The ultimate Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise oral history: the creator and stars tell the whole story
How a risky murder-mystery project became a giant international franchise.
The sweet sound of laid-back reggae welcomes in the debut episode of Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise, where the bustling island of Saint Marie comes alive piece by piece, character by character.
It isn’t long before the calm erupts into mysterious, murderous madness. The first Dᴇᴀᴛʜ and the first of many star detectives: Charlie Hulme (Hugo Speer).
Wait, what? Yes, you may not remember, but Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise began with the murder of Saint Marie’s chief detective. Ben Miller then arrived as his idiosyncratic replacement, dropped into the middle of the oppressive heat and tasked with finding Hulme’s killer.
Since its 2011 outing Robert Thorogood’s creation has spanned 14 seasons, five detectives (if you don’t include the bumped-off Charlie) and two spin-off series.
Now Digital Spy takes a deep dive into Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise‘s origins and its changing leads and investigates how this cosy crime drama became a beloved British television staple.
Interviewees:
• Robert Thorogood – Creator and executive producer
• Ben Miller – DI Richard Poole (No1)
• Kris Marshall – DI Humphrey Goodman (No2)
• Ardal O’Hanlon – DI Jack Mooney (No3)
• Ralf Little – DI Neville Parker (No4)
• Don Gilet – DI Mervin Wilson (No5)
• Anna Samson – DI Mackenzie Clarke (Return to Paradise)
• Sean Maguire – Marlon Collins (recurring guest star)
Jump to:
- The beginning
- Casting the detectives
- Meet the team
- Becoming the detective
- The denouement
- Filming in paradise
- Passing the baton
- The Paraverse
- The best storylines
- The legacy
The beginning
The seedling that grew into the beloved franchise was a 2007 newspaper report of a real-life Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in the Caribbean and a British detective who was tasked with solving it.
Cricket coach Bob Woolmer’s demise became a light-bulb moment for writer Robert Thorogood. That, coupled with the creator’s deep love and appreciation for Agatha Christie’s body of work, inspired the show, but its success wasn’t instant. In fact it debuted to damning reviews.
Robert Thorogood (creator and executive producer): Poor man [Bob Woolmer]. In the end, they ruled – quite recently – that it was an accidental Dᴇᴀᴛʜ . It was a genuine one-in-a-million accident. The way he fell on to whichever tiny bone in his neck, on his basin, was what killed him, but it really looked like a strangling, and it was genuinely in a locked room. They had to break through the door to get in. So, it was a locked-room mystery.
You want to find a new show, it’s in the newspapers. It was front page news and I was the only idiot who went, “Hang on, I can turn that into a TV show.” It kind of arrived in a moment, to be honest.
CSI was the most popular crime show on television [in 2008], which was all about whizzy forensics. You’d see the bullet go through and it was all computers and smart and modern and DNA. I was aware it’s really hard to do an old-fashioned cosy crime in the modern world with all the lab stuff, forensic psychology and forensic entomology. So I’d been thinking for ages, God, if only there was some way of doing a modern cosy crime.
When I saw the Bob Woolmer story I thought, hang on, if we send this guy to a small island in the middle of nowhere it won’t be a problem – there’ll be no cellphone coverage. They won’t have DNA, they won’t have pathology. All of that will be sent off island and whilst the science is going on, on a nearby island, because it’s all being done, just not there.
Then they can just walk around like it’s in Agatha Christie. So the next stage was me realising that it legitimised doing a golden-age murder mystery where you talk to people and trick them into revealing that they’re the killer.
I remember at the time the press weren’t that interested in the show to start off with.
Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole): Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise was a bit of a slow burn. When we’d finished filming, we knew what it was and we were all really happy with what we’d made. We felt it had worked but the reviews were pretty bad for the first episode and I don’t know that the viewing figures were that great.
I think they were okay but people hadn’t realised it was quite tongue-in-cheek and they were reviewing it like it was a kind of Scandi noir or something.
Which I think is fair enough, because I didn’t understand it myself when we started doing it. I guess I must have known that it wasn’t straight drama, but I didn’t quite realise how funny it was until we were actually doing it.
It’s a difficult tone to get right. You can’t be too funny because then nobody cares about the story. You can’t be too serious because then you’d really want to explore all the emotions that all these people are going through.
I can’t remember if it was the third or the fourth episode, we got a higher audience than the England match. None of us were really expecting that.
It struck a nerve and people give reasons, don’t they? But it’s hard to sort of see what the reasons are. People always say, well it’s shown at a sort of wintry time of year and it’s in a nice sunny place, but so are loads of shows.
