'Broadchurch' comes to BBC America

* BROADCHURCH. 10 p.m. tomorrow, BBC America.

IMITATION MAY be the sincerest form of flattery, but in television, inspiration's the better way to go.

The Danish series "Forbrydelsen" - an international sensasation most Americans haven't gotten to see - led to a U.S. series, AMC's "The Killing," whose first two seasons proved disappointing.

To put it mildly.

But Season 3, which ended Sunday, was an often-remarkable 12 hours of television that took the homicide detectives played by Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman in a direction dictated by U.S. showrunner Veena Sud, not the Danish original, and included a haunting performance by Peter Sarsgaard as a death row inmate.

(If you'd been reluctant to commit - I've pretty much had "The Killing" on a week-to-week lease myself this summer - all 12 episodes should be available for streaming on Netflix within the next few months as part of the deal that brought the show back to AMC.)

"Forbrydelsen," however, is still having ripple effects.

Starting tomorrow, American viewers will get their first look at the British hit "Broadchurch," an eight-episode murder mystery presented by BBC America that turns out to be one of the best things I've seen this year.

Set in a small seaside town,it stars David Tennant ("Doctor Who," "Spies of Warsaw") and Olivia Colman as detectives trying to find the killer of an 11-year-old boy.

I wince as I type that, because as both a mother and a critic, I am weary almost beyond words of the stories of missing and murdered women and children that form the basis of so much of what we call entertainment.

But TV's a medium that prizes high stakes above anyone's peace of mind, and there are no stakes higher than the death of a child.

And as always, execution matters. "Broadchurch's" is practically note-perfect.

Created by Chris Chibnall, the ITV drama seems to have been influenced by "Forbrydelsen," which was popular in Britain, but mostly in the way it acknowledges that a murder investigation is more than a whodunit. Instead, "Broadchurch" is a story of loss and of a monumental disturbance in the force that people who've never experienced such loss still tend to believe in.

Tennant plays Alec Hardy, a detective with a complicated past who's brought in from outside to take a job that Colman's character, Detective Sgt. Ellie Miller, expected to get herself.

Her resentment isn't allowed to fester: A body on the beach strikes much too close to home, bringing her limitations into sharp focus.

Yet while the investigation, and its repercussions for the victim's family and for nearly everyone in Broadchurch, take priority over whatever's going on between Ellie and her new boss, the sands underneath them keep shifting, as she tries to draw him into the small-town intimacy she takes for granted and which he's determined to resist.

I'd probably watch Tennant in an infomercial about products meant for ferrets, but Colman and David Bradley ("Game of Thrones"), who plays a local shopkeeper, more than hold their own here.

It helps that I've seen all eight episodes of "Broadchurch." A few seasons ago, after watching only the premiere of "The Killing" in advance, I was optimistic, only to be worn down by a steady procession of particularly stinky red herrings that turned me off long before the inconclusive Season 1 finale.

"Broadchurch," already ordered by Britain's ITV for a second season, will not leave viewers of its first one hanging.

I'm hard pressed, though, to imagine how Fox, which last week announced it had ordered its own version of "Broadchurch" as a "long-form event series" for the 2014-15 season, can top it, especially without Tennant or Colman aboard. (Chibnall will be involved.)

You can wait for the American accents if you like, but I'd recommend getting this one while it's still hot.