Broadchurch: The holiday!
Yes, we all adore the drama. But more importantly, now we can live in the dream locations – from £41 a night...
IT’S a gripping TV drama that features some of Britain’s most acclaimed actors.
Yet for many of its ten million viewers, the biggest star of Broadchurch isn’t David Tennant or Olivia Colman – but the stunning Dorset scenery.
Interest in the hit show is fuelling a boom in holiday rentals, and house prices, on the Jurassic Coast as fans flock to visit the locations.
Visitors can even stay in the blue chalet where Tennant’s character, DI Alec Hardy, anguishes over the murder case at the centre of the drama – for only £41 a night.
But the bad news is that Britbank, a 100-year-old two-bedroom chalet on the banks of the River Brit in West Bay, the real-life Broadchurch, is booked out for months.
Holiday letting agent Malcolm Gill added: ‘One thing’s for certain, it’s not going to be £41 a night for long.’
The price wasn’t even hiked for the producers of the series, who hired the chalet for two weeks to shoot Tennant’s scenes.
Mr Gill added: ‘We just treated it like a standard let. The crew came in on check-in day and left two weeks later. They were the perfect customers.’
The show’s creator, Chris Chibnall, who lives in nearby Bridport, spotted the holiday home when he was writing the first series in a local cafe.
He said the chalet ‘holds lots – if not all – of the secrets’.
It is not the only Broadchurch property that fans can rent. In the first series, Pauline Quirke’s Susan Wright lived in a mobile home at Freshwater Beach Holiday Park, where the father of the murdered Danny and the son of his killer secretly bonded over video games.
A week in the three-bedroom caravan ranges from £350 to £1,000, depending on the season.
Even Dorset’s beach huts have benefited from the Broadchurch effect, despite being the scene of the brutal fictional murder. One recently went on the market for £225,000, even though it’s uninhabitable with no bathroom, mains electricity or running water.
However, not every location from the drama, which returned to ITV last week, is up for rent. Lawyer Jocelyn Knight, played by Charlotte Rampling, lives in a £750,000 clifftop house, Tredewi.
Owner Lynn Mawditt only reluctantly allowed filming there. She said: ‘We weren’t looking to rent it out – this is our home – but then they said they’d be willing to pay £4,000 a week.’
It was enough to allow her and husband Nigel to go on holiday away from the ‘chaos’ of filming. ‘But I’m not sure we’d do it again,’ she said. ‘There’s not a day when a fan isn’t popping their nose through the window or knocking on the door wanting a photo, which is very intrusive.’