It doesn’t really explain Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise.
Ardal O’Hanlon (DI Jack Mooney): I think it just has that lightness of touch. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. The puzzles are really, really well constructed. Who doesn’t love solving a puzzle?
I think it’s a few weeks after Christmas and the first episode usually airs on what is regarded widely as the most depressing day of the year. It’s when people start booking their summer holidays to cheer themselves up, and I think that’s when Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise comes into their lives.
It’s a little bit of a glimmer of light and hope in an otherwise broken world. I think what people love about shows like Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise is that everything is tied up neatly at the end. We do live in a world that is uncertain, we live in uncertain times. Life can be messy sometimes, but a show like Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise comes along – everything is tied up neatly. I think there is a lot of comfort [in that].
Casting the detectives
After emailing in his video audition and securing the role, Ben Miller enjoyed two years as DI Poole before stepping down in 2013 and passing the baton to Kris Marshall, a changing of the guard that started a tradition. As the role has passed hands, the personalities of the detectives have been both wildly different and comfortingly familiar. So what qualities were the creators looking for when casting each lead?
Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole): It was very unusual then to audition [over video]. Now, the only place you audition is on your phone or on a camera but at the time it was quite unusual to tape something and send it. But it was quite short notice. I couldn’t get back in time. So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just record it on my phone.’ I was a pioneer!
I remember absolutely loving the story in the script. I thought ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’ But I didn’t realise that it was meant to be funny. I thought it was just serious. The Wire was very popular at the time and I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be like the sort of argy-bargy of real life in the Caribbean. This is going to be really gritty and, and interesting.’
And then we had some read-throughs and a lot of people were laughing when I was doing my lines, but I was just trying to get into the character and the situation.
When we were out filming it slowly started [to dawn on me] that I was basically not in a hard-hitting drama. It wasn’t a comedy exactly, but it was definitely not real life. We were filming an episode where a bride gets thrown off a balcony and dashed on the rocks and they had a shot over my shoulder at the top of this building where this bride is going to fall off. And they just chucked off a mannequin with a wedding dress on and it spun over and over and over and bounced a couple of times on the rocks and fell over.
I said, “Oh, that’s very clever. You’ve done that so that I know where to look when we do the real effect,” and they said, “No, that’s it. That’s what we’re doing.” I said, “But that is obviously not a person. That’s obviously just a shop dummy with a wig and a dress on it.”
And they said, “Yeah, yeah, we don’t want it to look too real.”
That was it. Out the window for you – I am not in The Wire.
Ardal O’Hanlon (DI Jack Mooney): I laughed when I was approached because I remember when Ben Miller got the part initially I was kind of grumbling to myself, ‘Why don’t I ever get offered parts like that?’ So it was a bit of a surprise.
There were a few hoops to jump through because of that big denouement scene in every episode. They were quite keen for me to prepare one just to see I could handle it because the sheer wordcount was about 10 pages of monologue.
Then I remember Joséphine [Jobert, who played Florence Cassell] was called over from Paris and we did a couple of scenes together just to see if we were compatible. It was kind of a protracted process.
I didn’t know Joséphine before – I have to confess I wasn’t even that familiar with the show generally. I hadn’t seen an awful lot of it, so that was really nice. We just hit it off instantly. She’s a very warm and lovely person and we just dovetailed nicely during that chemistry reading and then hopefully, we took that into the show, into the recording itself.
Don Gilet (DI Mervin Wilson): The audition process was just very basic. Different for me in that it was actually the first for a long time doing an audition in the room with real human beings there. Previously they’d have been Zoom interviews. Not only that, but Don Warrington was reading in.
I’m thinking, ‘Wow, this is high-profile because he doesn’t have to come in and read. They get other actors to do that.’ So he was there and everyone was in the room, the casting director, producer, director, execs.
Meet the team
The lead detectives may shape the show but the tone is also set by its ensemble cast. Gilet’s words about Warrington are a testament to his integral part on the show and that extends to many other cast members, past and present.
Don Gilet (DI Mervin Wilson): Don Warrington’s role there [for the] audience and his role as a character means a lot. His part on Saint Marie is as instrumental as a new detective. They need to have that extra energy, that all-knowing energy. His presence is very much needed.
Ardal O’Hanlon (DI Jack Mooney): Myself and Don (Warrington) are very good friends, we had a good working relationship as well. We’ve stayed in touch. He’s just such a lovely person. He’s a wonderful rock of sense apart from anything else. He’s a very stable person on the tour of duty. People are going crazy left, right and centre but Don remains ever calm.
