Like a Christmas romance that ends at the airport, Death In Paradise says goodbye to another detective when Ralf Little leaves the show.
But far from being heartbroken, the show’s eight million regular viewers are eager to see who they will fall in love with next.
The departure of the police series’ protagonist, a catastrophe that threatened to end the franchise when it first occurred, has now become a running joke.
Bookmakers are placing bets on who will be next to play a British detective out of his (or perhaps her?) depth on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint-Marie.
Ralf Little has become the latest Death In Paradise lead to leave the show. Pictured with co-star Shantol Jackson, who plays Naomi Thomas.
Current favorites include comedian Romesh Ranganathan (but can he really act?); Jason Watkins (already on a similar show, ITV’s McDonald & Dodds); Simon Bird from The Inbetweeners (interesting idea); Jodie Whittaker (but she already ruined Doctor Who) and Martin Clunes (born to play the role, surely).
But the real question facing all of these contenders is: why can’t Death In Paradise retain its cast? Not only have you lost four detective inspectors, but enough junior officers have come and gone through the police station doors to fill a passenger plane.
The only regular who has been on the series since the beginning, in 2011, is the magnificent Don Warrington, who plays Commissioner Selwyn Patterson.
Despite the heinous crime that drives each story, the episodes tend to be comfortingly familiar, whoever the protagonist is. Each episode begins with a pre-credits sequence showing the events leading up to a murder and ends with the detective in question unmasking the killer and tying up loose ends, with plenty of beautiful Caribbean scenery in between.
It’s a formula beloved by the show’s many fans, but its success was threatened from the start when the drama’s original star, Ben Miller, who played DI Richard Poole, a detective sent by London’s Metropolitan Police to investigate the murder of a British policeman. official: resigned after three years in 2014.
The show’s creator, novelist Robert Thorogood, was so horrified that Miller later revealed that the two were no longer on speaking terms. And perhaps in an act of revenge, rather than letting Poole off gracefully, Thorogood killed off his character: murdered with an ice pick to the heart at a college reunion.
Two of the many stars rumored to be taking the reins from Ralf Little are Romesh Ranganathan and Martin Clunes.
Fans have also suggested that The Inbetweeners’ Simon Bird and Doctor Who star Jodie Whitaker will be next to take on the role.
“I imagine he resented me for leaving,” the actor said, admitting that he felt compelled to quit by a combination of problems that made filming unbearable: the heat, the mosquitoes and, above all, the remoteness of the location.
Next to the sapphire waters of Guadeloupe, the six-month filming schedule meant London and loved ones were a 14-hour flight away for half the year.
For Miller, who first gained TV fame as half of a sketch duo with his Cambridge Footlights friend Alexander Armstrong, the job came at the wrong time. Recently divorced, he was in a new relationship with film producer Jessica Parker.
‘Two weeks after my arrival in the Caribbean,’ he said, ‘Jessica discovered she was pregnant.
‘I just got divorced and finally met someone, and now I’m on the other side of the world and we’re having a baby. That’s a real curveball.
But Thorogood wasn’t the only one who found his departure difficult to understand. Not only was Miller paid to work in one of the world’s most beautiful idylls, but he was also surrounded by a glamorous supporting cast, including Sara Martins as DS Camille Bordey. “People constantly say to me, ‘So what part of spending six months a year on a Caribbean island with Sara Martins did you find so unbearable?’ he admitted. (French actress Martins played Camille Bordey, a detective sergeant.)
The reality was very different. The whole premise of Death In Paradise is that the detective is completely unsuitable for the weather, and DI Poole wore his suit, collar and tie, even on the beach. Miller tried wearing backless shirts, but his skin stuck to the lining of the jacket. “You learn to take the heat seriously,” he said during a break in filming. “If you’re English, you think, ‘Oh, I’m a bit hot,’ and you move on.” That’s when you run the risk of heat stroke.
Ben Miller was the original lead, playing Detective Inspector Richard Poole.
