8 TV Shows That Should've Stopped At Season One
2. Broadchurch
Chris Chibnall’s skill as a writer and showrunner has certainly been the subject of much debate since he took the reins of Doctor Who back in 2018. But it's hard to argue against the fact that the first season of Broadchurch is a crime drama masterpiece.
It tonally takes a leaf from gritty Scandinavian dramas to dig into the dark secrets lurking within a sleepy seaside town in the South West of England. The red herrings thrown out in this story are enough to make your head spin, while never feeling overwhelming or unearned.
And while there is some debate over the first series’ ending, the killer just decides to give himself up in a fairly mundane way rather than the police catching him themselves, there is no doubt that it all makes perfect emotional sense. These characters feel like real people.
Unfortunately, the remaining two seasons, especially season two, struggled to find reasons to keep anyone who wasn’t a police officer around. Plotlines like Reverend Paul’s romance with Becca Fisher are boring distractions from a decent central drama surrounding the continuing fallout from the Latimer case.
The Sandbrook case also fails to peak as much interest as the first time round either, which definitively marks Broadchurch as a show that should have quit while it was ahead.