It was also great working with Joséphine, she was fab. Tobi Bakare (Sergeant JP Hooper) and Danny John-Jules (Dwayne Myers) were a wonderful double act. Really, really funny. Then the cast changes.
Aude (Legastelois-Bidé, who played Madeleine Dumas) came in from Paris for chemistry reading with me so I was instrumental, I suppose, in her being cast. She brought a freshness and vivaciousness to that part.
Shyko (Amos, who played Ruby Patterson) was great as well. She came in and brought a very different energy as well. It’s a carnival, it’s ever-changing.
I also loved the guest cast. You’d be pinching yourself sometimes when you see the cast list for the next episode. People like Rebecca Front, who I loved in The Day Today. People like Simon Callow, he’s a legend of stage and screen.
That was probably my favourite part – hanging out with the various guests and showing off what I considered to be my beautiful island to these visitors. I loved the whole social side of it. The whole thing was just very memorable.
Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole): My Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise team were all brilliant. Sara Martins (who played Camille Bordey) was just so funny and brilliant because she had to memorise those scripts in English, which she was just sort of learning at the time, which is absolutely phenomenal.
Gary Carr’s (Fidel Best) gone on to immense success. Danny John-Jules is a legend. I don’t think I ever saw him wear the same outfit twice the entire time I was in the Caribbean. Sometimes he’d change his outfit during the day. Where he kept it all, I don’t know, but every day a new baseball hat, new trainers, a completely new outfit.
The cast was an absolute joy. For Gary it was like his first big show, and the way he played Fidel was so pitch-perfect and Danny never, never missed a trick. He’s hilarious. He just does it all with a look. He’s a great motorcyclist and I used to love doing those things in the sidecar with him. I’d [be there] with the silly glasses on and the helmet, like sort of Mr Toad while he piloted the motorcycle. God, that was fun.
And don’t forget Harry the lizard…
Robert Thorogood: Right, so the full story behind Harry starts with Polly Hill, who is now the Commissioner of Drama at ITV. She was our original executive at the BBC and just before we started shooting, she gave me the best note I’ve ever received, which was, “Yeah, it’s all good. Well done. You’ve worked really hard. Could you just have another look at it and make it more fun?”
And I went away and thought: she’s so right. We’ve been so ’round-headed’ about it, but we need to be more ‘cavalier’. We need a big hat.
I thought every detective show has got an iconic mode of transport – you know, Morse’s got his Jaguar – and I’d read a blog from a Brit police officer in the Cayman Islands who had an old Enfield Motorbike and sidecar.
I thought, brilliant! I’m gonna give the police station a motorbike and sidecar. Because that’s funny. The image of somebody in the sidecar is funny. And then I thought we could really do with something else fun, like a pet, but we can’t give him a pet because he’s a new arrival.
I thought, well, what’s the Caribbean equivalent of a pet? Oh, it’s a house lizard! Then when they went out to shoot it, we discovered that in Guadaloupe it’s against the law to move or coerce to move any lizard. They’re a protected species. So we were told you might have to cut the lizard, and I think it was Tony [Jordan the producer] who said, how about we CGI the lizard?
That’s how we ended up with this CGI lizard.
Becoming the detective
There’s no single way to play the lead detective on a show like Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise and each DI has brought something different to the role. While the framework of what each sleuth required came from the creative team, the actors all imbued the part with something unique and personal to their acting style. This is something that has extended beyond the parent show to the Paraverse, with Return to Paradise‘s lead detective, played by Anna Samson.
Robert Thorogood: The really exciting thing about doing telly on a show that takes a long time to film is you’re watching the rushes (raw footage) come in every day and you’re changing your writing very quickly to fit the new actor.
Even once you’ve come up with the character, they then continue to evolve in their first season. When they are on the floor doing the thing you can go, ‘Oh, they’re really good at this sort of comedy,’ or ‘They’re very good at being dramatic.’ They’re all good at being dramatic, at being emotionally buttoned-up, say. And so you start writing to them. It’s a really joyous moment when you realise that the actor owns the character, not the writer any more.
Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole): The character was all there in the script. That whole character was very detailed and very well created. So there was like a blueprint to follow, but what was hard to get right was the tone.
Early in the series, we’d shoot several versions of each scene. We’d shoot some that were kind of comic, some that were sort of serious, and some in between. And the director of the first episode, Charlie Palmer, we did a lot trying to figure out exactly where to pitch it. So there was a lot of freedom in that sense.
