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Broadchurch has proved to be one of the most popular whodunits on television, a contemporary Agatha Christie-style mystery that has had nearly eight million viewers puzzling over clues and deboning red herrings.

Questions that keep fans awake at night include: who is the serial rapist; why do so many creepy men live within one postal code in Dorset; and will DI Alec Hardy’s beard hair finally connect with his chest hair before the final episode on Monday evening?

As the net closes in on the culprit in this little ole crime-drenched town, the suspects are lined up like skittles.

The car mechanic? The taxi driver? The husband? The stalker? None of the above?

All will be revealed as DI Hardy (David Tennant) and his sidekick DS Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) solve the crime with all the panache of a pair of penguins in woollen mittens trying to eat peas with chopsticks. They are both completely adorable, but come on!

All will be revealed as DI Hardy (David Tennant) and his sidekick DS Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) solve the crime with all the panache of a pair of penguins in woollen mittens trying to eat peas with chopsticks. 

They are both completely adorable, but come on!

What have they been doing all these years? Their seaside beat is seething with attackers, career prowlers, a teenage porn ring and some very suspicious- looking beetroots tied up with blue twine — yet Hardy and Miller seem to have noticed nothing and investigated even less. They didn’t even clock that the daughter of one of the chief suspects worked in their office, thus potentially jeopardising any future court case.

It all makes one wonder — does Broadchurch itself stand up to forensic investigation? It might be terrific entertainment, but does this third and final series stretch viewer credulity and goodwill too far?

There are baffling sub-plots and, oh God, Sir Lenny Henry in serious thespian mode, chewing up the carpet as the violent but lovelorn manager of the local farm shop.

Oh, for someone to throw an organic cabbage at his head and tell him to stop gurning. Or do we simply not care about the flaws and still love this tale of shady people in a sunny place?

Bang, bang, order in court! All rise as I don my judge’s wig and sift through the evidence and deliver my Broadchurch 2017 verdicts (and I promise I haven’t seen the last episode).

THE VICTIM

TRISH WINTERMAN (Julie Hesmondhalgh) is the middle-aged woman who was raped at the birthday party in episode one.

Since then we have learned that her boss (Lenny Henry) stalks her, her estranged husband still loves her and she is having an affair with the husband of her best friend Cath Atwood (Sarah Parish). There are also dark hints of other lovers.

What the heck is going on? Never in the field of human history has one unlikely woman inspired so much passion in so many men, despite having an Army recruit haircut and unfortunate ears.

TRISH WINTERMAN (Julie Hesmondhalgh) is the middle-aged woman who was raped at the birthday party in episode one

‘Of all the women at the party, why would someone rape you? It doesn’t make sense,’ said her pal Cath, who wasn’t feeling very supportive or sisterly on account of Trish sleeping with her husband. Still, it was what many were thinking.

It’s as if the Broadchurch cameras are deliberately trying to film Trish in a way that makes her look as unattractive as possible, thus proving some indefinable point about something or other.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that two more victims were attacked in a similar way.

THE BUDDY COPS

Her son is watching porn, while Hardy’s daughter has been embarrassed by naughty pictures of her being passed around the school

Cagney and Lacey, Starsky and Hutch — now Hardy and Miller. He is the classic snarky cop with a desolate home life, she is the pacifier urging him to take care of himself.

Yet look at her own life! Her husband was acquitted of the last Broadchurch murder, but everyone in town knows he did it.

Her son is watching porn, while Hardy’s daughter has been embarrassed by naughty pictures of her being passed around the school. Connection? Hmm, strokes chin, moves on.

Hardy (as portrayed by the Scottish Tennant) has a habit of going from softly, softly to shouty, shouty at the drop of a police hat. All too frequently, the thin blue line is that vein that throbs in his forehead when he goes full Braveheart.

Thank goodness Miller is there to catch him, with her no-nonsense cross-body bag, her sense and sensibility, and a palpable distaste for some of the greasier suspects that ripples across her face during interrogations.

THE SUSPECTS

Connected to all three rape victims, Jim is flamboyantly unshaven, uncaring and unrepentant about his sexual conquests

Jim Atwood (Mark Bazeley)

Seriously shifty. In fact, car mechanic Jim is so shifty he could be doing a shift in the shift shop, teaching a masterclass in shiftiness to the night shift.

Stuck in a loveless marriage to Cath, he is sleeping around, armed with a max pack of condoms in the glove compartment of his aptly named pick-up truck.

Connected to all three rape victims, Jim is flamboyantly unshaven, uncaring and unrepentant about his sexual conquests.

All the evidence points to him, which means it can’t be him — can it?

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Ian Winterman (Charlie Higson)

Soft voiced, a creepy teacher and Trish Winterman’s now estranged husband

Soft voiced, a creepy teacher and Trish Winterman’s now estranged husband.

After leaving Trish, he shacked up with a younger girlfriend, Sarah.

He disapproves of his wife’s new lease of life, and has also been telling the detectives that she’d been sleeping around and was too fond of booze and fags for his liking.

He was also forced to admit to spying on her via a computer program he had installed on her laptop.

After being caught out, he said it was because he missed her. Snort.

