The world from my window

Along with millions of others last night, I sat down and watched the final episode of Broadchurch . The difference was, though, I was at a live screening of the show at Bridport, in the town where much of the series was made. More details of that here . It was a shocking denouement, with no real winners, but (I thought) plenty of hope, right at the end. Broadchurch has made a great impact on my part of Dorset, and very much for the good. Writer Chris Chibnall has been embraced as 'one of our own', and we are grateful to him and his team for creating such an intelligent, beautifully-acted and shot series. It's gripped the nation, and rightly so. In the hands of others, the storyline of this last series, in particular, could have been very tacky. But it was handled with extreme sensitivity and we didn't feel bad for wanting to know who 'did' it. We wanted justice for Trish. I didn't correctly identify the culprit (I thought it was Trish's hu...

There were gasps as the verdict was announced. Surely not? And then the programme went on, with twists and turns, including the unexpected and the entirely predictable. Anyone would think the popular television drama, Broadchurch , was for real. Well, for those of us who live here, where the show was made, it does feel a part of everyday life. The writer lives in Bridport and the actors are now frequent visitors to the town and its harbour, West Bay. The series' backdrop is as familiar to us as the backs of our hands, although the magic of television splices the geographical areas of North Somerset and West Dorset with surgical precision, so that the dramatic East Cliff of West Bay on the south coast suddenly looms on the distant skyline beyond Clevedon and the Bristol Channel. In Bridport last night, the charming Electric Palace Theatre  played host to the haunting, atmospheric music of Ólafur Arnalds, the composer for the series. He and his band filled the q...