From a masterfully choreographed single-take sequence in which a plumber walks down the high street of a seaside town, cheerily greeting characters who will all figure later, one can tell that Broadchurch (ITV1) is something that will stand out, even in the glut of good drama that has lately made going out in the evenings seem a rash choice.
By the time its central horror unfolds – a 10-year-old boy, discovered to be missing, is found dead on a beach, at the foot of cliff – you can see how unremittingly grim it's going to be. Few police procedurals have been as unsparing in their depiction of parental grief – raw, all-consuming and, frankly, terrifying.
David Tennant is DI Alec Hardy, newly arrived in Broadchurch, Dorset, and attempting to weather the bad publicity surrounding a previous investigation. "I was completely exonerated," he says, but you can tell from the way people's expressions change whenever the case is mentioned that this is not a universally held opinion, or even a majority view. Whether he wants it or not, DI Hardy is clearly in need of a quiet life. He may not be interested in chasing up reports of diesel stolen from tractors in the night, but he's also not ready for another high-profile murder to hit his in-tray.
Olivia Colman is DC Ellie Miller, whose promotion Hardy usurped while she was on leave. She's also a friend of the parents of the dead child, the mother of a son the same age, and the aunt of the pushy young reporter on the local paper. Colman puts in an extraordinary performance – she's the emotional centre of the piece and, like her, the viewer is definitely going to need to toughen up for what lies ahead.
Like the BBC's Mayday (you will have to have recorded one or the other tonight, which pretty much writes off your weekend), this is also an examination of small-town claustrophobia and suspicion, but Broadchurch is more bleached and bleak, at pains to remind us that tragedy doesn't take days off. There's a particularly telling scene with tourists sunning themselves on the beach, metres from a police crime-scene tent.
There were familiar themes here, all sown in a heavy layer of grit. In its portrayal of a seaside town gripped by fear but also impatient to get summer back up to speed, the opening episode had something in common – something good – with Jaws. Even the name Broadchurch (a pun suggesting, perhaps ironically, that it takes all kinds?) put me in mind of Hardy's Wessex; a tragic fictional town in a parallel Dorset, a toxic counterpart to a place where you once had a lovely lunch. Maybe I got that into my head because of the new DI's surname.
We have, in terms of Broadchurch's broader issues, clearly just scratched the surface. A boot-faced extra from the crime scene turns out, on closer inspection, to be Pauline Quirke. She lives in a caravan on the cliff, with her dog and her fags, and she obviously knows something. She's already scaring me, and she hasn't uttered a word yet.
I learned something odd from The Flying Scotsman: a Rail Romance (BBC2). It's clear that the legendary steam locomotive once passed within earshot of my childhood bedroom, in Connecticut, when I was six years old, on its way from Boston to Washington. I said odd; I didn't say interesting.
One of a class of super-locomotives built to pull the long trains required by passenger demand, the Flying Scotsman was only belatedly christened when it was picked for an appearance at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition. The London and North Eastern Railway's marketing men wisely named it after their London to Edinburgh service, then set about creating a legend, supported by a feature film, a lot of cool posters and a few world records. The Flying Scotsman was the first train to go non-stop between London and Edinburgh, and the first to reach 100 miles per hour.
It was nearly sold for scrap in 1963 – steam enthusiasts couldn't afford British Railway's £3,000 asking price – but it embarked on a second life as a popular tourist attraction with a reputation for bankrupting millionaires. Alan Pegler bought it first, but went broke driving it around America. Sir William McAlpine took it on, until he decided it had drained his resources sufficiently. Now the National Railway Museum, in York, is saddled with it.
I find train programmes soothing, but it was the Scotsman's power to impoverish that delighted me most. Ninety years old, and still sucking in cash.
By the time its central horror unfolds – a 10-year-old boy, discovered to be missing, is found dead on a beach, at the foot of cliff – you can see how unremittingly grim it's going to be. Few police procedurals have been as unsparing in their depiction of parental grief – raw, all-consuming and, frankly, terrifying.
David Tennant is DI Alec Hardy, newly arrived in Broadchurch, Dorset, and attempting to weather the bad publicity surrounding a previous investigation. "I was completely exonerated," he says, but you can tell from the way people's expressions change whenever the case is mentioned that this is not a universally held opinion, or even a majority view. Whether he wants it or not, DI Hardy is clearly in need of a quiet life. He may not be interested in chasing up reports of diesel stolen from tractors in the night, but he's also not ready for another high-profile murder to hit his in-tray.
Olivia Colman is DC Ellie Miller, whose promotion Hardy usurped while she was on leave. She's also a friend of the parents of the dead child, the mother of a son the same age, and the aunt of the pushy young reporter on the local paper. Colman puts in an extraordinary performance – she's the emotional centre of the piece and, like her, the viewer is definitely going to need to toughen up for what lies ahead.
Like the BBC's Mayday (you will have to have recorded one or the other tonight, which pretty much writes off your weekend), this is also an examination of small-town claustrophobia and suspicion, but Broadchurch is more bleached and bleak, at pains to remind us that tragedy doesn't take days off. There's a particularly telling scene with tourists sunning themselves on the beach, metres from a police crime-scene tent.
There were familiar themes here, all sown in a heavy layer of grit. In its portrayal of a seaside town gripped by fear but also impatient to get summer back up to speed, the opening episode had something in common – something good – with Jaws. Even the name Broadchurch (a pun suggesting, perhaps ironically, that it takes all kinds?) put me in mind of Hardy's Wessex; a tragic fictional town in a parallel Dorset, a toxic counterpart to a place where you once had a lovely lunch. Maybe I got that into my head because of the new DI's surname.
We have, in terms of Broadchurch's broader issues, clearly just scratched the surface. A boot-faced extra from the crime scene turns out, on closer inspection, to be Pauline Quirke. She lives in a caravan on the cliff, with her dog and her fags, and she obviously knows something. She's already scaring me, and she hasn't uttered a word yet.
I learned something odd from The Flying Scotsman: a Rail Romance (BBC2). It's clear that the legendary steam locomotive once passed within earshot of my childhood bedroom, in Connecticut, when I was six years old, on its way from Boston to Washington. I said odd; I didn't say interesting.
One of a class of super-locomotives built to pull the long trains required by passenger demand, the Flying Scotsman was only belatedly christened when it was picked for an appearance at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition. The London and North Eastern Railway's marketing men wisely named it after their London to Edinburgh service, then set about creating a legend, supported by a feature film, a lot of cool posters and a few world records. The Flying Scotsman was the first train to go non-stop between London and Edinburgh, and the first to reach 100 miles per hour.
It was nearly sold for scrap in 1963 – steam enthusiasts couldn't afford British Railway's £3,000 asking price – but it embarked on a second life as a popular tourist attraction with a reputation for bankrupting millionaires. Alan Pegler bought it first, but went broke driving it around America. Sir William McAlpine took it on, until he decided it had drained his resources sufficiently. Now the National Railway Museum, in York, is saddled with it.
I find train programmes soothing, but it was the Scotsman's power to impoverish that delighted me most. Ninety years old, and still sucking in cash.
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