Gracepoint

The primary difference between the brilliant British series Broadchurch that aired on BBC America last year and the Americanized remake Gracepoint that premiered on Fox a few weeks ago is the faint and faintly off-putting Hollywood sheen.

In the first few episodes, Gracepoint’s storyline is almost identical to the one that had Anglophile TV lovers riveted last year. Once again we have a small coastal town (this time Northern California rather than South West England) rocked by the murder of 10-year-old local boy Danny Solano. Danny’s parents struggle to hold their marriage together, and the townspeople’s secret sins are brought into the light as weeks drag on without a prime suspect and neighbor begins to mistrust neighbor. Through it all, detectives Emmett Carver (David Tennant, reprising his role in the original with an American accent) and Ellie Miller (Anna Gunn) must work through their clashing investigative styles to try to catch the killer.

All of this was good storytelling in the U.K., and it’s still good storytelling here. The problem is that Fox’s producers seem less dedicated to the quiet authenticity that made the British version more than just a murder mystery.

Anna Gunn, best known for her role as Skylar White on Breaking Bad, is a lovely woman. Rather uncommonly lovely for a 46-year-old. Her dewy, lineless face, obviously enhanced lips, and glossy blond locks would seem out of place on a small-town cop even if a viewer hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing Olivia Colman’s worn-out-yet-witty and, above all, totally credible rendition first.

Other female roles seem likewise cast more for visual appeal than for acting ability. Worse though are the small but ham-handed changes made to appease American political correctness. A character whose sexuality was not relevant and therefore never defined in the British version here immediately makes an obnoxious and utterly immaterial proclamation that she’s a lesbian.

Gracepoint isn’t bad as a generic whodunit, but you don’t have to be an Anglophile to see that the original, which was more interested in accurately representing small-town people and values, was far superior.