Welcome back to Broadchurch where more bad stuff has happened in the tiny town, I think it’s a modern-day St. Mary’s Mead (that’s for AT/B). Rolling E2 after the break

Trish Winterman (Julie Hesmondhalgh) has been through a bizarre rape and assault ordeal while at a party for her friend Cath (Sarah Parish), possibly involving Cath’s husband Jim (Mark Bazeley) or one of the other 50 men in attendance. Bizarre because it was so clearly premeditated as Trish was restrained and only around people she knew. That’s all we know at this point, except that Cath and her hubs are clearly hinky AF.

Oh and Beth Latimer (Jodie Whittaker) will be Trish’s support person, which will bring her back into Ellie’s (Olivia Colman) orbit, as DS Ellie Miller and DI Alec Hardy (David Tennant) are investigating the crime. I am bracing myself for that; it will likely not be pretty.

Alec finds Ellie already at the crime scene when he rolls in; she’s been familiarizing herself with the scene. There are lots of hiding places, but also mud, so whomever attacked Trish didn’t walk away clean. Ellie wants to count heads: how many extra officers are they getting? Two. She doesn’t understand, only two? But Alec knows sexual assault never gets the same attention as murder. Good thing they only have 50 suspects to interview and eliminate.

I’m wondering if the restraints aspect could add a bit of interest, then? That’s along the lines of kidnapping, isn’t it?

Alec breaks it down for their tiny team, DC Katie Harford (Georgina Campbell) is confused: where are all the extra uniformed officers to help them? And the divers for the lake? Not coming, Katie, and that’s just the beginning of the bad news. There isn’t enough CCTV in the area to track anyone and several access and egress points to the property means that even if they clear the 50 male guests in attendance, a stranger could have done it. Katie is starting to get the shape of what it’s like to investigate a sexual assault in small town England.

Trish is recently separated, well that ought to make it easy, yes? Ian Winterman (Charlie Higson) has to be at the top of the leaderboard.

Katie keeps pushing, when’s Trish’s ABE? And correcting Ellie’s word usage and then asking if Trish had been drinking? Alec asks her if she’d like to run this meeting? So we’ve got Ellie, who is all emotion, up against Katie, who is all Joe Friday. Reserving judgement until I see more.

Alec will keep things even. He doesn’t seem to bend either way; either towards the people involved (except that woman from season two) or particularly towards keeping things by the book. He ends the meeting and reminds everyone to keep everything they’ve heard confidential, foreshadow alert!

Ellie and Alec interview Leo Humphries (Chris Mason) of the manufacturing of blue twine Humphries; it’s going okay until Ellie asks for one of everything. Young (very young) Leo pushes back, what’s this about? Alec jumps in then, it’s to assist in an investigation and no more details will be forthcoming. He questions Leo’s, who like totally has the authority to make decisions while his dad golfs. Alec makes me laugh when he totally pushes back

Ending with “and I might phone your dad.” HAHAHAHAHAHA. Ellie has my poker face

Leo reluctantly complies; Ellie notes all the mostly naked women adorning his office, along with those now creepy-seeming knot example displays. She’ll totally need a list of all people that work there casually or full time; why is he being so obstructive? She’ll be checking out his “drinks and kebab with his girlfriend” alibi toute suite.

That’s probably the hardest part of being a detective, figuring out why people act as they do and whether it even has anything to do with the case.

Better help with Jim; he’s got a full list of everyone who was at the party (all 50 dudes out of 70); Alec would like to know about his fight with Ed (Lenny Henry) that Jim’s wife Cath was nice enough to tell them about. Just the usual, it seems, why invite Ed then?

Alec’s eye is drawn by fishing rods in the corner; Jim losing focus as soon as Alec starts to move. Does he fish? No, he just has an entire table full of fishing equipment sitting in his shop. There’s an odd back and forth when Alec tells Jim he’ll need him to come down for a statement and DNA test (slight pause on Jim’s part). Jim’s just realised that one of his friends must have done this (you know, or YOU); let him have a think about who could be of special concern.

Maggie Radliffe (Carolyn Pickles) is in seeing Caroline Hughes (THAT wasn’t confusing at all – Mariah Gale) about the lack of editorial support she’s getting on the Broadchurch Echo; they’ve been replacing her front pages and undermining everything she stands for. That’s actually the good news, though. Wessex News Group is shutting down the local office of the Echo and will be using canned content instead. Maggie is welcome to join them at head office if she likes…the implication is clear. Climb on board or be done.

I’d like to be outraged on Maggie’s behalf, because she is absolutely right, but Caroline is ALSO absolutely right, besides being extremely rude for eating her lunch all the way through the meeting (to highlight of how little importance she feels Maggie and her concerns are). Print economics are terrible right now. Very few people are buying newspapers any more. Perhaps if Maggie could get it online? Too bad the one swaggery reporter got picked up by a tabloid, he was good at the online stuff.

