--- title: "Southcliffe" year: 2013 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/southcliffe" fi1m_score: 80 critics_score: 72 critics_reviews: 7 published: "2026-09-17T19:32:54.667004+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T19:33:18.524206+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Southcliffe (2013) Created by Tony Grisoni · 1h 00m · MPA TV-MA · Crime, Drama **Fi1m score: 80** · Critics 72 from 7 reviews *In a sentence:* Sean Harris barely says a word for four hours and we would cross the road to avoid him > Tony Grisoni and Sean Durkin’s four-part drama about a mass shooting refuses to explain the gunman and watches the town instead. Grey, slow, superbly acted and among the most frightening things British television has made, it is less sure of itself in its last hour. ## Synopsis Southcliffe is a small market town on the marshes. Stephen Morton (Sean Harris), a loner who says he was in the army, jogs at dawn and keeps guns. Chris Cooper (Joe Dempsie), a young soldier back from Afghanistan, starts training with him, to the unease of his wife Louise (Hayley Squires). Andrew and Claire Salter (Eddie Marsan, Shirley Henderson) run the town pub, their grown daughter Anna (Kaya Scodelario) still at home. Then, on an ordinary morning, Morton walks through Southcliffe shooting people. David Whitehead (Rory Kinnear), a television news reporter who grew up here and left without regret, is sent back to cover the story, and the first episode moves between the days before the killings and the days after. ## Review Tony Grisoni’s four-part drama is about a mass shooting in a small English town, and it is not about the man who does it. That decision is the whole of the series. Stephen Morton (Sean Harris) walks through Southcliffe one morning with a rifle, and the four hours that follow spend almost no time asking why, because Grisoni does not think there is an answer. They watch the town instead. The result is grey, slow, superbly acted and as frightening as anything British television has put out, and we recommend it with a warning about the mood you will need to be in. The first episode moves back and forth across the days around the killings without telling you which side of them you are on. Sean Durkin, whose [*Martha Marcy May Marlene*](https://film.one/film/martha-marcy-may-marlene) (2011) did the same thing with a young woman drifting out of a cult, directs all four episodes, and the editors, Daniel Greenway and Victoria Boydell, cut between before and after with no captions and no fades. For ten minutes we were lost. Then we found we could tell from the light and from the set of a face whether the worst had happened yet, and the lostness began to feel deliberate. The town cannot tell either. Mátyás Erdély shoots it in flat marsh light, mostly wide, so that the sea wall and the pub car park and the back gardens all sit under the same lid of cloud. The shootings, when they come, are filmed from a distance, in daylight, with no music. A figure walks steadily along a road. Someone drops. The camera does not move closer. We were horrified, and the horror was in the smallness of it: the shots sound like a door slamming two streets away, and the people in the frame do not understand what has happened until it has. Tom Bowyer’s Southcliffe is a real place of car parks and net curtains and a pub with a low ceiling, and Suzanne Cave puts everyone in the fleeces and anoraks of people who buy clothes to keep warm. Harris barely speaks. He jogs at dawn, stands at counters, and tells Chris Cooper (Joe Dempsie), a young soldier back from Afghanistan, about a regiment he may or may not have served in. Harris plays him with his shoulders forward and his eyes slightly off whoever is talking, and he never once signals what is coming, which is what makes him so hard to watch. Dempsie is good as a man wound so tight he cannot say what is wrong, and Hayley Squires, as his wife Louise, does most of her acting across a kitchen table, waiting for him to say it. Rory Kinnear’s David Whitehead is the series’ odd angle. He is the television reporter sent to cover the story, he grew up in Southcliffe, and he left it with a grievance he has never put down. Kinnear plays him with a stillness that keeps curdling into contempt, and the series is brave enough to make the man telling the nation about the tragedy the least likeable person in it. Eddie Marsan and Shirley Henderson, as Andrew and Claire Salter, carry the grief. Henderson takes hers inward until she is barely there. Marsan does a great deal by standing in a doorway and not coming in. Not all of it holds. The final episode moves the ground under us, in a way we will not describe, and what David does with that time feels written to make a point rather than to follow him. Some of the secondary threads are sketched rather than written; Anatol Yusef’s Paul Gould and Al Weaver’s Anthony are present without ever quite becoming people. And once or twice a character says out loud what the series has already shown us, which is the only time Grisoni’s script sounds like a script. British television usually approaches an atrocity through a detective, because a detective gives you questions with answers. There is no detective here. There is a town, a reporter who does not like it, and four hours of people getting up the next morning. It runs four episodes of an hour, carries a 15, and was first shown on 4 August 2013. Watch it in two sittings, with someone, and not on a night when you have had bad news of your own. We watched all