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Oh, what a nasty piece of work! Clive is the gimlet-eyed taxi driver with a conveniently dodgy car radio and a downtrodden wife

Clive Lucas (Sebastian Armesto)

Oh, what a nasty piece of work! 

Clive is the gimlet-eyed taxi driver with a conveniently dodgy car radio and a downtrodden wife, who looks like a member of a weird religious cult. 

He can’t account for his movements on the night of the attack and has a locked drawer full of ‘trophies’, including Trish’s key fob. He is certainly Up To Something.

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Leo Humphries (Chris Mason)

Handsome to the point of being suspicious, the cocky fishing rope salesman Leo is fast moving into the frame.

Not only did he get his burger van girlfriend to tell lies for him, he has a close relationship with his former teacher Ian Winterman, who groomed (sorry, befriended) him during a time of family trouble.

Leo installed the spyware on Ian’s computer — was he part of the crime?

Don’t forget that Trish saw a ‘white light’ during her attack — was Leo or another accomplice filming it? Bang, bang! Order in court. It’s only a theory.

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Gingery bloke with a previous sexual assault conviction

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Aaron Mayford (Jim Howick)

Gingery bloke with a previous sexual assault conviction who cannot account for his movements on the night of the party.

He says he went mackerel fishing that night, but DI Hardy discovers that there is no mackerel in his freezer. Aha! 

Yet Aaron has been given very little screen time, so we can discount him . . . probably.

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Mark Latimer (Andrew Buchan)

It was his son Danny who was killed by DS Miller’s husband Joe in the first series of Broadchurch, although the murderer was acquitted in court.

It was his son Danny who was killed by DS Miller’s husband Joe in the first series

Mark and wife Beth (Jodie Whittaker) are still struggling to cope. She has trained as an ISVA (Independent Sexual Violence Advisor) and, would you credit it, she got assigned onto the Trish Winterman case. Lucky!

Capsized by grief — or is it guilt? — Mark tried to drown himself in front of the Broadchurch cliffs in episode six. He survives — but why? It would have been dramatically more powerful to kill him off.

Unless… unless… bang, bang, I’m going to say it… unless he was more complicit in his son’s death than we know, and is also involved in Trish’s case in unexpected ways.

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The schoolboys

Including taxi driver Clive Lucas’s stepson Michael (Deon Lee-Williams) and DS Miller’s son Tom (Adam Wilson). They are part of a porn-swapping ring at school, with an unhealthy interest in sex. Could they be the attackers? Oh God, that would kill poor old Miller. Let’s just hope not.

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Lenny was first spotted looming over cauliflowers in the farm shop

Ed Burnett (Lenny Henry)

LENNY was first spotted looming over cauliflowers in the farm shop. 

Unmasked as a widowed stalker in love with Trish, he is also a violent man who cannot account for the mud on his suit from the night of the party. 

He has a history of domestic abuse and ties his veg up with the same blue twine used on Trish.

Brought in for questioning, he tells Hardy and Miller: ‘In the absence of any evidence, you’ve gone for the textbook police approach of “blame the black guy”.’

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JUDGE JAN’S SUMMING-UP

Unlike in real life, the guilty party in fashionable police procedural dramas is rarely — if ever! — anyone who is black or Asian or has serious mental problems. This is deemed too discriminatory and stigmatising and that is why you, Mr Henry, are now free to leave this court. Bang, bang! Order, please.

I now turn to the other defendants. One depressing aspect of this case is that each and every one of you could be the guilty party.

All of you have treated women badly, abusing and oppressing them in various ways, while four have cheated on your wives. Pathetic specimens, the lot of you.

The schoolboys are too young to have been involved in the previous two attacks, so I hereby dismiss their cases. I also dismiss mackerel-fishing Mr Mayford and reluctantly set Mr Latimer free, although a question mark remains over your behaviour, dear sir. And yes, I know you are a bereaved parent.

This leaves prime suspects Mr Atwood and Mr Lucas, the car breakdown repair man and the taxi driver. Professionally, both of you are employed to come to the aid of women in distress and both are capable of exploiting that trust. Yet despite — or perhaps because of — the weight of evidence against you, I am minded to turn my attentions elsewhere.

And that is towards you, Mr Winterman. Rape is driven by hate, but also a need for power. Out of all the suspects in this eight-part drama, it is you, as Trish’s estranged husband, who has the strongest motivation to hurt her.

You are furious she won’t take you back, annoyed she has taken new lovers and you have even confessed to spying on her through the camera on her laptop. Plus, you are middle class and morally judgmental, which makes you as guilty as sin in the contemporary gaze of all programmes like this.

Therefore I convict you, Ian Winterman, of the rape of your wife, Trish. I also charge your accomplice Leo Humphries of filming and aiding and abetting the attack in a further bid to humiliate Mrs Winterman. Sentencing will be announced on Monday evening. There will be no further arguments. Bang, bang. Take him to the cells.

n SO, IS Judge Jan correct? Tune in to Broadchurch on Easter Monday at 9pm on ITV to find out. The final episode will also be screened at selected Vue cinemas.

Sleuths: Will DS Miller and DI Hardy crack the rape case?