What’s Worth Watching: The Chilling Tale of Southcliffe

Southcliffe (available now, Netflix)

Back in 2013, when we in the U.S. were going mad for the first season of Broadchurch on BBC America, British audiences had already moved on to Southcliffe. The harrowing, four-hour miniseries stars Rory Kinnear (Penny Dreadful‘s Creature) as David Whitehead, a TV reporter forced to return to his seaside hometown when a childhood acquaintance goes on a shooting spree that makes national news. The story is told out of sequence, jumping from before to after the tragedy and back again as David tries to make sense of it—as well as his own past.

While Broadchurch was a mystery series set against the bereavement of a small town, Southcliffe is a series about bereavement that tries to solve the mystery of why these tragedies happen in the first place. And, it’s got topnotch performances from Kinnear, Harry Potter‘s Shirley Henderson, Game of Thrones‘ Joe Dempsie, and The Borgias‘ Sean Harris as the shooter. Prepare to be shaken.