We’re not in Guadeloupe any more. Yes, palm trees are swaying and Humphrey Goodman is fighting crime in his own bumbling but brilliant way, just as he did in Death In Paradise, but this is south-west England, not the Caribbean.
‘We can’t replicate all those cocktails on the beach but we can have the quirk and characters of the West Country,’ says Kris Marshall, who’s bringing Humphrey home in new spin-off series Beyond Paradise.
As a boy from Wells in Somerset who used to holiday here, he knows this part of the world well. ‘It’s not always as sunny, but it can look absolutely stunning.’
Today those palms are swaying in a cool wind by the River Tamar as cast and crew come to the end of the three-month shoot. As Kris chats in front of an open fire, it’s clear he knows the stakes are high.
‘If this doesn’t go well it’s not going to look good for me or any of us,’ he says, only half joking.
Kris Marshall and Sally Bretton are appearing in Beyond Paradise, the spin-off show of Death in Paradise which is set in south-west England
Very few British shows get a high-profile spin-off series like this, and even fewer work: Holby City from Casualty and Endeavour from Inspector Morse are two successes that spring to mind, but those are exceptions.
So the BBC is taking an expensive risk here – even though Death In Paradise has quietly and unexpectedly become one of the most successful television shows in the world since it was launched in 2011.
It is shown in more than 230 territories, and has made the Beeb a lot of money. The show has won its fans by sticking to a winning formula: a cast of eccentrics, a hapless expat detective on secondment to the fictional island of Saint Marie and an unlikely murder, which is a puzzle for all the family to solve.
It has the same escapism as Death In Paradise, there’s comfort in warm characters and beautiful surroundings – Sally Bretton
Beyond Paradise brings a similar approach to the West Country, but there is one huge difference when it comes to murders.
‘I’m going to give you a spoiler: there are none,’ says Kris. ‘We’ve got someone who may have been injured by a witch. We’ve got a kidnapping. We’ve got an art theft which is a real caper.’
But some things are the same. ‘You still have the fun of trying to solve the puzzle, which is a huge part of both shows.’
And there’s another revelation. ‘We don’t have the classic Death In Paradise ending, with all the suspects sat there while the detective points at each in turn, going, “You had the motive… but it’s not you!” Our new way is much more interactive. You go inside the mind of Humphrey.’
The crimes are now played out in the detective’s imagination; he watches things unfold, and commentates from within the scenes. It’s bold and clever and really works.
Cornwall’s Looe stands in for the show’s fictional town of Shipton Abbott, located near the Devon coast, and local businesses will be hoping Beyond Paradise can do for them what Doc Martin did for Port Isaac, giving tourism a huge boost. It certainly worked for Guadeloupe, which has seen a huge increase in visitors since the world started watching Death In Paradise.
That show is still doing well, now in its 12th series, with Ralf Little as the current fish-out-of-water cop; but its highest ratings of nine million viewers an episode were in 2017 when Humphrey fell in love with restaurateur Martha, played by Sally Bretton, and returned to Blighty. Will viewers still adore them on home soil, or was it just a tropical holiday romance?
Marshall and Bretton both feel their new show has the same escapism as Death In Paradise, with ‘comfort’ in ‘beautiful surroundings and warm character’
‘I’m confident people will love the show,’ says Sally. ‘We’ve got all the familiar elements: beautiful scenery, warm characters and a crime to solve, and it’s all done with the same light touch.’
Sally’s best known as Lee Mack’s love interest in the sitcom Not Going Out, but today she’s filming at a cottage on Cornwall’s Pentillie Estate. Humphrey and Martha are staying here with her mother Anne at the start of Beyond Paradise.
‘Martha’s dad died during the pandemic and her mum’s alone,’ says Sally. ‘This is the time to see if she can make a dream come true and start a café here. Humphrey supports her and gets a transfer from the Met.’
His new colleagues are as eccentric as his old ones in the Caribbean, and the couple’s living arrangements are as improvised as the beachside shack Humphrey used to live in.
‘They have no home and Martha has no premises and you watch them fumble through,’ says Sally. Things don’t run smoothly, especially when an old flame starts sniffing around.