Don Gilet (DI Mervin Wilson): What I think was great about [shaping Mervin], is that it was collaborative. You’re not taking on a job as a puppet. It’s ‘What have you got to give? What is your craft?’ And you send me scripts and I’ve got to make a creative decision based on what they said the character is, what comes out on the page and then the actor comes in with their instincts and makes a decision.
There was a quirkiness to the script. There was some comedy in it. There was some pathos in it, there was something quite personal in there as well. So, it is going to have some of me.
That’s sort of the only way I can say it, I’m not going to turn up on the day and try to be someone that’s so not like me, because you can only give of yourself to start with.
I’m carrying on the model, the formula of Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise but they’re all very different characters, so I haven’t got to follow anything in that. So it was great.
The denouement
Every Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise episode builds up to this moment: the anxious suspects sitting before the detectives as the DI breaks down how they deduced who the murderer is. As Selwyn explained to Mervin Wilson on his appointment “it’s a matter of tradition,” and it’s so important that it is baked into the audition process along with the preceding ‘eureka moment’ when all the pieces of the puzzle come together.
Don Gilet (DI Mervin Wilson): Every time [I do the denouement] it’s the same for me. I’ve got to go back to square one. I look at the intrinsic parts that have put this together because from an actor’s perspective, there are a lot of words that have to be on point because they’re giving an idea of how the character thinks. It’s hard work but you have to put aside it being a memory test.
The words have to mean something, the clues have to mean something.
Let’s just say I stay up many nights [so that] by the time they say action, those words are easy to pull, [and] by the time I’m saying it, it’s coming out of me the same way it’s coming out of Mervin.
That information is there. It’s not a struggle to reach for anymore. The whole of the episode has been the struggle, now it’s, ‘I’m gonna let you know how I know what I know,’ and hopefully on the day that they shoot it, they don’t see me, they see Mervin. Homework.
Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole): [Producer] Tony Jordan was very insistent on one thing in every single episode. He said, there’s always got to be a moment where you see the penny drop. The moment where Richard Poole puts together the whole thing in his head and where it all clicks into place for him, which is not always in shows.
I love that because that’s been a thread that has continued on through the other detectives as well, you see that moment with all of them.
It was a clever thing to do. I think it’s quite cool.
Don Gilet (DI Mervin Wilson): Mervin doesn’t think in any kind of linear way in terms of how he joins his dots. Certain minutiae might mean nothing to anybody else, and the penny drops for him.
When that eureka moment happens before the denouement, it has to be a big deal because he’s been looking for that moment for the whole episode. It’s there. It’s just out of reach. Something needs to go off for me to realise I’ve got it.
Anna Samson (DI Mackenzie Clarke, Return to Paradise): It’s very specific in the script, because it’s not just me that has to be aware of it, it’s the whole production team. So the camera has to know what we’re doing at that exact moment to get into these eyes, to see her soul.
It’s a very interesting bit to film. You have to get into this almost Mackenzie-like zone to convey that her brain is doing something very specific, which is putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
Filming in paradise
Saint Marie is as much a part of Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise as the detectives, the victims and the criminals causing all the mayhem. The island of Guadeloupe has become home to the team, who were adamant that the BBC drama should feel authentic.
Robert Thorogood: We had to film in the Caribbean. Back in 2010ish, most shows in any kind of hot setting shot in South Africa because for the Brits, the time zone is just spectacularly good and they have very good trained crews.
So there was this real sense of, ‘Look, in order for us to afford to do this at all, we’re gonna have to go to South Africa.’ And Tony Jordan and I just said, ‘Over our dead bodies are we going to make this fake.’ It had to be authentic. The Caribbean is one of the key characters of the whole show.
Characters and actors come and go, but the Caribbean stays the same. The show wouldn’t have lasted if we’d set it somewhere fake. So it was critical to us that we shot in the Caribbean and when the French came on board – because we couldn’t quite afford to make it, so France television helped us out – they said, ‘Would you go to Guadeloupe and do it?’ Talk about authenticity!
Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole): I think Guadaloupe was a really inspired choice because it’s not what you think of when you think of the Caribbean. The sort of stereotypical view of the Caribbean is white-sand beaches and palm trees. It’s all a bit like a desert island. Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise being set on Guadaloupe, where it’s a little bit rainforest-y, it looks very different.
I think the island looks amazing on screen. It’s very remote where we film. There were no people on the beaches when we used to be there. There was nothing, the beaches were empty. People liked to live up the mountain where it’s a bit cooler.
