Broadchurch

Three stars are for the book, with maybe one of those stars born of a gravity effect from the five-star drama - of the same name and similar pedigree - pulling up the score of this lackluster adaptation. Hidden within the BBC show are depths unspoken. Unfortunately, that depth is of an elusive, almost silent variety. A better novelist could have listened, through the silence, and found the truly literary amongst the dramatic. Instead, we have a thinly disguised, reformatted teleplay. Even the tense carried over, as if the author couldn't be bothered to transform the most surely present-tense script (scripts are almost universally written in the present-tense) into a more traditional, past-tense novel. Simply set the writing application for stun - reformatting the script - and insert the odd detail, a bit of inner-dialogue, a novelistic touch. I exaggerate, but by how much I'm not sure.

But do catch the BBC program.