Warning: contains spoilers for the first episodes of Broadchurch and Gracepoint.

With the same story, characters, scenes, dialogue, male lead and screenwriter, episode one of Fox’s Gracepoint is no fuzzy “inspired by” adaptation, but a shot-for-shot impersonation of the Broadchurch opener. If Fox hadn’t paid what is probably a handsome sum for the privilege, we’d rap its knuckles with a ruler for copying ITV’s homework.

Perhaps because it’s kept so close to the source, so far Gracepoint makes for a pretty decent murder mystery, if an entirely superfluous one for audiences of the original. If you know Broadchurch, then Gracepoint’s opening episode makes for an uncanny hour of déjà-vu television. Explaining it to someone else is like explaining the illogic of last night’s dream: “David Tennant was there, but he was American, and everyone was really sad and wearing sunglasses and moving in slow-motion…”

From the peeling, ironic “Love thy neighbour” poster to that slo-mo sports day shot of a poignantly hula-hooping child, so far Gracepoint has taken everything Broadchurch had and made no creative decisions of its own. This may change as the season progresses, but at this point, it’s a wholesale import and a thoroughgoing copy.