The fact that there’s just no studio in it at all means everything is a location. Every single place you shoot is the real thing, found somewhere in Guadaloupe and I think that makes a huge difference.
Passing the baton
There comes a time where all DIs must leave paradise. Ben Miller set the trend with his exit in 2014. Miraculously the show survived despite the creator believing it would be the kiss of Dᴇᴀᴛʜ for his murder-mystery drama. This, of course, could not have been further from the truth. Ralf Little is the latest lead to have passed the baton on over a decade after Miller, proving the show’s resilience and incredible staying power.
Before handing over the role to Don Gilet the actor bid a touching farewell to DI Neville Parker. In a post on Instagram Little thanked his fans for their support during his four-and-a-half-year tenure, stating: “I knew I had big shoes to fill and coming into a series beloved by millions, including me, was a huge responsibility.
“The way everyone took Neville into their hearts it really has been one of the most magical and profound experiences of my entire life and if it wasn’t for all of you I’d have never have gotten to do it so thank you so, so much.
“It’s been the ride of a lifetime.”
Gilet marks the fifth detective on Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise but the changing of the guard wasn’t intentional, being born out of real-life circumstances.
Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole): I’d have loved to have carried on. I felt there was still a lot to do with the character and there were a lot more stories to explore.
The thing was, it was just physically so difficult because my wife had a baby right in between series one and two and while he was a very small baby I was away for all those months. That was really hard. So it was just too tricky.
There was a bit of something very authentic [about my performance]. I’m not just acting as someone who’s stuck on a desert island and can’t get home. I am stuck on a desert island and I can’t get home. So it kind of comes across.
I’m not sure that people would have been aware of it watching it but there’s something quite real about my irritation about being there. Although it was quite tricky for me personally at the time it was good for the show.
Robert Thorogood: We all thought the show was sunk. We presumed the show was Ben. When Ben left we thought, ‘We’re going to have to kill him because if the audience thinks that DI Richard Poole is still knocking about and could come back and solve a murder, how on Earth are we going to get the audience to go with the new detective?’
But we didn’t know that we had Kris Marshall coming. There was no need to kill Richard Poole because we had a brilliant actor coming along next and every single one of our detectives has been brilliant.
Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole): It’s kind of great the way it’s worked out, though, because it’s become a bit like Doctor Who or something. I seem to have set the pace. You do three [seasons] and you leave. Although the others don’t seem to get murdered.
It just seems to be me that gets murdered.
Robert Thorogood: One of the things that we did know quite quickly was that the character of Richard Poole is not a joiner. The joke was we sent somebody who didn’t like the Caribbean to the Caribbean, so we could never do a sailing story, we could never do a swimming story, we could never do a paragliding story, we could never do anything to do with the Caribbean, because the joke is he doesn’t interact with the Caribbean.
So when we were coming up with Humphrey we were just thinking, what’s the opposite of Richard? Who’s going to join in with everything? Who’s going to be chaotic where he was controlled? We just did the opposite and it was through the process of coming up with Humphrey that we went, ‘This is fun.’
And then what’s super interesting is that Sara [Martins], who played Camille, after a season or two of Humphrey went, ‘Hang on. I’m the antithesis of Richard Poole, and you’ve brought in a new lead who’s the antithesis of Richard Poole, which means that he and I are agreeing on everything, and the comedy isn’t there. The tension isn’t there, and the friction isn’t there. I need to leave, because what you need in place of me is someone who disagrees.’
So she left and we went, ‘You know, she’s right’ because in that police station, the dynamic has to be that they are brilliant differently. That goes without saying, but they have to have traits that wind each other up.
Kris Marshall (DI Humphrey Goodman): When I first took over from Ben, I was absolutely bricking it, because I’d never taken over anything from anyone. I’d never joined a show midstream. I was like, ‘This is not going to be a great look for me if I mess this up.’
Fortunately, maybe more by luck than judgement, this show grew and grew and so, when I handed it over to Ardal I was really pleased that I was able to give him something that wasn’t broken.
And then to also be able to walk away from it and go, okay, I did alright. I did my job and that felt great to – as Ben had done to me – pass on a show that was in rude health and continues to be. I mean look at it!
Ardal O’Hanlon (DI Jack Mooney): They kind of smuggled me into the show. I don’t think anyone was expecting [Humphrey and Jack to team up in London].
