: at first, Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller seem to be positioned as a clear contrast. She has a warm and affectionate personality, is well integrated in the local community, has a nice and loving family, and cultivates a good, friendly relationship with her colleagues. Alec is introduced as the typical ‘loner’ detective, grumpy, separated from his wife and daughter, and disinterested to the point of rudeness in his colleagues as human beings, who consequently call him “shitface” behind his back (S1/E7, 00:03). With regard to the community, the team of detectives thus seems to have one ‘insider’ and one ‘outsider’, corresponding to the cliché of good cop and bad cop. Even on the level of language, Alec is marked as an outsider by his Scottish accent.

However, after this contrast is initially exploited for comic effects and to introduce the characters, as well as the community, it begins to change as the detectives each take steps into the direction of their respective counterpart. Alec urges Ellie: “You have to look at your community from the outside now.” (S1/E2, 00:29) She starts to do this, willy-nilly, although she is feeling very uncomfortable (S1/E4, 00:21 and S1/E3, 00:12). At the end of the first series, Ellie temporarily loses her place within the community as her husband turns out to be the murderer and she inevitably shares part of the blame, and she is even estranged from her elder son Tom for a while. The second series then shows a gradual, painful process of reconciliation. These experiences force Ellie to reconsider her essentially positive view of humanity, which is a recurring point of discussion between her and Alec during the first series. While she claims that “most people have a moral compass”, he maintains that everyone has the potential to commit murder and that “compasses break” (S1/E2, 00:29). Alec refrains from rubbing it in, but the fact that her own husband turns out to be the murderer eventually proves his point. Alec, in his turn, becomes closer and closer to the Broadchurch community. He starts to care about the people, moves out of his hotel room and into an apartment in the second series, and even has his daughter come to live with him in the third series. When Ellie teases him by saying “I thought you hated it here”, he replies: “I do. Mostly.” (S3/E3, 00:28-29) These developments of the detectives serve to bring them together as a team as they meet somewhere in the middle and learn to respect each other’s attitudes.

At the most fundamental level, however, the moral values and emotional involvement of the two detectives are very similar from the beginning. Alec’s grumpiness hides great empathy, a strong sense of justice, and his responsibility for providing, or at least preparing, justice. This sense of responsibility far exceeds the call of professional duty, is distinctly personal, and verges on the religious: Alec claims that he took on the case in Broadchurch as redemption for the unresolved Sandbrook case, and that he has done his “penance” when the latter is finally closed (S2/E8, 00:34). He even believes that he is still alive despite his severe heart condition because he must fulfil his purpose (E2/S7, 00:04). Alec is driven by this quasi-missionary calling and by his rage and anger on behalf of the victims (E2/S7, 00:05), which also transgresses every code of professional detachment. When Ellie is frustrated after the verdict of ‘not guilty’ for her husband, he urges her to use her anger to solve the Sandbrook case with him (E2/S8, 00:06).

During their investigations, both detectives show a strong tendency to moral judgments as they unravel the smaller and bigger vices hidden in the community. In interviews, they frequently treat the suspects or witnesses to disapproving glances or remarks when, for example, sexual betrayals are revealed. In this, they represent the moral values of the community and enforce, or at least promote these values, which do not always correspond to their roles as police officers. At the same time, however, they generally show a high degree of professionalism in their investigations, diligently collecting details and pursuing leads and – as Alec never tires of telling Ellie – distancing themselves from the community to keep an open, objective mind. Mark Lawson emphasises that the series shows a “procedural realism unknown in classic detective fiction”, a “quasi-documentary presentation of best police practice”, which it combines with the “outlandish twists and cliffhangers” of crime drama. More intriguingly, I would add, the series combines this modern, empirical, methodical police work with the core values of the traditional community, in which everyone has a responsibility for everyone else and for the community as a whole. The detectives use the rational, modern methods of investigations as means of ultimately providing order and justice, but they always feel answerable to the basic moral prerogatives of the community and, if both happen to clash, they always prioritise the communal moral core over the procedural rationale. In essence, the detectives, in their self-doubts, struggles, and occasional defeats, embody the key conflicts of a community in transition, but they also represent a possible solution by combining the highest modern standards of professional rationality with an unalterable moral core of community values. It is not a simple solution, as the sufferings of the two detectives show, but it is a hopeful affirmation of the lasting values of the community that deserve to be protected. The series thus employs and transforms the convention of the troubled, suffering detective – a convention associated with Scandinavian noir,5 not with golden age English murder mysteries6 – to represent a troubled community that has to change with the times and defend itself against disruptive forces while trying to uphold its essential moral core.