[gryfft]

This is directly relevant to my wife's and my reading of the David Tennant & Olivia Coleman vehicle Broadchurch.

David Tennant's character is notably very bad at his job; that's why he got exiled to a backwater town. He bungled his last case so badly it made national news. In an American police procedural, we would either have some mitigating explanation for his failure, or at least some gritty vice or personal demon that was the real reason he got demoted.

In Broadchurch, Tennant's character just sucks at his job. Every episode of the show conforms to a formula where he gets suspicious of one of the other characters in the show and we spend the episode wasting time while it's finally determined that the suspect of the week is actually innocent. I have to say, it makes for entertaining television. It also resulted in my wife and I chorusing aloud, every episode, "he's SO BAD at his job!!"

(Minor Broadchurch spoilers) At the end when he finally catches the big bad, it's not because of anything he did. A coincidence and some carelessness on the part of the big bad lead to the mystery being solved. Also, every other character on the show had already been ruled out.

Since watching it we've kept a lookout for protagonists who embody the "everyman in way over his head who accomplished virtually nothing himself" archetype. It's fun to know Adams held forth on the very subject.

[arethuza]

"David Tennant's character is notably very bad at his job; that's why he got exiled to a backwater town."

Worth noting that in Hot Fuzz (also featuring Olivia Coleman!) the main character is exiled to a rural location for being too good at his job.

[jacquesm]

That movie is a long series of spoofs nicely spliced together to form a story. To the point that it even works in the reverse, you've seen Hot Fuzz and then years later you watch some other movie and suddenly you realize that's where they got it.

[WalterBright]

Should watch "Zero Hour" (1957). "Airplane" is nearly a shot-for-shot remake, except it's done for laughs rather than a thriller.

"I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!"

[rapind]

Airplane! also features tons of other TV and movie references doesn’t it? Basically what would have happened in these well known shows and movies when you add absurd scenarios while still playing it straight (the joke is never acknowledged of course!).

[seanc]

We had to pause the movie and explain to our kids who June Cleaver was.

It was a fun echo, because when I was a kid I watched it with my parents, and my Mom had to explain to me who Ethel Merman was.

[samplatt]

Not just jokes and scenarios - it's full of many actors that for years (and decades) played very serious "leading man" type roles. Seeing all these all-american heroes just being utter idiots helped make it so impactful.

[fhdkweig]

I was very confused when I recognized Leslie Nielsen in Forbidden Planet. I had never seen him in a non-farcical comedy role.

[jacquesm]

Thank you, I will do that. Never heard of it before!

[Insanity]

She’s also in Peep Show, which to this day is my favourite British television series.

It’s such a good piece of dark comedy.

[timthorn]

And the lesser known "Look Around You" which might also not land so well with an American audience.

Thants.

[vizzier]

For season 1 it very much satirises the early morning open university tv educational media format from the 70s through the early 2000s [1]. I'm not sure it'd land quite the same way for other countries or even for gen-z onwards.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/january/op...

[timthorn]

I wondered, but my 15 year old loved it.

[techterrier]

i think the skibidi toilet crew would love spiders on drugs

[Aeolun]

That’s actually pretty cool. I can think of worse things to watch in the mornings.

[benjijay]

While we're on an Olivia Colman thread, I can't leave 'Green Wing' unmentioned

[CommieBobDole]

What are birds?

We just don't know.

[teknolog]

Correct!

[petepete]

I love that 15 years before winning an Oscar she played the mother of a boy with an arse for a face, too.

NSFW, obviously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGvH86wfrzk

And she was terrific in Fleabag.

[gertrunde]

Similiarly vintage classic Coleman...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAssh20BF-k

(Circa 2004-ish?)

(Not really sure if it counts as SFW/NSFW tbh?)

[awesome_dude]

For real humour starting Olivia, I STRONGLY recommend get appearances on Graham Norton - she's a great sport

[HPsquared]

And that's a show about people who are bad at relationships.

[Insanity]

True! Two “losers” as protagonists

[FrostViper8]

I personally never liked it. All the characters were deeply unlikable and a lot of the jokes are just disgusting shock humour. When I used to live in a shared house, I always skipped it if it was on the television.

[dumb1224]

Well depending on your taste of TV shows and the general culture.

When I moved to the UK early 2000s I could understand but can't appreciate that type of humour. I think its rooted in culture. Luckily that was the golden era of British comedies and there were great diversities so you can pick and choose what flavour you like.