I’m not sure if people knew that Kris Marshall was leaving the show but I certainly don’t think anyone suspected that my character – this detective based in London who was liaising with Humphrey – would be the new detective. So I think that was clever. We did a denouement together where Humphrey started and I chipped in and I think it was a bit of fun for the audience.
The show is so robust, it can withstand these dramatic changes of cast, it weathers them all and it survives somehow. It’s really quite remarkable.
Kris Marshall (DI Humphrey Goodman): I left 2017 so now we have the history of not just Ardal taking over, but then Ralf, and now Don Gilet – who I think is fantastic, by the way, and I think the right way for the show to go.
Ardal O’Hanlon (DI Jack Mooney): I think the secret is you don’t try to copy what either Ben did or Kris did. You have to do your own thing.
You kind of rely on instinct. I suppose where I’m coming from my character, Jack Mooney, was slightly low status. Underestimated by other people and that’s part of his thing. Part of his shtick is that he plays the fool a little bit. So he lets people underestimate him at their peril.
I probably stayed a little bit longer than I had planned to because I joined halfway through one series, and I left halfway through another series so I ended up in Guadeloupe for four summers in total and that’s quite a big chunk of time to do anything. And with the best will in the world it is a demanding job. I think everyone you speak to will corroborate that. It is a long way from home, you do work very hard, you work very long hours in quite gruelling conditions.
I look back at it incredibly fondly but I’m glad that I don’t have to do it any more. You just know in your bones that it’s time to go. Your character is not going to evolve much more and, and also in terms of your personal life, your real life, it’s not fair on your family to keep going off for entire summers. We’d be there for up to six months of the year.
It was very important to me to get back into stand-up, to be available for other roles, to get back to writing again, and to do all the other things that you miss out on.
Ralf Little (DI Neville Parker) : Did I have shoes to fill? Yeah, massively. I was actually in an episode as a guest with Ben [Miller] and I saw him doing his thing as a detective, years and years and years ago. Don [Warrington] didn’t remember that – he didn’t remember me! There’s been a fair few cast members, though.
That was weirdly helpful. I already had a sense of where the island was and how the show worked. That removed some of the mystery and uneasiness of it.
Ben’s amazing. Kris is amazing and Ardal was amazing. You’re not walking in going, ‘I’m trying to revitalise a show that’s on its heels a little bit.’ They know what they’re doing.
I just thought, ‘Come along, try to be as professional as possible, know your lines, hit your marks, get it right and hopefully the rest will take care of itself’. It was a little bit nerve-wracking, but to be honest I didn’t think too hard about that because it wouldn’t have helped.
It was only 20 minutes before my episode came out that all of the potential worry and anxiety of ‘What if people don’t like this?’ just arrived in one minute and played out over the next 10, 15 minutes before the show started.
I thought, ‘What if people hate this?’ I actually couldn’t watch it. My other half texted me literally 10 minutes in saying, ‘You can breathe again, it’s a hit’. I think she was monitoring social media. It was big shoes to fill, but I found the best way to deal with it was not to think about it and just do the best I could.
Don Gilet (DI Mervin Wilson): I didn’t go into any major study [when taking on the role]. I watched certain episodes because I like to see the transition and the handing over stories of when a new guy comes in. And you get a vague appreciation of what each character had and you think, ‘Well, clearly there was a different person, otherwise why change it?’
It’s not just people turning up and solving crimes – it’s never that anyway. A thing should always be character driven, but I think they’ve gone into a deeper dive with this particular character and created an arc that takes you through.
Robert Thorogood: I left the show a couple of years ago to do the Marlowe Murder Club. But [story and script producer] James Hall took it over.
It was really hard to step back from Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise. I love the show and more than anything else, the people who I work with on the show are friends. So we’ve all been in the trenches together for years. We know where all the bodies are buried.
I’m very lucky because I knew that Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise was in the best hands possible. They involve me as a courtesy now. So I saw the audition of our new Detective Don and knew he was brilliant the moment I saw him.
The thing I got from his audition was, he is one: beautiful, two: super charming, three: very, very funny, and four: you genuinely believe he’s a detective in the Metropolitan Police.
It was a brilliant audition. Ralf was irreplaceable, all of our detectives are irreplaceable but then eventually they want a life outside of going to the Caribbean for nine months.
There’s not much to do outside of the work, and there’s not much time to do it. You work really hard – 11 day fortnights, so it’s six days one week, five days the next and they have a two-week break in the middle, but they do that for over nine months and your family are at home.
The production are very good and they’ll try to fly families out, but seriously, it’s a really hard show.
