I FELT both sad and satisfied following the finale of Broadchurch this week.
In many ways, for me this was the most involving of all three series because it brought together all of the pieces of the original story and focused more than ever on the emotional impact of crime.
While the first, and arguably, most sensational of the three series with its alarming and dark twist at the very end, will probably always be the pinnacle for many, it actually did tend to meander quite a bit.
Wanting to find out who had killed schoolboy Danny Latimer kept everyone hooked but at times it sagged a bit under the weight of its secret and mountain of red herrings.
Once we all knew the truth it was hard to see where it would go in the second series and while its central, and somewhat fresh crime story was high quality, it still seemed to be in the shadow of the Latimer family and their continuing grief.
But this final eight-parter was clever in that it did not centre on a murder and also did not shy away from the original story and the on-going trauma this had caused.
Grief, and how people cope, is a subject more people should talk about.
In fact, being able to talk in general is often a good thing and coping with trauma and the aftermath of a crime was deftly dealt with here.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom either, the script fizzed with one-liners and David Tennant and Olivia Colman as the two police officers at the centre of it all boast an enviable chemistry.
Admittedly, David was a bit shouty and theatrical at times. 
His little speech to a group of youngsters who had put a questionable picture of his daughter on-line was well-meaning but a tad cringey, but he is always watchable.
Broadchurch worked because it stuck with the story of the original victim’s family and they certainly reached a point of closure with this on the third series, so I agree this is the right place to leave it.
But it leaves a gaping hole for a must-see drama, which will grow even wider when the Line of Duty concludes in a few week’s time.
I will miss Broadchurch, and my daughter persistently and wrongly calling it Hornchurch.
But I might go back and re-watch it in its entirety, just to see where the clues were all along.