[iso1631]

> Luckily that was the golden era of British comedies

You'll find people saying that about every era.

[FrostViper8]

TBH there is a few standout really good British shows and the rest is forgotten about. A lot of humour in some of shows was really tied to the time of making and a lot of audiences won't get the joke.

If you watch Today Today or Brass Eye, unless you grew up at the time, it isn't funny. Most people under 30 won't know who any of celebrities are in the show.

[dumb1224]

True that. So it's down to our preferences : )

[FrostViper8]

I actually didn't see that era as a Golden era and actually much prefer the sketch shows in the 80s and 90s such has the Fast Show.

I don't like any Mitchell and Webb stuff and don't particularly find either of them very funny.

David Mitchell's (at least on panel shows) brand of comedy is just doing a stupid face and making sardonic/cynical remark which is often some thinly veiled political jab, that the target audience often already agrees with. That isn't comedy. It is activism. Once you can see it, you can't un-see it and I find nauseating.

[hbarka]

In the 12th century a Welsh writer named Walter Map wrote the line "no good deed unpunished, no bad one unrewarded". Not quite English but maybe he was already expressing the whimsy of the English kingdom.

[Cthulhu_]

A lot of people cite Hot Fuzz as one of the best examples in filmmaking. Almost everything is a setup for a joke or scene that resolves later on in the film.

[nebula8804]

Warms my heart to see fellow Edgar Wright fans here. Felt bad about his recent film results. I waited years for that. :/

[tialaramex]

I saw Baby Driver, which I really liked but I haven't seen any of the three movies since that.

The Cornetto trilogy are excellent. I'm a big fan of Three Colours (my favourite is White) and I think that actually in the same way that Kieślowski clearly doesn't care about the supposed theme, he just wants money to make movies, we can say the same for the Cornetto movies. We're bringing the commonalities to it in our interpretation, Wright didn't pour great effort into ensuring that these movies "work" as a trilogy, but they do if you squint, in the same way that Kieślowski didn't put great effort into relating his three films to the French flag but if you squint you can make it work fine.

[nebula8804]

At the end of the day, Hollywood is a business unfortunately and his last two films did poorly

Last Night In Soho was a absolute cinematic treat but had mixed reviews. I was fortunate to see it a week before release in 35mm in NYC and it was truly a special moment. But lets be real, even with films being graded on a curve due to the pandemic, the movie still did poorly.

Ok fresh start a few years later with The Running Man. This time he got big money, three time more than Baby Driver. (34mil vs 110mil) and the result? Baby Driver brought in ~227 mil and Running Man? Just ~69 mil.

Maybe he is better off producing smaller budget films and while I want nothing but success for him since he's my all time favorite director: Hollywood is a business. They will not look kindly on someone that keeps losing money.

[chilmers]

To be fair to Wright, there were a bunch of big budget movies in 2025 that flopped: Thunderbolts, Tron Ares, Snow White, etc. There’s definitely a wider phenomenon at work of cinema struggling in general. But I agree, Wright’s big-budget career is likely over.

[nebula8804]

I like to think that if he managed to produce another smash hit maybe studios will take another chance. Studios know he is respected by the fans. Hes just got to show that he can bring in the dough and that Baby Driver wasn't just a fluke. Running Man seemed very sloppy and not what we have come to expect from him and I heard on the grapevine that the studio pushed down a lot of executive decisions. If true, that could explain some things but still surprising given his past history with Ant-Man.

[eli_gottlieb]

The older I get, the more I suspect the Neighborhood Watch Alliance of being behind all society's problems.

[ksymph]

Hold on, wasn't the flak he got for the case before the show started actually because he was covering for his wife (who was also working on the case)? She was having an affair and left the evidence in her car where it was stolen. He didn't say anything so their daughter wouldn't know, and took the fall for the case's failure, even though it wasn't his fault at all.

I didn't quite get the same read on the show you did. It seemed like the dynamic was that Olivia Coleman couldn't imagine anyone she knew being the killer, contrasted against Tennant being aggressively willing to suspect anyone, which is how they were able to rule the various suspects out.

[gryfft]

It's admittedly been years since I saw it; I don't remember the entire mitigating bit about covering for his wife, but a lot went on in that series finale and I've had covid a few times since.

I like your read on their dynamic as foils to each other; I'll have to give it another watch with your read in mind.

