A vital element in the success of record-breaking 2013 British drama Broadchurch was the hauntingly beautiful, BAFTA Award-winning score by the young Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds. To coincide with the arrival of a much-anticipated second series of Broadchurch in January 2015, Mercury Classics is releasing a full soundtrack album of musical highlights from both series.

The first series of Broadchurch, about a hunt for the killer of a young boy in a small coastal community, rapidly became ‘a bona fide national obsession’ (Entertainment Weekly). Produced by Kudos for ITV, it gained an audience of 10 million viewers, making it the highest-rated drama on the UK’s main commercial channel. When it was later screened in France, it immediately broke a long-standing viewing record on the channel France 2 and peaked at 7.3 million viewers. The show has enjoyed similar international success in 135 countries; and generated ITV’s largest ever Twitterstorms of more than 470,000 viewers’ comments, many of them about the music.

It is fitting that the score should be praised as highly as Broadchurch as a whole. Author Chris Chibnall was a long-term fan of Ólafur Arnalds’ albums – which combine contemporary classical influences, avant-garde electronics, and evocative ambient sounds – and listened to them when writing the script. The mysterious and melancholy atmosphere of the show had Arnalds’ music in its creative DNA from the very beginning.

After getting a green light for his project, Chibnall then approached Arnalds (via his website) to compose the score. The Icelander was just 26 when he was commissioned, but was already a hugely successful composer and performer both in his homeland and internationally. ‘Ólafur’s music just broke my heart. I instinctively felt if we could get him, it would be amazing,’ said Chibnall.

In a remarkably short space of time, Arnalds created an atmospheric and hypnotic score which captured both the mood and direction of the plot and the imaginations of millions of viewers. He assigned evocative themes to the most important characters and elements of the story, including the bleak and dominating Broadchurch cliffs (which are in reality part of the UK’s spectacular Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site in Dorset.) ‘The music is a narrative all of its own,’ commented Chibnall.

Broadchurch season 2 starts on TV One on January 11th 2015