Alec knows what Katie said has merit; they need to get Trish’s evidence right away, since she is their main source of information. Ellie pushes back, this is the main interview. If Trish isn’t ready or doesn’t remember things properly, it could jeopardize the case if it ever gets to court. Alec pushes back: there’s a rapist out there that could be targeting another woman and how do they resolve that? Ellie says she’ll push Beth to get Trish ready.

Yay! Beth and Ellie are friends again, I was worried for nothing! They sit and chat about Ellie’s son exclusion for porn on his phone, all they had at that age was Jilly Cooper novels (or Princess Daisy!). Ellie found her mum’s “whisk”in her mum’s nightstand, the “don’t tell Dad” made me laugh. Ellie gets serious for a moment; Beth has to get Trish ready quickly. But Beth hasn’t even MET Trish, stop pressuring, Ellie!

Oh for the love of god, Beth and Trish are having their first meet in public at a restaurant. Trish looks like she wants to crawl under the table, BETH, get your client to a safe, discreet place like her home! Trish keeps covering her face, it’s so raw. Beth explains her role and the part where she says “I don’t have any agenda except to help you” calls to mind the last scene, where Ellie was trying to make that a big fat lie. We do come to that, with Beth asking Trish about her final interview. Trish isn’t sure, she wants to talk to the police, but she’s not sure she’s ready.

A pregnant pause as we wait for Beth to do the right thing for her client or the right thing for Ellie or the more nebulous thing for the good of the community: she tells Trish that whenever she is ready is when she should do it, don’t worry about anyone else. Whew

Trish is struggling, I think Beth will be good for her. Trish breaks all of our hearts when she says she so ashamed, she wishes he’d killed her.

Beth calls Ellie; she doesn’t think Trish is ready yet today but Ellie wants to swing by and have a word with her anyway. Wait, I thought she wasn’t supposed to be working with the police?

Oh and oh this didn’t go well. Ellie thought they were there to advise Trish of the upcoming police press release about the attack; Alec jumps in and tells Trish he’d like her to do the ABE interview at 4 pm. Ellie and Beth are horrified, but Trish looks grateful to have the decision out of her hands, to be honest.

In times of extreme stress, people often want the subject of all the stress to take the lead, but sometimes it’s better for someone else to do that, isn’t it? Because decision making carries it’s own stress.

Ellie confronts Alec after; they were still discussing it! No SHE was discussing it, he’d already decided because that’s his job. I was right with him until he said “It’s easy to be you, Mullah.” Dude.

They’re right into an interview with prime suspect Ian Winterman, bloody hell! If he’s lying he needs some kind of an award for liar-acting because he’s completely credible. He came to the party with his girlfriend Sarah, who left because she felt she wasn’t getting a warm enough welcome from Cath.

Awwww, poor new girlfriend wasn’t getting sufficient attention from his (recently separated) wife’s best friend.

He got schwasted and took a cab home with some other people, he thinks (I thank the lords and wee fishies that I don’t drink any more) after exchanging words with Trish. It seems our Trish was drunk and cavorting with any number of men; apparently it was embarrassing that she’d slept with a half dozen of them or so over the past few months and he was aghast! Sorry, Ian With a Girlfriend, you don’t get to decide what your wife does after you two separate, just like she doesn’t get to comment on your girlfriend that surely you only started dating after separation, even though you work together.

He’s noticed all of Alec’s notetaking and it’s making him increasingly nervous; he’d like to know what all of this is about, please? Since they won’t, he will not give them a voluntary DNA sample. He’s not a fan of how the police store bio-data. I do like how Alec managed to make “voluntary” sound very much like “non-voluntary” but this dog will not bite.

Daisy (Hannah Rae) calls, Alec forgot lunch with her. He asks Miller how she handles the single parent gig and she couldn’t be more right :”by constantly absorbing feelings of failure, guilt and shame.”

They’ve tracked down Trish’s cabbie; ohhhhh, he’s the guy I thought was her neighbour last episode, the smarmy image consultant from Apple Tree Yard! Sorry, sorry, this is Clive Lucas (Seabastian Armesto) and he calls Trish a regular, which is maybe why he was staring so hard from the next house over. I must have missed the taxi light.

Hinky Cabbie Lucas was having trouble with his radio; he just hung out all night at the car park at the party, ferrying people back and forth as required. Huh. So he was IN town dropping off people and he didn’t pop over to get his radio replaced? Alec, Ellie and I think that’s odd, innit? We’ve got two DNA refusals now!

Beth and her ex-husband (don’t know if they’re divorced yet) Mark (Andy Buchan) are having a picnic, she needs a little support after the wrenching session with Trish today. He asks her to not ask him to do that; she and I don’t understand. It’s giving him hope, see, and it hurts too much when she shuts the door. Ah, I get it, but Beth doesn’t: they’ve been best friends and lovers since high school, haven’t they? Except for when he was screwing the hotel owner for whatever reason people decide to screw hotel owners after a couple of decades of married life.

