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Working out the culprit in this series of Broadchurch is proving as maddeningly difficult as in the first one. Not just for the viewers - for the detectives investigating it.

Alarmingly, DS Ellie Miller and DI Alec Hardy seemed just as perplexed about who had raped Trish Waterman as we were.

‘Do you know what’s bothering me? It’s not narrowing down,’ Miller admitted about the list of suspects. ‘It feels like the more men we talk to, the more we rule in. It’s a scarily wide net right now.’

Perplexed: DS Ellie Miller and DI Alec Hardy, played by Olivia Coleman and David Tennant were concerned that their list of suspects was not narrowing down 

She wasn’t wrong, judging by the vast chart in their office - ‘every man that was at that party,’ DC Harford explained gravely.

DI Alec Hardy’s response matched Miller’s dread and raised it.

‘Do you know what’s bothering me about this case?’ he spat. ‘It makes me ashamed to be a man.’

Pretty damning, but not unreasonable...

Every single man in the town appeared to be at best a secretive, unsavoury, chauvinist and at worst a sexist liar capable of violence.

Ellie Miller considered that the rapist could have been anyone of the 50 male guests at Cath Atwood’s birthday celebration reasoning: ‘they were all there, they all saw Trish, and they all had an opportunity.’

Victim: Trish Waterman was insistent about not revealing who she'd slept with the morning she was raped

Trish Waterman thought the same.

‘At first I thought ‘not the men I know, not like that’, she told Atwood, her best friend. ‘Now I think ‘I’m not so sure.’

Earlier DI Hardy had promised Trish ‘we will find the man who attacked you.’

Not before Episode Eight you won’t, viewers were probably thinking looking at the chart and their progress.

The fact DI Hardy and DS Miller seemed unaware that DC Katie Harford was the daughter of one of the suspects (Ed Burnett) didn’t give you much faith in their ability as detectives.

We knew more than they did.

Here are 15 things we learnt from Episode Three – but that didn’t really help work out whodunit.

1. Even Ellie Miller's son was emerging as a suspect

Everyone's a suspect: Even Ellie Miller's son Tom was emerging as a suspect after being caught supplying porn to kids at school

 ‘I will not have you be your father's son !’ DS Miller had raged but the saintly Ellie was as ominously in the dark about her teenage son as she had been in series one when it transpired her husband Joe had been a paedophile who groomed and killed Danny Latimer. 

Now Tom Miller had been caught supplying porn to kids at school and had rifled through her room and taken back the mobile phone she had confiscated but without removing the clip he played his friend Michael that may even have been a homemade video to do with the case.

2. Trish Waterman was suspiciously insistent about not revealing who she'd slept with the morning she was raped  

‘We’re going to retrieve his DNA from your bed-sheets anyway !’ DI Hardy told Trish bluntly.

But she was adamant the attacker was ‘not him’ though, insisting ‘it’s not connected !’ in a way that could only mean it was or might be.

Fearful: DI Hardy revealed he was 'scared' that the rapist was going to strike again

3. DI Hardy was 'scared' that the rapist was going to strike again 

‘That’s why I’m pushing Trish,’ he told Miller. Trish Waterman’s speech telling Ellie Miller ‘you don’t know what’s it like’ heightened our worst fears that she could be the next victim.

4. These days young people today say everything by text 

Ian Waterman found out that his estranged wife Trish had been attacked from their daughter Leah – in a text. ‘Mum was raped at Cath’s party’ it said starkly.

5. The young people in Broadchurch are almost as bad as the adults 

Besides Tom Miller’s obsession with porn, Daisy’s friends had no respect for Alec Hardy at all even though they knew he was her father and a police officer.

6. There were still new suspects emerging 

The owner of the country house where the rape took place and the musician who played at the party were potential new suspects, albeit long-shots. ‘I’ve never been asked for a DNA swab before. That’s quite cool,’ said the singer crassly.

But the head of the caterers was more promising. They had taken a ten-minute break and walked round the lake between 11.30 and midnight – exactly the time of the attack. 