four at once, and afterwards we wanted a walk, and it was not the kind of walk you take to clear your head. *Fi1m score 80, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics receive Southcliffe warmly, and the praise clusters around Sean Harris as the gunman, whose performance the reviews describe as convincing and sinister in roughly equal measure. The wider cast is credited with holding the four parts together, and the same qualities come up again and again: an unflinching handling of the aftermath of a mass shooting, a stark and rather beautiful picture of the town, and a sound design one critic finds unusually realistic. Nobody treats it as anything other than serious work. The reservations are about endurance and structure. The Telegraph wonders whether viewers will put up with such unrelenting bleakness from the first hour onward. Variety finds the nonlinear structure imprecise, and The Hollywood Reporter goes furthest, calling it superior middlebrow television with stilted dialogue and characters that lack depth. The spread is moderate rather than wide: no review is negative, but three of the seven stop short of a recommendation. ### Reviews we read (7) - **IndieWire**, Erik McClanahan (90/100, inferred): The series stands out as one of the strongest new offerings available on Netflix. It delivers a powerful, unflinching look at the aftermath of tragedy in a small community. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/culture/review-southcliffe-may-be-the-best-new-series-on-netflix-you-havent-yet-watched-271862/) - **The Guardian** (85/100, inferred): The series is brilliantly done and frighteningly good, with Sean Harris totally convincing as the shooter. The critic singles out its realistic sound design and starkly beautiful depiction of the town and events for praise. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/aug/04/southcliffe-i-love-my-country-tv-review) - **Variety**, Justin Chang (70/100, inferred): The critic finds it an uneven but powerful four-part study of a small English village reeling from a mass shooting, with searing performances sustaining the work despite narrative imprecisions in the nonlinear structure. [Read](https://variety.com/2013/film/global/film-review-southcliffe-1200732572/) - **The Times**, Andrew Billen (65/100, inferred): The series explores how ordinary people commit terrible acts in a small town setting, with strong performances including Sean Harris as the gunman. The critic highlights the focus on dysfunctional characters and the unglamorous reality of the violence rather than any simplistic explanation. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/uk-travel/england/london-travel/weekend-tv-southcliffe-kqc8kkpzg6k) - **The Telegraph**, Benji Wilson (60/100, inferred): The episode establishes strong poise and pacing with Sean Harris's sinister performance as the deluded ex-squaddie. The critic notes the sustained grimness ahead and questions whether viewers will tolerate such unrelenting bleakness from the outset. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/10219739/Southcliffe-episode-one-Channel-4-review.html) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Stephen Dalton (50/100, inferred): It is quality television but not great cinema: a superior middlebrow drama with high-caliber cast, crisp visuals and sustained bleak mood, though characters lack layered depth and dialogue often feels stilted. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/southcliffe-toronto-review-622518/) - **Digital Spy**, Alex Fletcher (85/100, inferred): The first two episodes prove utterly captivating despite the bleak subject matter. The series is unflinching and bold, with standout performances, making it one of the scariest and best TV shows of the year. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/alex-fletchers-tv-review/a505630/doctor-who-live-southcliffe-i-love-my-country-this-weeks-tv/) ## Details - **Created by:** Tony Grisoni - **Creator:** Tony Grisoni - **Director:** Sean Durkin - **Writer:** Tony Grisoni - **Cinematography:** Mátyás Erdély - **Editor:** Daniel Greenway, Victoria Boydell - **Production design:** Tom Bowyer - **Costume design:** Suzanne Cave - **Producer:** Peter Carlton, Derrin Schlesinger - **Cast:** Rory Kinnear as David Whitehead; Joe Dempsie as Chris Cooper; Sean Harris as Stephen Morton; Anatol Yusef as Paul Gould; Shirley Henderson as Claire Salter; Eddie Marsan as Andrew Salter; Kaya Scodelario as Anna Salter; Al Weaver as Anthony - **Runtime:** 1h 00m - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 4 August 2013 - **Genres:** Crime, Drama - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2bdwXQLXg4 ## Where to watch in the US - Apple TV: buy, sd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: CA, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Elephant* (2003), Fi1m 84: Gus Van Sant walks the corridors of a school shooting and refuses to explain it either. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-elephant-man.md) - *Polytechnique* (2009): Denis Villeneuve’s black-and-white Montreal massacre, told from the survivors’ side, in 77 minutes. - *Red Road* (2006): Andrea Arnold’s Glasgow CCTV operator watches a man from her past; grief as surveillance. - *Happy Valley* (2014): Sally Wainwright’s Yorkshire police drama does have a detective, and she is as damaged as the town. - *Mass* (2021): Two sets of parents in a church side room, years after a shooting, talking it out. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/southcliffe