Broadchurch

Broadchurch is a three-season ITV crime drama from Chris Chibnall, who wrote all 24 episodes himself between 2013 and 2017. It's set in a small Dorset seaside town, all chalk cliffs and off-season pubs, where a boy's body is found on the beach in the pilot. David Tennant plays DI Alec Hardy, a wrecked outsider limping in from a case that went wrong somewhere else. Olivia Colman plays DS Ellie Miller, the local sergeant who expected his job and instead has to work under him. Everyone in town knows everyone. That's the whole engine.

Colman, mainly. This is the role that put her on the road to The Favourite and The Crown, and you can see why. She plays Miller as a woman whose job requires her to suspect neighbors she's known for twenty years, and every flinch registers. Tennant does the opposite work well, hollow-eyed and rude, refusing the small-town warmth the show keeps offering him. Chibnall builds the first season around a single question and holds discipline for eight episodes, which almost no procedural manages. James Strong's direction leans on the coast itself, wide shots of cliffs and grey water that make the town feel both cozy and exposed. Olafur Arnalds' score is a big part of the mood, all sighing strings and piano.

Season two is a real drop. Chibnall runs a courtroom track alongside a second cold-case plot and neither one has the shape of the first year. Some of the supporting characters get stuck repeating the same beat for a full run of episodes. Season three recovers by picking a genuinely difficult subject and handling it seriously, but it's still built for people who liked the first one enough to keep going. And if you've heard the ending of season one from a friend, a Reddit thread, or the American remake Gracepoint, a lot of the tension leaks out. This is a show that rewards not knowing.

People who liked The Killing, Happy Valley, or Mare of Easttown. Anyone who wants a mystery where the grief of the parents matters as much as the case. If you need a body per episode and a new suspect every twelve minutes, you'll be checking your phone by episode three. It's slow on purpose. Watch it with the lights low and no second screen.

Worth It because the first season is a small, precisely built thing that earns every choice, and because Colman and Tennant together are one of the best detective pairings British TV has produced in the last fifteen years. Season three takes on consent and how a community handles a survivor, and it does the work through character and interview scenes rather than speeches. Nobody stops the plot to tell you what to think. When a suspect says something ugly, another character reacts like a person, not a mouthpiece. That's the difference between a show with something to say and a show reading you a statement. Broadchurch dips in the middle and doesn't reach its own peak again, but the peak is high enough to carry it.