The husband: Trish Winterman’s husband lied to the police about his movements at the party

7. Ian Winterman had lied to the police about his movements at the party  

Unlike us, DS Miller and DI Hardy were unaware that last week Trish Winterman’s husband Ian had been frantically washing away evidence off a bag of clothes he had hidden.

‘What I told the police,’ he told Jim Atwood here. ‘I made it all up.’

He claimed he had been drinking tequila and ‘blacked out. I just remember waking up on the grass by the lake. My wife was being raped and I don’t know where I was.’

8. Ian Winterman and Leo Humphries were involved in something dubious 

Trish’s husband had a surreptitious, late-night meet with the cocky 23 year-old manager of the rope factory which made the fisherman’s twine used in the rape.

‘That stuff you did to the laptop I gave you - can you delete it? Remotely?’ Winterman asked Leo nervously. ‘I don’t want anyone to find it.’ Gulp.

9. Even his wife considered Jim Atwood a suspect 

The singer told them Jim Atwood and his wife Cath had been arguing at the party.

‘Did I rape one of our best friends? Do I really need to answer that?’

‘Yes,’ she said. But he didn’t.

Under suspicion: Ed Burnett, played by Lenny Henry, was still considered a suspect

10. Ed Burnett was also still a suspect 

‘I went home, I drove, I don’t drink !’ Ed Burnett claimed to Hardy and Miller about his movements after his fracas with Jim Atwood. But the musician told them otherwise.

‘That bloke from the farm shop was in a right old mood. Looked like he wanted to kill someone. I saw him heading off into the gardens about 11.30-ish.’

11. Clive Lucas the taxi driver was lying so much he was now our prime suspect  

Having been less than honest about his ‘faulty’ cab radio, Lucas’ alibi that he had been taking home partygoers did not add up.

‘You didn’t take any of those people. Did you not think we’d check?’ carped Ellie Miller.

‘Why would you lie about what you were doing about the night a woman was raped?’ DI Hardy pondered.

Later a witness told them he had seen Lucas’ cab near the crime scene at 12 ‘clock – ‘in the car park, locked up, with the lights out.’

What with Ed Burnett, Ian, and the caterers it was beginning to look as if it had been quite crowded.

Taxi driver: Clive Lucas the taxi driver was lying so much he was now our prime suspect

12. Lucas had been accused of impropriety by a female passenger before

Like Trish, Maria Brady had been one of Lucas’ regulars.

‘She made a complaint about me. I misread some signals,’ he stuttered. ‘I asked her if she was going to invite me in. And she looked really scared...’

You could hardly blame her.

13. Lucas was married but openly cheated on his wife and had once studied to be a doctor  

This was arguably the most shocking revelation of the night. Lucas’ wife revealed Lucas had quit his studies to marry her when she was pregnant with another man’s baby, declaring: ‘if he won’t do the honourable thing I will.’

Big list of suspects: DI Miller reasoned that the man who raped Trish could have been any one of the 50 male guests at Cath Atwood’s birthday

His one redeeming feature, even this counted against him if his sexual frustration and anger against women had only been a factor in making him a rapist.

Lucas slept on the sofa, his wife said, and he had been cheating on her for years.

‘Every time he says it’s the last time. Every time he apologises.’

Did the flowers Trish receive with the message ‘thinking of you’ come from him?

14. It transpired that Tom Miller's friend Michael was Clive Lucas' step son

Michael had complained to Tom Miller that his stepdad was being ‘more of a dick than normal.’ Later we discovered this man was.... Clive Lucas. Not good.

15. Lucas had a secret, decidedly sinister, lock-up

The last scene saw Clive Lucas late at night, going into a garage and opening a locked drawer full of purses, sunglasses, and door-keys. 

Whether they were trophies from previous victims or future ones wasn’t clear but the music made it obvious, either way it didn’t bode well. 

As with everything else about Lucas, you sensed it was not going to have an innocent explanation.