Dr. Who and Skyler Team Up to Solve a Small-Town Murder

Anna Gunn and David Tennant star in Gracepoint. (Image: Fox)

Two of television’s most iconic characters of the last decade – David Tennant’s Dr. Who and Anna Gunn’s Skyler White – have new gigs as an argumentative detective team tasked with solving a small-town murder. They team up on the Fox show Gracepoint , which is the latest British import to hit American screens, a remake of the ITV series Broadchurch. Seaside England becomes northern California, fish and chips turns into burritos, and British accents shift to American ones. The connective on-screen tissue is Tenant, the kinetic Scot who plays the outsider detective in both iterations, an irascible sleuth hoping to make up for past mistakes.

Significant portions of the first two episodes are a carbon copy of Broadchurch: Chris Chibnall’s series was a critical and popular hit in England, and if it ain’t broke, why fix it? But things are bound to diverge, since Gracepoint has 10 episodes rather than 8, and the word on the street is there’s a different killer (though, “we might be double-bluffing you,” warns Tennant).

So why devote so much time to the same character? (Tenant flew in for the L.A. premiere from England, where Broadchurch season 2 is filming.) “When the writing is this good, the story is this potent, that’s catnip for actors,” he says. “So with this quality of writing, I’ll tell the story 25 times if I can, not just twice.”