Okay OKAY so I just saw a post courtesy of @hardythehermitcrab linking this article that says in Broadchurch S3 there’s a flashback scene for one of the characters that’s being shot in a rustic country pub. The name the Broadchurch team chose for the pub is The Rising Sun.
I immediately freaked out and had to put on my Thomas Hardy Whore Hat because The Rising Sun is the name of an inn that appears in Hardy’s novel Desperate Remedies, a piece of Gothic fiction that involves jealous lovers, themes of sexual assault and the murder of a wife. The Rising Sun Inn is connected with the murderer and within its walls takes place a police inquiry into the suspicious death of a woman.
But it could be coincidence, right? There are lots of pubs called The Rising Sun. Not everything has to be about Thomas Hardy. EXCEPT THAT THIS IS A MODERN WESSEX TRAGEDY AND YES IT DOES.
Because guess what? One of the other settings is going to be a place called Budmouth.
I know it’s kind of hard to make out, but that store front has definitely been branded as Budmouth Taxis. Budmouth was Thomas Hardy’s Wessex name for Weymouth/Melcombe Regis. It appears in a number of his novels, but most prominently in… you guessed it, Desperate Remedies.
It’s also been officially/unofficially confirmed that three years have passed since the events of S2 (thanks @nannyogg123) and although I’m aware that this is drawing a slightly long bow, I think it’s also worth pointing out that two characters in Desperate Remedies – the heroine Cytherea and the hero Edward – meet and fall in love, but due to murders and a whole clusterfuck happening that keeps them apart, their marriage does not occur until three years later, and the whole story ends upon the following exchange: ‘Yes — give me one half-minute’s row on the lake here now, just as you did on Budmouth Bay three years ago.’ And upon the water Edward kisses her. The lovers together at last after three years. The end.
SO – I said before that Chibnall is telling a modern Wessex story, which is why he named his fictional town Broadchurch in the Thomas Hardy fashion and explicitly set his narrative within Hardy’s augmented West Country – the “realistic dream-country” of Wessex [source]. He instructed the DoP that the cinematography should echo Thomas Hardy’s prose, and that every human action should be tied back to the landscape – see the use of scenery and setting as motifs, the cliffs, the ocean, the river, the bluebell woods, etc. [source]. And then he drew on Hardy’s various novels to build his own universe [source – it’s in the video, towards the end].
This is what I’ve deduced: Tess of the d’Urbervilles gives us Alec and Tess’ names, as well as themes and a love triangle that rhymes beautifully with Ellie’s situation. Jude the Obscure is the only novel referenced by name, and the characters Jude and Sue strongly parallel Hardy and Miller and give us the “only really half of something” idea. A Pair of Blue Eyes gives us the haunting sea-cliff imagery (in Hardy’s words “One enormous sea-bord cliff in particular figures in the narrative” – lmao sound familiar), as well as Henry Knight, barrister at law, who becomes our Jocelyn Knight, barrister at law. Jocelyn is also tied to Jocelyn Pierston from The Well-Beloved, and from this we get the idea of missing the person you’re supposed to be with. The Distracted Preacher gives us a view of law enforcement at work in a town full of secrets, as well as a man called Latimer whose bitter and hunted enemy is a miller. The Mayor of Casterbridge, starring the awful anti-hero Michael Henchard (who abuses his spouse), is echoed in the fact that the ex-spouses of Hardy and Miller are called Joseph Michael Miller and Tess Henchard. The “I am not the guilty one” theme is seen in countless Wessex stories, since Hardy was adamant that women should not be blamed for what men do to them (see esp. Tess Durbeyfield finally realising and proclaiming “I do not deserve it”), as well as the danger of keeping secrets and the idea that love is not true unless there are no secrets and full trust between the pair – “the highest form of affection is based on full sincerity on both sides.” And Chibbers said that, as in Hardy’s Wessex, “there is a wrathful God in Broadchurch.”
I could go on, but these are the most explicit (i.e. provable, since the rest of my ideas are speculative). As far as I can tell, Desperate Remedies has not been referenced – until now. So if those precedents are anything to go on, it suggests that Chibbers will be borrowing heavily from Hardy’s Gothic world in this season as he narrates his story of sexual assault and domestic tragedy. The simple use of these place names makes it quite striking already since Chibbers tends to use real place names, except for Broadchurch and Sandbrook, which are of his own invention. That is to say, Budmouth is the first explicit use of Hardy’s name for a Wessex town. The Trader’s Hotel, too, is a name of Chibnall’s own invention (although the off-screen King’s Arms pub comes from a pub in Hardy’s Casterbridge, real-life Dorchester) which makes The Rising Sun the first instance of scenes being shot in a building named after a Hardy setting.
IN CONCLUSION Chibnall is a fucking genius who has constructed an entire modern Wessex universe by faithfully and respectfully borrowing themes, names and ideas from Thomas Hardy. In S3, it would appear that most of his influences will be taken from the novel Desperate Remedies, and I for one am really excited to see how this will shape and enrich the narrative.