‘Martha gets a bit tangled in her head. She and Humphrey are like passing ships in the night, working restaurant hours and in the police. She starts to reassess everything.’
Humphrey is charming and clever, but he’s a bit of a handful. Could Sally be with him in real life? ‘Yeah! He’s clever and warm and funny and optimistic. What more do you want? He’s a bit clumsy, but that’s OK.’
Sally is not in the police scenes, so she’s able to go back and forth to the home she shares with her husband and three young daughters in Hertfordshire. ‘I come down for a week or so and then I go back. Kris is much more settled down here.’
Family is the reason Kris quit Death In Paradise at the height of his success in 2017.
‘You’re away from home nearly six months at a stretch. When your kids are very young, they’re easily transportable. Mine went all over the world with me,’ says Kris, who made his name in the movies as the equally hapless but much less clever Colin in Love Actually.
But when he went to Guadeloupe to film what would be his last series of Death In Paradise in 2016, his son Thomas was just about to start school. Kris left him, his wife Hannah and baby daughter Elsie behind in England.
‘When they’re a little older they’re settled with their mates and they’ve got school, it’s not fair on them. So you either go out there alone and don’t see them as often as you’d like, or you move out there as a family.’
Did he not want to do that? ‘Well, Guadeloupe is an awesome place, but it’s a French island and my kids aren’t French. We could have moved ourselves lock, stock and barrel over there, but our home is in the UK.’
Sadly, Kris was hit by a tragedy on his return to Britain.
‘It worked out well that I left when I did, because unfortunately I lost my mum. That was about four months after coming home. Had I been doing the show I’d have been out there.’ His voice cracks, it’s still raw.
‘As it happens, I got to spend quite a bit of time with her before she died. These things work in strange ways.’
We’ve got kidnapping, art theft, a witch… but no murders. There’s still a puzzle to solve though – Kris Marshall
After his return, Kris starred in West End plays Ugly Lies The Bone, and Glengarry Glen Ross with Christian Slater and his Death In Paradise co-star Don Warrington. He was also a favourite to take over as Doctor Who at the time, so how close did he actually come to that?
‘Oh, nowhere near. I think it was because Peter Capaldi said he was going around the same time I announced I was leaving Death In Paradise. All I could do was keep my mouth shut. Maybe I shouldn’t have done, because the rumours just got bigger and bigger.’
How has he coped being away from the family while filming down south? ‘On Friday nights I get on the motorway and I’m home. I get the best of both worlds: the brilliance of the weekend with the kids and I don’t have to do the school run! And I get to spend the week in Cornwall. What’s not to like?’
He hopes the show will tempt visitors off the beaten track.
‘Everyone comes to St Ives and Padstow, they don’t come to this southeastern bit, the Rame Peninsula,’ he says. ‘It’s beautiful and unspoilt.’
The first episode gets a bit spooky as a witch is accused of murder, while Humphrey meets the team. Dylan Llewellyn from Derry Girls is the seemingly clueless PC Kelby Hartford, The Bay’s Zahra Ahmadi is eager detective Esther Williams, and Felicity Montagu, so brilliant as Alan Partridge’s put-upon PA Lynn, is equally compelling as office manager Margo Martins.
Barbara Flynn is terrific as Martha’s mother Anne, even though she’s had an accident that makes filming tricky.
‘I broke my ankle after a week’s filming,’ she reveals. ‘I was watering the garden and slipped on the hosepipe. My ankle came down on a concrete step and opened up like a flower. There’s a cutlery drawer in there now. About 13 screws. But it’s getting better.’
Her foot’s in a protective boot, which is hidden by a clever bit of costuming, but how has she managed with filming? ‘We have a lot of scenes sitting on benches!’
Barbara says she’s enjoying acting with Sally.
‘Martha is such a glorious female lead. We’ve made mother and daughter quite flinty. Sentimentality is not encouraged.’
For Sally, filming in Britain has been as joyful as the Caribbean. ‘Beyond Paradise has the same escapism as Death In Paradise. There’s comfort in beautiful surroundings and warm characters. We could all do with a bit of that now, couldn’t we?’
Beyond Paradise, Friday, 8pm, BBC1.
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