The Paraverse
The success of Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise has fed the growth of the franchise which has, in turn, led to the creation of a book series and two spin-offs, the Kris Marshall-led Beyond Paradise and Anna Samson’s Return to Paradise.
Robert Thorogood: I can never remember who said this, but it’s so, so true – ‘Writers are megalomaniacs with low self-esteem.’ We’ve got a huge ambition, but we do doubt ourselves.
One of the things I always wanted to do was to be published; to write a murder-mystery book. So when Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise was up and running, I was trying to think of another world to do a murder mystery in and that I could try and get a book deal on.
I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise, why don’t I try and turn them into books?’ So I got a book deal. To write some Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise books, and they sold okay, you know, they don’t set the world on fire.
I think the people who find the books, who like them, really like them and I’m thrilled to have written them, and I’m proud of them. [I based them on Richard Poole] because he’s Poirot for me. He is the most intrinsically ‘me’ version of the [detectives]. I admire Humphrey. I’m married to a Humphrey, but I’m not Humphrey at all.
So when writing the book, it was always going to be Richard that I’d go to. Just because he was the first and, and that’s the one that I do the least amount of thinking to access because he is so like me. I’m very neurotic, I’m very rule-bound.
I’m not as angry as him. I’m quite high-functioning on the spectrum, I’d like to think, but I’m still there somewhere. Humphrey’s not on any spectrum.
Kris Marshall (DI Humphrey Goodman): Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise is a well-loved show and so with Beyond Paradise we had the nucleus of an audience to try and attract but we also wanted it to be a completely unique show whilst retaining the DNA that made Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise.
Anna Samson: I’m a massive fan of the murder-mystery genre. I think there’s a part of me that’s always harbored a desire to be a detective on the BBC. So [this role] was a very good turn of events for me.
Being a female detective doesn’t change the DNA of the show as much as you might think. I think what makes ours unique is the setting. I think setting it in Australia does something very different to the show and also because the central detective role is returning to a hometown.
That’s very different from the original show. You know, it is not set in the Caribbean so there’s not this culture clash. It’s a fish out of water but in a town that she knows and they already know her. She’s out of place in a place that she knows and I think that’s quite unique to our show.
Robert Thorogood: After Kris, I think we started having a conversation there and then about, look, ‘We’re in the Caribbean. Wouldn’t it be fun? Wouldn’t it be interesting to send a Black British actor or a woman out to the Caribbean? Because what Kris taught us was the best way of keeping the show alive is to keep changing the cast.
For the last seven or eight years we’d been speaking to all of the acting community in the wider sense of that word. We’ve offered the role to other people and for one reason or other we’ve only had yeses from white men.
And with each white man that we had – all of whom are brilliant, Ardal was brilliant and Ralf was brilliant – we’ve felt that another year has passed, and we’re still sort of banging the same-shaped drum, which is ‘the white Brit man goes abroad’. That’s funny, but there are other stories we want to tell as well. So we were thrilled when Don agreed to do it. Absolutely just over the moon. I can’t believe we’ve got him.
I’m thrilled because I think it gives the show longevity because we have to diversify. By diversify, I mean that with a small ‘D’, not with a big ‘D’. Just character-wise diversify. Tell different stories, because otherwise, it’s just the same gang solving a lighthearted murder mystery every week.
Don Gilet (DI Mervin Wilson): I try not to make [being the ‘first Black detective’] a thing that I have to engage with. I mean, it’s there as a visual. People can’t help trying to find some kind of a political approach. This is not a political thing. The story is the same. This guy is an outsider. He’s from the UK. To a certain extent, end of.
On another layer, they want the best person for the job. They don’t want the best Brown person for the job.
This role should not be defined by our skin colour because from all the tussle over the years to find this equality, I sometimes worry that if you then start to point at it too much, you’re still ‘othering’. And I don’t want this character or my part in this job to be defined by a colour.
Within a very short space of time, you should stop seeing colours. You should feel vibes and feel storytelling and feel enriched by it. You should feel the emotions.
I don’t think any Black actor wants to be defined by the colour of their skin. They want to be on a level playing field because it’s just a tough business to be in the first place. It’s not about how great you are. We all know that. It’s not a meritocracy. It is still so much being in the right place at the right time but giving your worth and believing in yourself and I just think my colour isn’t the thing to believe in. It’s what my craft is as a storyteller and that’s what I’ve always wanted to push.
The best storylines
As a murder-mystery show Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise has gifted fans with a fair few dramatic moments (Neville being suspected of murder). The cast and creator share which storylines meant the most to them.