She didn’t come completely empty handed, she brought the cheque from the government to compensate for Danny’s life. Of course there is no way to compensate for a person’s lost life, how is that calculated? Mark doesn’t want it but Beth is more practical; it’s money. And Danny is gone.

Reverend Coates (Arthur Darvill) finds Maggie smoking in the cemetery and shares her bad news with his own; nobody’s coming to church any more either. He gets quite pouty about it; he’s worth more than these badweather friends! Er. I don’t know who told you the reverendhood was an endless party of good times and bad choices, dude, but that’s an unhelpful viewpoint. Don’t go attack someone so people get scared and come to your church again.

Leah Winterman (Hannah Millward – I see this generation of English women have moved from Claire and Emily to Hannah) is finally home, yay! Trish is very glad to see her daughter, but Beth’s presence and her mum crying has Leah wondering. Ah Trish, she says she was raped out loud for the first time and cries as she hugs her daughter.

Cuppa break.

The news release has gone out; everyone is carefully reading it online or hearing it on the radio, including Ed, Cath, Leo Humphries and Clive, Ian and Jim. Those are our suspects, tied with a bow.

Mark is fixing a pew in the Rev. Coates’ church; he tells him of the cheque from the government for Danny’s death. He’s thinking about finding Joe Miller and tossing him off the cliff this time, instead of this merciful business. See, Reverend, you’re still needed!

Ellie hands over the list of party invitees to Katie, she’ll need to draw up a list of profiles for everyone and get DNA samples. Katie doesn’t think that will take long, some snipping back and forth and we get it: they’re very different and don’t like each other.

Katie notices a name on the list that is highlighted differently than the rest; has Jim indicated that Ed Burnett is of special interest? Maybe Katie knows the name.

It’s time for the ABE interview; everyone is NERVOUS.

They start with routine questions (except for the questions about ginch; is that normal to ask what kind of underwear someone was wearing?) but the question about the cabbie takes us a little farther. She and Clive Lucas had been on one date and she’d had to turn him down. This was the first time she’d seen him since, huh.

She drank rather a lot at the party, just like Ian and then we have an accounting of the attack and rape and then we’re out of it and we can all breathe again.

Ellie asks when the last time Trish had sex before that, why is that relevant? For elimination purposes? Trish doesn’t want to answer, but reluctantly says it was the morning of the party. She does not want to say with who, I immediately flashed on Jim Watson, Cath’s husband. I can’t think why. Ellie and Alec keep pushing and Trish terminates the interview after throwing out that it was a stranger she met online.

This. This is why people don’t report, you see. It’s nobody’s business who she had consensual, unprotected sex with that morning, but the detectives have to know so that DNA can be ruled out and people can know the answer to that, as it will surely come up in court when they’re going over her history.

I get the frustration of the detectives; Trish’s affair with Cath’s husband or whomever it was that she didn’t want to disclose is important to Trish, but they want to take a dangerous rapist off the street. You know, Paul Bernardo was a violent rapist before he graduated to serial killing.

Alec would like Ellie to not say I Told You So, peez so she doesn’t, but they toss back and forth whether they think that Trish was lying when she said she had sex with a stranger from online. Hahaha, I didn’t waste any time at all on that, Trish threw it out so quickly that it looked like a straight dodge to me. Plus the fact that she said it was unprotected; I can only see that if she knew the person. I don’t think it’s rational to believe that it’s common practice to have unprotected sex with online strangers, but I have been out of that loop for awhile. Looking at her online dating history might yield someone with a grudge, though, follow that up, Alec and Ellie!

Ian does some odd things at home; he digs out a bag and starts washing the clothes inside and scrubbing his shoes in the sink.

Ohhhhhhhh, Katie looked like she swallowed her tongue earlier because Ed Burnett is her dad! That’s Ed from the store!

Trish is watching TV at home when her phone buzzes; she has a text from an unknown number saying “shut up. SHUT UP OR ELSE” which terrifies her and totally made me think of young Leo Humphries from the twine shop. We’re oot.

So. Hm. It’s not a huge lot of fun to sit around decide who assaulted someone (much like Unforgotten, no gold stars there) but I do like how they showed everyone we’re supposed to pay attention to in that one tidy shot. I still think there’s something off with Jim but Leo has also thrown his hat into the ring in a big way. Ian can’t be involved, he’s far too obvious of a suspect as is Clive. I think we’re going to find that there’s a big ugly twist in the middle.

I do love Olivia Colman, but Ellie was dangerously close to being a cartoon in this episode; all bleeding heart and big eyes all the time. Alec rode the shades of grey a little more deftly, but I really think this episode belonged to Trish, who finally spoke.

Can we get Ellie a boyfriend / girlfriend? She hasn’t had a smile on her face in four years and I’d really like to see her relax for a full beat. Until next time, you lot! Cheers