Kris Marshall (left, with co-star Josephine Jobert) joined as Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman, in the third series, before leaving the role. Series six saw Ardal O’Hanlon take over, as DI Jack Mooney
“I only got it once during the first year,” he added tersely. “But I’ve had heat exhaustion a few times, where you feel very lightheaded, dizzy and dizzy.”
Ralf Little took this to the extreme when he arrived in 2020 as DI Neville Parker: allergic to mosquito bites, as well as suffering from eczema and hay fever, and prone to sunburn, even on cloudy days.
Miller believed this was the secret to the show’s appeal: “The world goes to bed happy knowing that there is an Englishman who suffers for being English.” But other dangers left him shaken. After diving into the water to cool off, along a stretch of beach famous for its strong currents, he was pulled from the ground and nearly drowned.
And when he took his family to the neighboring island of Antigua, his son was miserable: “He hated the flight, he hated the heat, we couldn’t sleep because Harrison wasn’t sleeping.”
In desperation, Miller began traveling back to Britain every fortnight, making the long-haul flight just to spend a couple of days with his family.
His successor, Love Actually’s Kris Marshall, stayed for four series, but he too found the schedule exhausting.
“It’s an incredible job, but the shoot is really long,” he said. “We spent six months filming in Guadeloupe and I spent three of them dying to be home with my friends and family, between English jokes and roast dinners.” Wearing a jacket and tie in 40C heat, she said, was “like putting on a wetsuit, going into a sauna and doing Hamlet.” When he filmed his last series in 2016, his son Thomas was starting school: “When they are a little older they move in with their friends and have school, it’s not fair to them. So either you go out alone and you don’t see them as often as you would like, or you move as a family.
“We could have moved full force there, but our home is in the UK.”
He joked that when his family joined him, his son became “too Caribbean: he refused to wear shoes and only drank coconut water and ate pineapple.”
‘My little daughter grew enormously between visits. Luckily, she still recognized me, but it was hard being away from her.”
Four months after he left the show, Marshall’s mother died.
“I spent quite a bit of time with her before she died,” he says. “If I had been doing the show, I would have been there.”
Ardal O’Hanlon, beloved as Father Ted’s stupid novice priest Father Dougal, replaced Marshall, knowing how difficult it would be. Although his children were older, he felt it was asking too much of his wife Melanie to fend for herself for too long.
“Three grown children and adults live in the house,” he said. “As the years went by, everything became more difficult for him. It’s a difficult series in terms of being away from home for so long and in terms of the conditions you film in: the heat and the humidity.’
Those stifling conditions, however, are part of the appeal for Death In Paradise’s many guest stars, who can be paid to tan.
Murder victims and suspects over the 13 years since its release have included famous faces such as Gemma Jones, Colin Salmon, Sally Phillips, Levi Roots, Charlotte Ritchie and Michele Dotrice, to name just half a dozen.
But even these occasional appearances are not without risks. Tony Gardner (one of the stars of Last Tango In Halifax) contracted the Zika virus after being bitten by an infected mosquito in 2016, and suffered joint pain, swelling and rash, as well as painful sensitivity to light.
Of the 250 or so British Zika cases recorded in the UK until then, a significant proportion were members of the program team, he said.
It’s no surprise, then, that Ralf Little has decided that enough is enough, although he himself admits that he has no other job in mind.
In Sunday’s unexpected finale, DI Parker literally sailed across the horizon with DS Florence Cassell (Josephine Jobert) after telling her: “All I want is for us to be together.” Little rarely complained about the difficulties of the job. After all, she couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned. But she confessed that she found the snobbery surrounding the show irritating and hated its reputation for being “a guilty pleasure.”
‘What is there to be guilty of?’ he snorted. It is a high quality show and looks beautiful. “It’s an incredible achievement, something I’m very proud of.”
It’s one the BBC has no plans to abandon. Death In Paradise is one of their most profitable productions, selling in more than 240 territories worldwide, including major markets such as the United States and Australia, and often topping the ratings.
Perhaps its detective carousel has turned out to be its greatest attraction. Like James Bond or Doctor Who, the show is constantly revived and reinvented by a new star. Death In Paradise could be eternal.
