TV Crime Log: Broadchurch

So, look, don’t look so grim. After the catastrophic crime show famine of Christmas, there’s plenty of new – or rather, returning – crime shows this week.

Foyle’s War slipped back last night, cosy Father Brown is back for a third series this afternoon, featherweight Death In Paradise later in the week, and that old warhorse Silent Witness inevitably lumbers around for its umpteenth return. Crumbs, that’s a landslide of crimey stuff for your over-stimulated eyeballs.

But everybody’s attention will be turned to Broadchurch tonight, at 9pm. It’s a show that provided ITV with a rare critical and ratings drama triumph. The first series managed to run for 10-episodes while keeping up the gripping dramatic pace in a way which others dramas—The Missing, perhaps—have struggled to do.

The trailer for the second series hints at the disappearance of two girls— maybe referencing the investigation that ruined David Tennant’s DI Alec Hardy’s career—and creator and writer Chris Chibnall has promised a more straightforward thriller narrative this time around.

It’ll be interesting to see if lightning can actually strike twice for the beleaguered residents of that blighted, fictional Devon town, with its bright Scandi fabrics and steep cliffs and dark secrets. Broadchurch became something of a phenomenon when it aired in 2013.

A US-version, called Gracepoint, limped along across the pond this summer. And there was the novelization written by Erin Kelly. No matter how good novelisations of TV-series are, I’ve never quite understood the logic of publishing a book version a year or two after the telly show transmits—although Kelly has said that Chibnall insisted she insert a small clue into the book about the direction of the second series.

TV veteran Chibnall wrote the show on spec, and said he origjnally designed the show to be a trilogy—and it’s been reported that a third series has already been commissioned.