What Do You Think About Alec And Ellie Dressing The Same When They Are In Detective Mode (grey Button

What do you think about Alec and Ellie dressing the same when they are in detective mode (grey button down, dark grey jacket)

Have I ranted about the costumes in Broadchurch yet? No? WELL THEN.

TV shows and films are all about characters. Ergo, the costumes should be all about the characters too. Good costuming will tell you everything you need to know about the character’s personality, and will change to suit their mood and the tone of the scene.

When it comes to Hardy and Miller, their costumes are fascinating to analyse. The signature “look” for both of them is Hardy in black and blue and Miller in orange.

What Do You Think About Alec And Ellie Dressing The Same When They Are In Detective Mode (grey Button

These are the clothes they typically choose to wear of their own accord. Now, this look renders them as opposites - eye burningly-bright v. dark and dull, informal v. formal, etc. Hardy’s tendency to wear a suit at all times, even in informal settings, plus a black coat indicates how self-protective he is. His clothing is his armour and he uses it to protect himself from the rest of the world. He hides his feelings behind a business suit. He feels at home in a suit and doesn’t consider it posh. He wears it in S02E04 when he shares a bed with Ellie because he’s so nervous and awkward that he needs those layers of clothing to protect himself. Around other people, it’s always a semi-formal suit. This is the default look for him.

Ellie’s default look is trainers, comfy trousers and her orange jacket. This establishes her as a practical woman, a mum who doesn’t care about appearances. The orange jacket is particularly comforting for her, and she withdraws into it - zips it up and tucks her hands into her sleeves - when she’s feeling sad or scared. She also carries a practical, ugly bag on a strap that she often clutches to herself like it’s a safety blanket.

Their signature look, therefore, presents them to us as opposites. But the way Chibnall has constructed them is as people who are superficially opposites, but the same underneath. They are cast to look the same, and are the same age, with the same brown hair and eyes. They seem like opposites, and they are in many ways, but under it all they exactly the same, with the same values and principles and desires. They are really two halves of a whole.

It’s my opinion that Chibnall is basing Hardy and Miller off the couple Jude and Sue from Jude the Obscure - a book which is, not coincidentally, I’m sure, the only Thomas Hardy book explicitly referred to by name in the show. Jude and Sue are both traumatised by disastrous first marriages, but eventually form an extremely intimate and loving relationship with each other. Sue is incredibly intelligent and a real rebel in many ways; Jude is a rather melancholy man hung up on old dreams and desires with recurring health issues.

Here are some of the ways Thomas Hardy talks about them:

That complete mutual understanding, in which every glanceand movement was as effectual as speech for conveying intelligence betweenthem, made them almost the two parts of a single whole.

“I have been struck with these two facts; the extraordinarysympathy, or similarity, between the pair… They seem to be one person split in two!”

There is even a scene where Sue wears Jude’s clothes. “Sitting in his [Jude’s] only arm-chair he saw a slim and fragile being masquerading as himself.” Later, Jude thinks, “what a comrade she would make; fortheir difference of opinion on conjectural subjects only drew them closer together on matters of daily humanexperience. She was nearer to him than any other woman he had ever met, and he could scarcely believe that time, creed,or absence, would ever divide him from her.”

Jude and Sue are two halves of a whole who look alike and dress alike, but are superficially different. Jude says “you are just like me at heart” and Sue replies, “But not at head.” Same heart, different minds.

It is Claire who brings up this idea of two halves. “You go about your life thinking you’re complete and then youmeet someone and you realise you’re only really half of something… when you meet that person… you’re only really whole when you’re with each other. Neverends well, does it?… Howeverit happens, one half always loses the other.”

Now, I’ve already established in another post how the cinematography establishes them as two halves of a whole, but let’s look at how the costumes do the same.

When it’s all business and they’re working together, they tend to wear the same grey, black or blue suit and blue or white shirt

Here they are absolute mirror images of each other, she almost a “double for himself.”

It should hardly be surprising that they’re wearing suits, since they’re in a professional setting, but the fact that almost constantly mirror each other, with Ellie wearing a feminine version of whatever Hardy wears, is absolutely deliberate. It really gets across the sameness between them, the absolute equality of their relationship, and the fact that they share the same goals and principles when investigating these cases.

Ellie also has a black coat that matches Hardy’s, again just a tailored, feminine version of his outfit.

It goes the other way, too. Plenty of people have noticed that Hardy wears a blue sweater in S02E06 and S02E07 that matches Ellie’s blue sweater from S02E01.

Ellie’s is bigger and baggier than Hardy’s, and it has horizontal pattern stitching while Hardy’s is vertical. Hardy even wears it with a blue collar underneath, just as Ellie did.

It’s interesting that Hardy says, “I’m reborn” and that the first outfit he wears after his operation is something that reminds him of Ellie. Technically that sweater was not a good choice for a man who’d just had pacemaker surgery since you can’t really lift your left arm (watch how DT favours his right arm when he puts it on); button-up shirts would have been a better choice, but no, Hardy wanted something warm and cuddly that reminded him of Ellie. He’s like a babby duckling imprinting on the first person he sees when he wakes up.

I like that Ellie tends to match him when it comes to formal wear, but Hardy matches Ellie in informal wear because it echoes the way Hardy teaches Miller to be a better detective, and Miller teaches Hardy to be a better person.

When Hardy’s alone or in bed, he sometimes wears a grey t-shirt, which is about as exposed as he gets.

As S2 rolls on and he literally and figuratively starts to expose himself more to Miller, and she to him. In S02E05, once Ellie has forced her way into his home and made herself a permanent fixture, he relaxes around her.

Here, she is all business. The suit is on, the hair is up and she’s working a case, but Hardy’s jacket and tie is off and his sleeves are rolled up.

By S02E07 it’s different. Hardy is revitalised by surgery and is now all business as they work together, while Ellie has relaxed into informal attire and works with her hair down and slightly messy, wearing a casual, comfy blue top with the sleeves and collar open.

For them to relax like this in each other’s company indicates a deep trust and intimacy.

There’s a hundred other details I could talk about, but even so, out of all the little quirks and subtleties in the costuming choices it is their default look that I adore the most because honestly