Beautiful beaches of Britain

Look behind the well-sculpted muscles of Ross Poldark and you’ll see the Cornish coastline. This is not the first time that a British beach has proven to be a co-star on a TV show.

I guess when you can’t boast the sun and the white sands, and when “it’s so bracing” (read “cold and miserable”) becomes your catch phrase, a little bit of publicity is always welcome. A similar fame to that that will inevitably be encountered by the beaches of Poldark has already been experienced by the Dorset coast where the TV drama Broadchurch was set.

The show was a police drama so dark and disturbing it is a surprise that people could watch it and think of their next holiday location. However, the brilliant writing and acting by David Tennant (Dr Who) and Olivia Coleman (every other TV/movie show ever) wasn’t the only thing viewers appreciated, at least in the first season, before shares dropped dramatically. Currently property prices are on the rise in the area and local businesses are smacking their lips in delight.

Even less subtle was the attempt of 2012’s series True Love to publicise the holiday town of Margate, Kent. The narrative, also featuring David Tennant, was relatively poor, focusing individual episodes on different inhabitants of the small town, all linked to each other. The hype was maintained by promises of lesbian kisses with Billie Piper and, of course, epic coastal panoramas.

I guess these shows serve as reminders of what television’s prime purpose is: a broadcast for all things new and beautiful. A cynic may interpret this as an attempt to bring people to small, rapidly deflating towns. However, I like to think of it as more of an educational journey to discover all this lovely country has to offer, which is so much more than the view from Waterloo Bridge. Thus reconfirming the BBC’s mission “to inform, educate and entertain”.