'Granite Harbour' To Debut On BritBox in August

BritBox has scooped up yet another BBC One hit six months after it's original debut. Granite Harbour, a Scottish-set police procedural that's billed as more drama than mystery, first debuted on BBC Scotland in December 2022, followed by a BBC One debut this past spring. The glossy series, featuring the unlikely pairing of an ex-Royal Military policeman and a down-home Scottish police sargent solving the murder of a billionaire, was a rating hit on the far side of the pond. BritBox releasing it as a cold mystery in the doldrums of summer hopefully will do the same over here.

The BBC first commissioned the Aberdeen-based series Granite Harbour in May 2022, with two rising stars, Romario Simpson (best known for Small Axe) and Hannah Donaldson (who PBS viewers will recognize from Annika). U.K. critics initially assumed this was a clone of the Scotland hit Shetland, but in reality, the series is far more like Guilt, a short and sweet series (three episodes in all), filmed in Scotland for a Scottish audience, with BBC One taking second run.

The series is also not based on a pre-existing property but an idea dreamed up by the creative team of Adriel Leff (Moving On) and former Derbyshire police chief Kul Muhay. This is in keeping with several new police dramas out of the U.K., which are either co-created by former members of the U.K.'s various police corps or written in consultation with them.