'Broadchurch' Postmortem: The Prosecution Takes a Hit

Spoiler alert! The second episode of Broadchurch's sophomore season saw DI Alec Hardy (David Tennant) take the stand in the trial of Joe Miller (Matthew Gravelle) and be asked to answer for his error in judgment that allowed Ellie (Olivia Colman) to get close enough to her husband in the interrogation room to give him a broken rib and bruises to his neck, chest, and torso. Joe's confession was thrown out.

On the Sandbrook side, Hardy had Ellie convince Claire (Eve Myles) to meet her husband, suspected killer Lee (James D’Arcy), at Ellie’s home, which Hardy then secretly bugged. Ellie was standing watch outside when pregnant Beth (Jodie Whittaker) — believing Ellie was moving back to Broadchurch and that she’d attacked Joe to help him beat the murder charge — came storming up to confront her. Lee managed to flee with Claire, and Beth’s water broke.

Related: 'Broadchurch' Postmortem: Inside the Season 2 Premiere

Below, we continue our weekly debriefings with executive producer Jane Featherstone.

So when you were filming the Season 1 finale, creator Chris Chibnall already knew that Ellie beating Joe would come back into play at the trial?
Yes, and a few other bits and pieces like that… Things were planted to make any future case very, very difficult to bring against Joe. Those were all deliberate.

Since no one was expecting to see Joe in Season 2, I don’t think viewers were watching the Season 1 finale thinking, “That’s going to bite them. And that. That, too.” We were just too caught up in the emotional fallout of Ellie’s husband being the killer to think ahead. What makes that interesting then is that every time something like that rears its head, it’s surprising and like a punch to the gut.
I know, and that’s what it’s really like. We did a lot of research, and it’s been a little bit of a challenge in the U.K. to the voracity of some of those legal teams. Now we actually had a massively well-qualified [Queen’s Counsel] defense barrister help us, and another solicitor, and they said this is really how dirty it gets. In a big murder trial, they throw everything at it, and this is what happens. People’s lives are dragged through and destroyed. So a lot of that is based on truth, and so many legal cases turn on technicalities rather than truth, you know? Obviously, in terms of Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s character [Sharon Bishop, QC], that was absolutely what you wanted her to do as well — allow that to become part of that examination of the legal process and justice.

Having seen all of Season 2, it feels like responsibility is a major theme.
Yes, definitely.

Related: Matthew Gravelle on the Secrecy Surrounding Season 2 and Joe’s Not Guilty Plea

Aside from Joe, who pleaded not guilty, we see it in moments like Claire accosting Ellie and then saying, “See what you did?” when her water breaks, and Hardy roping Ellie into helping him orchestrate that meeting between Claire and Lee that goes awry.
That was a sequence that didn’t change that much from when Chris wrote the first draft. That scene, I think, was written originally from the point of view of, how much is Hardy overstepping the mark here? How off beam is Hardy going with this, and how crazy is he being to even begin to think about this? And I think Ellie is just like, “Well, you’ve done what? You’ve put cameras in my house?” It’s ridiculous stuff. It was very much about that, and the risks he would take, and how he would almost put Claire there as bait, really, and how dangerous that was of him to do that. And then ultimately, with the decision to do these two stories — the courtroom thriller and Sandbrook — we had to keep finding ways of making the stories back into each other, and that was one of the moments they did. You’ve got Beth and Ellie in the courtroom, and then you’ve got them standing outside [Ellie’s home]. So yes, it was very much about responsibility, and duty, and how far you’ll go to get the truth that you think you need.

Broadchurch airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on BBC America.