Baywatch (1989-2001)

Suggested by hoppo

“No mention of Baywatch?” scoffed hoppo, who may or may not have spilt hot coffee all over their “I Heart Hasselhoff” T-shirt before leaving a nonplussed message in the comments section. Indeed, who could forget the silly, sunkissed vision of the Los Angeles County lifeguards, who were world-beaters when it came to retina-burning grins and slo-mo shoreline runs (and creating body-image issues for a generation of viewers). Over 11 seasons, one never tired of that rip-roaring theme tune – let’s hope they keep it for the Dwayne Johnson-starring film adaptation that’s currently in production.

Remember (Walking in the Sand) – The Shangri-Las, 1965

Suggested by mikedow

The beach is the perfect setting for the songs of 1960s girl group the Shangri-Las and their brand of diaphanous melancholy. Cascading waves and the twitter of seagulls complement the finger-clicking chorus to their 1965 debut single, as the then 17-year-old singer Mary Weiss warbles: “Walking in the sand/ Walking hand in hand/ The night was so exciting/ Smile was so inviting.” It reached the top five in the Billboard charts, and was covered by Aerosmith in 1980.

Derek Jarman’s garden in Dungeness

Suggested by PhilSm

Following Derek Jarman’s HIV-positive diagnosis on 22 December 1986, the pioneering gay director moved into a black fisherman’s cottage in Dungeness, Kent. “I’m sure there is footage of him and Tilda Swinton and others cavorting on Dungeness beach in some experimental films,” said Yosserian, correctly referencing Jarman’s 1990 film The Garden, in which a homosexual couple are arrested, tortured and killed, before noting that “Dungeness is the UK’s only designated desert”. It is a bleak and barren environment situated beside a nuclear power station, and while the house is closed to the public, visitors still go to pay homage from a distance.

Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)

Suggested by NeitherYankNorBrit

It is difficult to imagine that Spielberg’s shark-infested blockbuster has improved anyone’s experience of the seaside – though the fearful frisson that comes with swimming through a dark patch of ocean is a silver lining. Cinephiles have no such practical problems, with NeitherYankNorBrit recommending: “Any of the scenes in Jaws, although the opening scene is my favourite.” Yosserian concurs, but prefers “[Michael] Caine’s character fight” towards the end, when his character flees from Jaws into a seaplane, loudly proclaiming: “Oh shit!” Observer film critic Mark Kermode basked in the 1975 summer classic’s legacy for a story earlier this year.

Brighton Rock (Graham Greene, 1938)

Suggested by RabBurnout

Graham Greene’s seventh novel is not your conventional, breezy holiday read, even if it is set along the Sussex coast. “People don’t change. It’s like those sticks of rock: bite it all the way down, you’ll still read Brighton,” are the most famous words of the 1938 thriller, which meditates on the nature of sin via the murderous confrontations of 17-year-old gangster Pinkie Brown. RabBurnout gave his approval, while also acknowledging “the original [1947] film starring Richard Attenborough”. An arcane web of duplicity, it may be slight on plot, but its characters are brilliantly sketched.

Planet of the Apes (Franklin J Schaffner, 1968)

Suggested by sun2day

Franklin J Schaffner’s beastly sci-fi brims with subtext and social commentary, imagining a world where the superior beings are the apes. It marks the second appearance of California’s Zuma Beach on this list – after Baywatch, which was shot there many times – in the film’s dramatic denouement, as recommended by sun2day. In it, the leading man du jour, Charlton Heston, after lead roles in Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958) and Ben-Hur (1959) laments humanity’s destructive myopia, knees sunk into sand: “Damn you, damn you all to hell!”

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976-79)

Suggested by ID3334123

During the opening credits of this cult 1970s TV series, 46-year-old sales executive Reginald Iolanthe Perrin (Leonard Rossiter) decides to end his miserable existence – stripping naked and swimming out to sea in Dorset, before awkwardly losing his nerve. Adapted from David Nobbs’s book trilogy, it follows Perrin’s disenchantment with dull suburban life and a career at Sunshine Desserts that is completely bereft of job satisfaction. Grim it may first appear, but through the prism of pitch-black humour, it becomes a very British way of beachgoing (and life).

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)

Suggested by Skoolyad

A product of the surreal chemistry between director Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman, who co-wrote the script, the beach becomes a peculiar hinterland, shorn of its usual hedonistic connotations. We see former lovers Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet), for example, play around on a snow-covered shore after hiring a futuristic hi-tech firm called Lacuna to remove memories of each other – another time, jarringly, they are there in a bed. “Sand is overrated,” mumbles Joel at one point, in the winner of 2005’s Best Original Screenplay Oscar. “It’s just ... tiny little rocks.”

The Outsider (Albert Camus, 1942)

Suggested by Steff Clarke

The stifling heat and the oppressive glare of the sun experienced by The Outsider’s troubled existentialist figure Meursault reflect on a warped impression of the world – a postcolonial dystopia. While on a visit to a friend’s beach house, he ends up murdering an Arab on the beach at Algiers merely because the sun gets in his eyes. “I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I’d been happy,” he chillingly recounts in the climatic scene. “Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.”

The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)

Suggested by Yosserian

The adventures of Antoine Doinel, François Truffaut’s charming on-screen mouthpiece, began in glorious fashion with this autobiographical gem of the French new wave – later to be joined by Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970) and Love On The Run (1979). It centres around the 14-year-old Doinel, portrayed by Jean-Pierre Léaud, who cheekily swindles his way through life by hook or by crook. Yosserian hails the film’s poignant final scene, in which Doinel arrives at the beach after running from the police: “Brilliant existential moment, running to the sea, and then turning away from it, looking into camera, and freezing.”