But there was also something specifically English (derived, Chibnall has said, from Thomas Hardy) in the West-Country seaside community, with its range of eccentrics with secrets up to and including murder.
From hilltop mansions in the West Bank to seaside shanties in Gaza, almost every Palestinian has been shaken economically by the last 16 months.
By Saigon, of course, I mean Bridport, west Dorset, a seaside market town of charity shops, estate agents and bad local art galleries.
Continuing further west through untidy seaside resorts stuck barnacle-like on the coast, we ended up in the tiny fishing village of Porto Palo.
A resident of Lillehalle in the United Kingdom, she was recently in the sunny seaside West Australian capital of Perth to visit her son, and took the opportunity to go charter fishing not once but several times over the course of her trip.
All described an atmosphere of tension in Conakry, the West African nation's seaside capital.
Then, on a retreat at a seaside town west of Santiago, the abuse went much further, he said.
Faversham had been hoping that Southcliffe would replicate the tourism boom which ITV's hit Broadchurch drama has delivered for its seaside location, West Bay in Dorset.
Then one day, while on a retreat at a seaside town west of Santiago, Dr. Hamilton said, Father Karadima took his intimate play much further.
Up here at an altitude of 2,800ft (850m), 26 miles west of the busy seaside resort of Agios Nikolaos, lies the 200-acre (800 sqkm) Lasinthos Eco Park.
On a retreat at a seaside town west of Santiago when he was 18, Dr. Hamilton said, the abuse went much further, and it continued for nearly 20 years.
