The Doctor is in

The answer to the question ‘What made ITV’s Broadchurch (a long-running primetime drama about a child-related crime in a close-knit community produced by Kudos) work when the BBC’s competing Mayday (ditto) did not?’ could simply be answered by two names: David Tennant and Olivia Colman.

And yet, despite the unmistakeable class and depth the pair brought to potentially clichéd roles (grisled copper with ‘a past’; newbie copper with a heart of gold), I’d argue Broadchurch‘s success lay in the superior treatment of creator Chris Chibnall, who also comes to us by way of Doctor Who, and who knows the importance of writing three-dimensional characters an audience – and cast – can fully invest in.

Chibnall has described this project as a labour of love, and that care was apparent in his meticulous script. While Mayday painted every unpleasant and/or psychotic character in broad, melodramatic strokes, and then threw in mystical scares for good measure, Broadchurch quietly built up a recognisable small community, where a web of close ties is both attractive (as demonstrated by the bravura opening tracking shot) and potentially devastating.

Not only has Tennant’s grisled copper sworn to root out the secrets of all connected to the murdered boy, but seemingly innocuous relationships could impede his progress, such as Colman’s Ellie inadvertently tipping off her wannabe-tabloid hack nephew, who then breaks the story on Twitter – not out of spite, for there are no cardboard-cutout villains here, but ambition.

The grieving family’s reaction to this latest assault – hurt, anger, disbelief, confusion, silent fracture – beautifully cements Broadchurch’s appeal: like our beloved Scandinavian crime dramas, this Whodunnit’s power lies in its masterful depiction of an everyday human tragedy, unsettlingly close to home.