[tartuffe78]

It's very explicitly explained in the finale.

[gryfft]

Alas, my think-meat is fallible and forgetful. I shall have to refresh myself and give it another watch.

[rurp]

It's been some years since I watched the show so I've probably forgotten a fair amount, but I remember it differently. I recall Tennant arguing at various points that it's probably the more obvious suspect/explanation. It's the whole you're probably hearing horses not zebras thing. Which in reality is the more competent approach. Crimes usually are committed by the most obvious suspect and pursuing more obscure theories is a worse approach.

But of course in a TV universe that's completely flipped on its head, nobody makes shows about normal straightforward cases.

This same conflict bugged me about the movie Zero Dark Thirty. The main analyst is 1000% sure that her hunch is correct and is constantly aggressively adamant about it, despite a lack of hard evidence. The others analysts are shown being much more rational, giving probabilities to their assessments and grounding conclusions in evidence. But since it's a movie of course you know the heroine is going to be correct and all of the other people seems like indecisive fools. But in reality someone who acted like her would be an absolute train wreck and the sober rational ones would be getting things done consistently with far fewer screw ups.

[deanCommie]

Speaking of Zero Dark Thirty, it has WAY more problems than that - https://www.tiktok.com/@trademoviespodcast/video/75653617056...

[KineticLensman]

> Every episode of the show conforms to a formula where he gets suspicious of one of the other characters in the show and we spend the episode wasting time while it's finally determined that the suspect of the week is actually innocent.

Something like this applies in the UK Midsomer Murders. Specifically, in the episodes where one of the suspects has a prior criminal record, they always get grief from Inspector Barnaby's current sidekick but are then proven innocent of the current crime. However, if an old police colleague from Barnaby's past offers to help, they are always guilty of something.

[IAmBroom]

My take is quite different. EVERYONE in Broadchurch is at least nearly-criminally incompetent.

"Ooh, I'm an investigative detective in a homicide. I think I'll forget myself and beat up somebody in lockup!"

"What's that, evidence? I think I'll withhold it for minor personal reasons."

"Hey, there's a pedophile investigation going on. I think I'll lie about my 'alone time' with a teenage boy to EVERYONE, just to avoid arousing suspicion..."

Tennant's advantage is that, in season one, he's not emotionally tied up in this completely tangled small town. He's got some professional competencies over Miller, but not many.

[pjc50]

This very good description makes it sound like a comedy, which it absolutely isn't, although I note that Olivia Colman got her break in dark comedy Peep Show.

[jsolson]

It's so far from comedy that I couldn't make it through the series. When it comes up in conversation, I tend to describe it as "grief porn."

[gryfft]

Ah, I should have made that clear, yes. We derived some unintended humor from the mismatch in cultural expectations, but Broadchurch is as serious as a heart attack.

(Didn't stop me and my wife from yelling MELLAR!! at each other across the house for weeks afterward.)*

*(He yells his partner Miller's name a lot in his Scottish accent.)

[amiga386]

If you'd like some comedy in your police procedural, watch A Touch of Cloth

It's a parody of all British police procedurals simultaneously. It's the Airplane! of police shows... I won't say it's the Police Squad! of police shows, because that was spoofing US tropes, this spoofs UK tropes, but yes it's full of very serious actors saying very unserious things.

And yes, it has a gruff Scottish man (John Hannah) as lead D.I. Jack Cloth

[jodrellblank]

Thirty years ago there was The Thin Blue Line, a sitcom set in a police station in the UK, starring Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean, Blackadder) and written by Ben Elton (writer on Mr Bean and Blackadder). I suspect it wouldn’t stand up to much rewatching today, but it was a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thin_Blue_Line_(British_TV...

[IAmBroom]

"MELLAH!"

There is no 'r' in Miller.

[gryfft]

Quite right; please forgive the error in transliteration.

[mjd]

“In an American police procedural, we would either have…”

In the first minutes of the American show “Keen Eddie”, the titular character bungles a project so badly that he is exiled to London.

It unfortunately lasted only one season.

[jameshart]

This is also the core conceit of Slow Horses, the Gary Oldman AppleTV show. An office filled with MI5 officers who screwed up and so can’t be trusted with anything important.

