By TANIA PHILLIPS
Death In Paradise, Saturday ABC1, 7.30pm
IT is always hard to replace the central character in a program and very often it proves impossible so when Ben Miller announced he was leaving Death In Paradise I figured that it was the end of the quirky and fun crime solving show set on a tropical Island.
I mean, how can you have a “fish-out-of-water” show without the fish? Death in Paradise is about a straight-laced OCD English detective Detective Inspector Poole trying to cope with crime-solving on a Carribean Island.
Ben Miller’s character is not just important, he was pretty much essential.
Enter Kris Marshall – best-known for his roles in My Family and the movie Love Actually – another Brit detective.
But the writers have been clever, while he possesses a lot of similiar character traits, DI Humphrey Goodman is a lot more rumpled and clumsy and Marshall seems to be the perfect foil for his “Caribbean” co-stars. So much so that the show is still drawing 6-7 million people per week in the UK and has just been renewed for a fourth series.
Maybe this proves that you can’t keep good writing down – or that we all just want to escape to an island paradise?
Or maybe, just maybe, lightning struck twice. Marshall puts in a stellar performance as the clumsy Humphrey, relying on physical comedy rather than Miller’s more cerebral approach and it works. Humphrey is immediately likeable and yet as he says “he’s not there to take DI Poole’s place”.
It was a nice touch too having him investigate Poole’s murder and, along with Poole himself, solve the crime. There may have been a Death in Paradise but hey it looks like this show will live on.
