Olafur Arnalds won the award for Original Television Music in 2014 at this year's UK BAFTA Television Craft Awards, which was held last month. The award is for his music in the hit ITV drama, Broadchurch, which was the highest-rated drama on the UK's major commercial channel, ITV1, with an audience of 9.6 million viewers.
The original soundtrack EP for Broadchurch, composed by Olafur Arnalds and released on Mercury Classics last year, eloquently highlights the painful questions of the plot, which follows the murder investigation of an 11 year old boy in the small coastal town of "Broadchurch," culminating in the song So Close, sung by Arnór Dan Arnarson. It is featured on the EP along with five other tracks—the Main Theme, Suspects, Arcade, Broken and Beth's Theme – offering 21 minutes of music in all. Commenting on the series, Radio Times' Alison Graham highlighted "the terrific music that is so important in building Broadchurch's chilly atmosphere and dark mood. Like the best music it's unobtrusive and doesn't tell you what you should be feeling."
Broadchurch recently launched in France and immediately broke a long-standing viewing record (Click here for article), peaking at 7.1 million viewers on France 2, the biggest audience for the channel since early May 2012.
Olafur Arnalds was also nominated for his Broadchurch work in the category "Best Original Composition: Television Programme Score" at the 2014 Music + Sound Awards.
To check out a Spotify playlist of Film Music created by Olafur covering his early influences who, "got me started in music as well as some of my favourites of what is happening in film music today," click here.