31 January 2024 , 21:17
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What do you get if you take a game of crusty old Cluedo and relocate it to a lush and sun-soaked Caribbean isle?
No more murder in the library with a candlestick by Professor Plum, that’s for sure… try drowned in a fishtank, electrocuted in a swimming pool or poisoned with a puffer fish. It’s Death in Paradise. Murder most fanciful, and fun. And it’s back with a belter on Sunday, the 100th episode.
Ralf Little, who plays DI Neville Parker, is pinching himself. “For me to have been here and be lucky enough to lead a stellar cast and be trusted with this legacy is something I can’t believe,” he says.
“I thank my lucky stars every day and feel like I’ve won the lottery.”
The new series of the hit BBC show that holds back on the blood and guts and goes big on quirky characters and bumbling Brits, opens with a life-or-death situation for one of its original and most beloved characters.
EastEnders' Davood Ghadami secures his first TV role since Holby City was axed
Hayley Mills will appear in the new season (BBC / Red Planet Pictures / Denis Guyenon)
Ralf Little says he feels like he's won the lottery (BBC / Red Planet Pictures)Commissioner Selwyn Patterson – Rising Damp’s velvet-voiced Don Warrington – is celebrating his half-centenary in the police service when he is shot by a mystery attacker. It’s up to DI Parker to catch that killer and solve the crime.
Joining Ralf and Don in the 100th episode is Oscar winner Hayley Mills. Ralf admits: “She’s the one person I got starstruck by and had to get a photo with, she was just glorious. She’s been at the top of the film industry. She won an Oscar when she was a kid, Whistle Down the Wind is one of my favourite films.”
She’s not the only famous face to grace the show over the years – and maybe meet a wicked and very imaginative end.
Gruesome guest stars
Friends and Cold Feet star Helen Baxendale was the ultimate frenemy when she drove an ice pick into the chest of the show’s original DI, Richard Poole, played by Ben Miller. He was followed in the role by Kris Marshall’s DI Humphrey Goodman, Ardal O’Hanlon as DI Jack Mooney and finally Neville.
Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar made a smooth murder suspect over two episodes in 2011. And his colleague in AC-12, Martin Compston, pitched up on Saint Marie too in 2016. Man Behaving Badly Neil Morrisey was Swimming in Murder, an episode which also featured Sally Phillips and Francis Magee. Other episodes have featured EastEnders’ Michelle Ryan, Casualty’s Adjoa Andoh and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ Dexter Fletcher.
Some stars were less recognizable. Les Dennis’s turn as Scouse clairvoyant Danny Sheridan in one Christmas special was so physically different that fans were flummoxed.
“Someone said I looked like a cross between Jack Nicholson and Arthur Fowler,” he said. “But I suppose it was the black hair of Danny… kind of a deranged Jack Nicholson, I think. How can you get more deranged than Jack Nicholson anyway?”
When Tamzin Outhwaite landed her role, she described it as a “bucket list job” and other cameos have featured a Young One and a Dr Who, Ade Edmondson and Peter Davison. The show also caught some stars in the making. Lashana Lynch, who played Jasmine Laymon in 2014, was the first female 007 in 2021’s No Time To Die.
Don Warrington says: “It’s like looking at your heroes and people who you’ve watched over the years, then suddenly they’re in front of you.”
Gemma Chan has had a turn in the detective series (DAILY MIRROR)Death becomes them
Fans of the show love its formula of outlandish killings investigated by an uptight, pasty, fish-out-of-water British copper wilting in the heat. Implausible murders are implausibly always solved by him, and there is always a big Poirot-style reveal. Skydivers are stabbed mid-air, women strangled after reporting a murder, stomachs pierced by spearguns.
Death in Paradise boss gives update on show's future as he teases what's to come
One victim is killed while handcuffed to the DI. Another is murdered for real while acting in a horror flick. There is a feast of it in the new series, too – a deadly game of bingo, a poisoning at a cookery competition, death during a blackout and a mystifying murder in a lift.
But Who Shot Selwyn? kicks it all off. “It was exciting to shoot because I think it’s an episode where we move away from the sort of conventional case, as it is a crime that involves everybody,” says Don. “Everybody is emotionally involved in solving it.
“There’s a sense of jeopardy about this case, which I think hopefully makes it exciting to watch.”
Elizabeth Bourgine, who plays Catherine Bordey, adds: “Death in Paradise is for me like a game because people get a challenge.
“There is a murder, but there’s no violence, there’s no blood. The challenge is to find out who did it, why, when, and how? It’s a nice game and it’s set in an idyllic setting. Life in Death in Paradise is what we would love life to be like. Also, the characters are so wonderful, it’s like a big family.”
Role call
Every DI who leaves Death in Paradise is mourned – and replaced. Ben Miller, lead actor when the show launched in 2011, bowed out after two seasons for personal reasons But he’d had the time of his life. He says: “I’m looking across the bay and a bride falls off the top of a building. It was quite obviously a dummy.
“I said: ‘Oh right, that’s so you can track it for the special effect later, is it?’ He said: ‘No, that is the effect... We don’t want it to look too realistic.’ That’s part of the genius of the show.”
Ardal O’Hanlon departed after series nine. “I’ve spent the last four summers in Guadeloupe and solving over 20 murder cases!” he said.
And as the show enters its 13th series, it’s clear cosy crime is not just a British love. Death in Paradise is licensed to over 230 territories. Now that’s what you call making a killing.
- Death in Paradise returns to BBC1 and BBC iPlayer on Sunday at 9pm.