Broadchurch US vs UK: David Tennant played it twice — and didn't know how the US version ended

Broadchurch premiered on ITV in March 2013. Chris Chibnall created it and wrote every episode, with Tennant as DI Alec Hardy and Olivia Colman as DS Ellie Miller, two detectives looking into the death of 11-year-old Danny Latimer in a small Dorset town. Fox announced its remake within months. Gracepoint premiered in October 2014, with Chibnall again credited as creator, Tennant back in the lead under a new name and an American accent, and Anna Gunn as Ellie.

Same case, new names

The remake started out close to a copy. Showrunners Dan Futterman and Carolyn Bernstein told TV critics before it aired that the first two episodes matched the original "almost shot for shot." The changes were mostly on the surface:

• The detective — Alec Hardy became Emmett Carver.
• The length — eight episodes became ten.
• The cast around them — Nick Nolte took over the role of Jack, and Jacki Weaver played Susan Wright.
• The cause of death — Danny is strangled in Broadchurch. In Gracepoint, he dies from a blow to the head.
• The small stuff — much less talk about the weather, no 99 ice cream, "sneakers" instead of "trainers."

Tennant didn't treat it as the same part. "They feel very different to me," he told Nerdist. "Having a different voice makes you a different person."

The first time, he didn't know either

On Broadchurch, keeping the actors in the dark was part of the method. The cast signed agreements not to reveal the killer, only 29 people knew who it was during filming, and the last three scripts were handed out together.

"I didn't know if they'd done it or not," Tennant said of his interrogation scenes, on the Inside of You podcast.

It paid off. The series 1 finale drew an average of 8.4 million viewers in Britain, with 9.3 million watching at the moment the killer was revealed.

Who did it, in each version

Fox announced early that the American version would end differently, and Tennant teased it before the premiere. "What they have is a very different note, which is thrilling for me," he told Entertainment Weekly. Here's how the two endings compare:

• Broadchurch — the killer is Joe Miller, Ellie's husband. Hardy gets the confession, and the case closes.
• Gracepoint — Joe Miller is still at the center of it. He made an advance on Danny at a clifftop cabin, chased him when he ran, and covered up his death. But Ellie's son Tom, who had followed his father, swung a boat paddle to defend his friend and hit Danny instead, killing him.

Ellie learns the truth from Tom in a hotel room. She decides to protect her son and let Joe face the charges alone. "Every single bit of it stays between us," she tells Joe in jail.

The detective who never finds out

That's where the US version leaves Tennant. In the last scene, Carver agrees to the heart surgery he's been putting off and takes a video call from his daughter. He remembers Tom saying he "never saw anyone else hit Danny," wonders whether it means more than he thought, and calls Ellie. She doesn't pick up.

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Gracepoint drew low ratings, and Fox never made a second season. Tennant went straight back to Dorset for Broadchurch series 2, which premiered in January 2015. "Broadchurch and then Gracepoint and now Broadchurch again," as he put it to Nerdist.

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