[latexr]

I haven’t seen Broadchurch, but I have seen Slow Horses and it doesn’t seem like the description applies. Sure, they are “exiled” MI5 officers, but they also save the day every season, and not through luck. They’re not completely incompetent. Take River: he was sent to the Slough House due to a mistake someone else made. Ho was sent there due to character flaws, despite being the most skilled at his job.

[something765478]

> he was sent to the Slough House due to a mistake someone else made.

No, he was sent to Slough house over his reaction to that mistake. He disobeyed orders, caused panic at an airport, and assaulted a civilian. Now, that would have been fine if he was trying to save lives, but the whole thing was just a training exercise! He deliberately put people in danger just to massage his own ego; he absolutely deserved to be "exiled".

[roesel]

Except in Slow Horses, most of them are exceptional at least in some way. Many of them are too difficult to work with, yes, but they do excel at _something_. That is very different from being _all around mediocre_.

[d-us-vb]

Today I learned that I would make a terrible detective!

When I watched Broadchurch with my family, I thought he was doing a fine job at getting to the bottom of the case. Goes to show much crime drama I watch.

I see now that Tennant's character's actions are a plot device to reveal the drama amongst the other characters, not the workings of a good detective.

[haritha-j]

That reminds me a lot of slow horses as well.

[dclowd9901]

Slow Horses is so equal-opportunity with how it hands out ineptitude. About the only character on the show who isn't inept is Lamb (Gary Oldman), but is such a wretched character, you could actually hardly find a moment to root for him. It's fantastic.

[ndsipa_pomu]

I like to think of Lamb as an inverse Columbo - he's rude and horrible to people rather than Columbo's charm. They share the grubby look and intelligence.

[biztos]

Nooo, the character is such a wretched human that you can't help but root for him.

He's being an ass in order to push people to do better, and at the end of the day (over and over again) he cares about Justice or at least the National Interest, but he cares about the Slow Horses more (in his way).

The flatulanece (et al) works as a filter: can you see past the boorishness?

[PeterWhittaker]

I'd argue that Coe is more than competent, just, you know, detached most of the time. Lamb always knows what needs be done, just never shares, and often lets things happen until what needs be done happens on its own or is inevitable.

Coe has extraordinarily high SA and makes decisions immediately. They might seem impulsive, but when he acts, it is always with forethought.

(Yeah, Coe is our favourite character.)

[cryzinger]

Louisa too. Before Coe came along she was for sure the best agent of the bunch; between the two of them it's a tough call imo.

Although I think Standish might have a leg up on all of them, including (sometimes) Lamb... but I'm biased since she's my favorite :)

[DoughnutHole]

Coe is insightful and good at violence, but also (!spoiler for latest season) responsible for the most hilariously unfortunate cock-up of the show so far…

[stavros]

Lamb is more like a teacher, he'll let you make your own mistakes until the situation is about to go FUBAR, then he'll step in and save it and show you where you went wrong.

[dclowd9901]

As you described, because he keeps to himself, he comes off as a loose cannon, which feels to me like something you wouldn't want on a coherent spy team, but nonetheless is so fun to watch, which is the point, really.

[pinnochio]

> Coe has extraordinarily high SA

What does 'SA' mean? I'm not familiar with it.

[ahazred8ta]

situational awareness

[petesergeant]

Roddy's portrayed as very technically competent too, just, a knob.

[ragall]

I'm Italian and I was rooting for him all along. He's a good chap.

[petesergeant]

I would argue Taverner is meant to be very competent, although she of course has her own flaws, and his hardly a character for one whom is meant to feel sorry

[catlover76]

> such a wretched character, you could actually hardly find a moment to root for him.

Hmm really?

In the first couple episodes, he definitely is, but I think they level him out a bit later on so that the viewer actually ends up liking him.

In the books, he is much more consistently unlikable.

(Don't bother with the books, IMO--show is better while still hewing quite close to them).

[saispas]

Other way round, IMO of course …

For me the books have depth that the TV series doesn't – and can't – have: some of the plots are dumbed down a bit to give more visual impact, and of course you don't get the same depth of characterisation, or the insights into Lamb's and the others' pasts because much of it comes out in interior monologue, and it's much harder for the shows to, erm, show.

And you miss one of the glories of Herron's writing: as a stylist is on a par with Terry Prachett for cramming wisdom into short witty phrases. He is very good at memorable phrases skewering contemporary life, and particularly politicians. The shows bring some of this out, but there's only so much that you can do in dialogue.

