Kris Marshall opens up about revisiting Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise romance: ‘There’s a genuine love’
Credit: Getty / BBC
Kris Marshall says he was eager to revisit his character’s “happily-ever-after” in Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise spin-off Beyond Paradise.
He will reprise his role as DI Humphrey Goodman in the follow-on series, alongside Sally Bretton, who played love interest Martha Lloyd in the original series.
The couple rode off into the sunset after Humphrey bid farewell to Saint Marie in 2017, with the soon-to-be-newlyweds starting a new life in Devon in Beyond Paradise.
Speaking to virginradio.co.uk and other press ahead of next Friday’s debut episode, Kris admitted it was Humphrey and Martha’s romance that twigged his interest in returning to the Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise universe.
He explained: “They genuinely love each other. There’s a real genuine love and commitment to each other, and they found that and they found each other in the end, and they made it work.
“It was also a joy to obviously explore other areas of their life, the challenges, the personal issues they have to deal with, and doing that and keeping it honest, sensitive, but also doing it in a way that’s entertaining…we’re still entertaining people. It was sort of dovetailing those two things.”
Kris continued: “It was delightful. It was such a delight to see what happens when you undo that ‘happy-ever-after’ box”.
Sally shared the sentiment, adding: “It’s a real love match those two, they really do love each other. When we join them, they’ve been together for five or six years. So life is more real. It’s not just sort of that holiday romance. And they’ve lived real things and supported each other through real things. So the relationship has deepened, and it was just great to explore that in a more real way.”
Beyond Paradise will see Humphrey join the local police force in Shipton Abbott in Devon, while Martha pursues her dream of running her own restaurant. The couple will navigate the ups and downs of normal life, coupled with their new jobs, all while living at home with Martha’s mum, Anne Lloyd (Barbara Flynn).
Goodman will start to work with the rather eclectic police team, including DS Esther Williams (Zahra Ahmadi), PC Kelby Hartford (Dylan Llewellyn) and office support Margo Martin (Felicity Montagu), who are all raring to go on a host of truly baffling cases.