Robert Thorogood: From a storyline point of view, the one I was most pleased about, which actually quite a lot of other people have said to me is their favourite episode of the ones that I’ve written, was episode three, series one, which is set in a school.
It was an idea I had before the show got greenlit. ‘What if you hid a body as a display skeleton?’ That would be amazing because you see them in doctor surgeries, in schools, universities, and I came up with this whole idea that we’d have the skeleton on display throughout the whole episode. Then right at the end, Richard Poole would reveal that the dead body was in the classroom with them as they were speaking.
The problem with that idea is that it had nothing to do with the Caribbean and although I knew it was a really good murder mystery, it was going to be fun. I thought if I try and do that for episode one we won’t have a show because you could have shot that in Midsomer. You could have shot that in the world of Morse.
I had to fight quite hard for it because the feeling in the production room was ‘It’s not a very Caribbean story, is it?’ And I went, ‘Yeah, but it’s so good’ and of course it was a Caribbean story, because when you shoot in the Caribbean, it just is because that’s the scenery, that’s the classroom, that’s the actors, that’s everything.
I was just pleased that I’d held onto it for long enough and delivered on it.
Ardal O’Hanlon (DI Jack Mooney): There were a few slightly darker storylines, without going into Happy Valley territory or anything. I’m thinking particularly of the Florence being shot. That was quite moving and it was quite-action packed as well.
I think those couple of episodes were probably the time where it felt more real. That’s where you could, as an actor, exercise your dramatic chops.
But there were other times, like my character was grieving for a recently deceased wife. He was missing his beloved daughter who lived back in the UK, so there was always just a little hint of melancholy which kind of gave him a vulnerability.
Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole): One storyline I’m really proud of was – basically none of us had experienced the hurricane season until the end of filming season one.
My attitude is like, ‘What’s everybody fussing about? It’s just a bit of wind and rain. How bad can it be?’ And then you experience a hurricane and you think, ‘Oh my God, I had absolutely no idea that could happen.’ And then in the second season they wrote this great episode centred on a hurricane and we all had to spend the night in a university on a campus. I loved that episode.
The legacy
In 2024 Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise achieved a huge milestone when it celebrated its 100th episode. Over the show’s decade-plus duration the crime drama has done more than just accrued a loyal, intergenerational fanbase , it’s left behind a legacy that touches lives beyond the screen.
Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole): I do book signings for my children’s books and quite often a lot of the people that come along are teenagers who watched Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise. I don’t know why it’s now a big thing with teenagers. It’s got that generational appeal. I ask [a lot of them] ‘When did you watch Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise?’ And they say in lockdown.
Sean Maguire (Criminal Marlon Collins, recurring guest star in the pilot and 100th episode): The first episode, the pilot – a producer phoned me and said, ‘Look, I know you’re living in America, but we’ve got this new show. It’s a pilot. We want to try to draw as many people to it as possible. It’s a very small part – you don’t have to do much – but it would really help us out. And it shoots in the Caribbean.’
‘Well, can I bring my girlfriend along?’ They said, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.’ I went, ‘Great, I’m in.’
So when it came around for the 100th episode, they phoned my agent and said, ‘Would he be interested in doing the role? It’s still in Guadeloupe and Don Warrington is still there.’ I said, ‘My then-girlfriend is now my wife and we have three children. Can I bring my wife and three children?’ They said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ I was like, ‘Great.’
To get to 100 is a really big achievement. But I do remember talking to Ben Miller when we were shooting the pilot, and I said, ‘How are you enjoying it?’
I think he was going through a little bit of a difficult personal time at that moment, and so he was a bit like, ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’
I was like, ‘A whodunit in the Caribbean? This thing’s got legs, man. This thing’s gonna go for a minute.’ He was like, ‘I don’t know. I can’t think that far ahead.’ I was thinking, ‘You better, because you’ve got to be here.’
Robert Thorogood: When we started Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise there was no film structure at all. No crew, nothing. We had to ship everything out in crates because there was nothing you could get nearby. Then a few years ago I went out to visit the set and I arrived at the hotel and the person who picked me up said, ‘Oh, you’re Robert Thorogood. Thank you so much for making the show. I’ve just graduated from Guadeloupe University doing film studies.’
Now you can shoot stuff and they film stuff on Guadaloupe, because of course the crew are trained, but the infrastructure is there, people know the locations. When I try and be happy about my work, I go, you know what, that was cool.
Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise and Beyond Paradise both air on BBC One and stream on BBC iPlayer.