Take this passage from the first book:

> Peter Judd. PJ to his friends, and everyone else. Fluffy-haired and youthful at forty-eight, and with a vocabulary peppered with archaic expostulations – Balderdash! Tommy-rot!! Oh my giddy aunt!!! – Peter Judd had long established himself as the unthreatening face of the old-school right, popular enough with the Great British Public, which thought him an amiable idiot, to make a second living outside Parliament as a rent-a-quote-media-whore-cum-quiz-show-panel-favourite, and to get away with minor peccadilloes like dicking his kids’ nanny, robbing the taxman blind, and giving his party leader conniptions with off-script flourishes. (‘Damn fine city,’ he’d remarked on a trip to Paris. ‘Probably worth defending next time.’) Not everyone who’d worked with him thought him a total buffoon, and some who’d witnessed him lose his temper suspected him of political savvy, but by and large PJ seemed happy with the image he’d either fostered or been born with: a loose cannon with a floppy haircut and a bicycle.

Herron, Mick. Slow Horses: The bestselling thrillers that inspired the hit Apple TV+ show Slow Horses (Slough House Thriller 1) (p. 187). (Function). Kindle Edition.

That is a brilliant piece of characterisation, and if you know anything about British politics, you know exactly who he's describing, and how accurate a character assassination this is. The TV show's Peter Judd goes out of its way to make the character a lot more generic – their Judd is merely 'typical cynical nasty venal politician' and it loses a bit of force accordingly.

Or take the set piece descriptions which start every book: they recreate the seedy world of Slough House in a way that the shows can only hint at.

Not to say the shows aren't very good – they are one of the best things on TV – but the books are even better.

IMO, of course…

[dclowd9901]

Yeah, I mean he has a lot of really strong flaws that almost seem purposefully to put one off (which could be his whole angle, who knows), but between his drinking, terrible health, horrid treatment of his team (who, yes I know, he actually does care for), you're often not on his side, but more eager to see how what he's put in place will unfold.

[jimbokun]

Slough House denizens screw up in blatant, over the top ways. While the Park screw up in ways that leave geopolitical consequences festering for years or decades while being good at covering their own asses.

The plot is generally some evil, corrupt actions the Park took in the past are coming home to roost and only the bumbling losers in Slough House can fix it (kind of, eventually, in a "at least London wasn't blown off the face of the earth" kind of way).

[abrookewood]

God that show is fantastic.

[EtienneK]

Yes, exactly my first thought as well. Fantastic show!

[biophysboy]

The game Disco Elysium is kind of like this. Just know that the game is 99% reading and rolling dice.

[aetherson]

Apropos of nothing besides the mention of Disco Elysium, I present to you the best item in a CRPG: https://discoelysium.fandom.com/wiki/Volumetric_Shit_Compres...

[Sharlin]

…sort of, but the game does ultimately make clear that for all his faults, the protagonist is (and was, before the amnesia) exceedingly good at what he does.

[biophysboy]

Ha! Not the way I played him as a character :)

[stavros]

Also a masterpiece.

[hoten]

Did you know there is a American reboot of broadchurch also starring David Tennant? It's called Gracepoint.

I haven't seen it myself, but I wonder if it conforms to your theory: does the detective in that show have mitigating explanations for his failures?

[danaris]

Sounds like a much-more-fleshed-out version of Inspector Gadget!

[ravishi]

That sounds awfully similar to our own reading of Department Q. I'll watch it too.

[bee_rider]

Department Q is a weird one because it goes with the trope of the acerbic hyper-competent guy, but then… actually, I don’t recall, is he actually incompetent? Or does he just not quite live up to his over-confidence.

Also it is sometimes hard with these detective shows because the screenwriters might want a character to be hyper-competent, but they are people too, limited in their ability to portray super-competent abilities. This can result in characters lucking their way into clues.

[talldan]

My recollection is that the main guy is a highly competent at problem solving, but limited by an inability to work with others.

In some ways similar to Lamb in Slow Horses, though I think Lamb is a very good manipulator of people (he gets others to do what he wants without telling them directly), whereas the Dep. Q guy doesn't engage at all.

[kranner]

> Since watching it we've kept a lookout for protagonists who embody the "everyman in way over his head who accomplished virtually nothing himself" archetype.

You might enjoy Joyce Porter’s Dover series.

[scotty79]

Well, he was good at not quitting.