Like a holiday romance that ends at the airport, Death In Paradise has said goodbye to another detective as 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 crime series’ protagonist, a catastrophe that threatened to kill the franchise the first time it happened, has now become a running joke.
Bookmakers are betting on who will be the 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 leader 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 in 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, for sure).
But the real question facing all these contenders is: why can’t Death In Paradise hold on to its cast? Not only have four detectives been lost, but enough NCOs have gone in and out of the police department doors to fill a plane.
The only regular who has been on the show since its inception in 2011 is the magnificent Don Warrington, who plays Commissioner Selwyn Patterson.
Despite the gruesome crime that drives each storyline, the episodes are often reassuringly familiar no matter who’s starring. 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 the loose ends – with plenty of beautiful Caribbean scenery in between.
It’s a formula adored by the show’s many fans, but its success was threatened early on when the drama’s original star, Ben Miller, who played DI Richard Poole – a detective recruited by the Metropolitan Police in London sent to investigate the murder of a British police officer. officer – retired after three years in 2014.
The show’s creator, novelist Robert Thorogood, was so baffled that Miller later revealed that they could no longer talk to each other. And perhaps in revenge, instead of letting Poole leave gracefully, Thorogood killed his character – murdered with an ice pick to the heart during a college reunion.
Two of the many rumored stars to take the reins from Ralf Little are Romesh Ranganathan and Martin Clunes
Simon Bird and Doctor Who star Jodie Whitaker from The Inbetweeners have also been suggested by fans to take over the next role
“I can only imagine that he resented me for leaving,” the actor said, admitting that he felt forced to quit due to a combination of problems that made filming unbearable: the heat, the mosquitoes and especially the remoteness of the location.
Because it’s hot on the sapphire blue waters of Guadeloupe, the six-month filming schedule meant London and loved ones spent fourteen hours on the road for six months.
For Miller, who first found television fame as part of a sketch duo with his Cambridge Footlights friend Alexander Armstrong, the job came at exactly the wrong time. Recently divorced, he was in a new relationship with film producer Jessica Parker.
“Two weeks after I arrived 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, he was surrounded by a glamorous supporting cast, including Sara Martins as DS Camille Bordey. “I keep hearing people say, ‘So what made you find it so unbearable to spend six months a year on an island in the Caribbean with Sara Martins?’ 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 unsuited to the climate, and DI Poole wore his suit, collar and tie, even on the beach. Miller tried wearing backless shirts, but his skin stuck to the jacket lining. “You learn to take the heat seriously,” he said during a break in filming. ‘If you’re English you think, ‘Oh, I’m just a bit pretty,’ and you move on. Then you run the risk of getting heat stroke.
Ben Miller was the original lead actor, playing Detective Inspector Richard Poole
Kris Marshall (left, with co-star Josephine Jobert) joined as Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman in season three, before leaving the role. In series six, Ardal O’Hanlon took over, as DI Jack Mooney
“I only got it once in the first year,” he added laconically. ‘But I have suffered from heat exhaustion a number of times, where you become very light-headed, dizzy and nauseous.’
Ralf Little took this to the extreme when he arrived in 2020 as Inspector Neville Parker – allergic to mosquito bites, eczema and hay fever, and prone to sunburn even on cloudy days.
Miller believed this was the secret of the show’s appeal: “The world goes to bed happy knowing that there is an Englishman suffering because he is an Englishman.” But other dangers left him shaken. After wading into the water to cool off along a stretch of beach notorious for strong currents, he was pulled to his feet and nearly drowned.
And when he flew with 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.”
Desperate, Miller began traveling back to Britain every fortnight, making the long-haul flight just to spend a few days with his family.
His successor, Love Actually’s Kris Marshall, stayed for four series, but he too found the schedule grueling.
“It’s a great job, but a very long shoot,” he said. “We spent six months filming in Guadeloupe and I spent about three months there eager to be home with my friends and family, surrounded by English banter and roast dinners.” Wearing a jacket and tie in 100-degree heat was, he said, “like putting on a wet suit, going to the sauna and doing Hamlet.” By the time he filmed his last series in 2016, his son Thomas was going to school: ‘When they’re a bit older they’re used to their friends and they have school, it’s not fair to them. So you go there alone and don’t see them as often as you would like, or you move there as a family.
‘We could have moved ourselves there, but our home is in Britain.’
He joked that when his family joined him, his son “became a bit too Caribbean – he refused to wear shoes and would only drink coconut water and eat pineapple!”
‘My daughter grew enormously between visits. Luckily she recognized me, but it was hard not being with her.’
Four months after he left the show, Marshall’s mother died.
“I got to spend a lot of time with her before she died,” he says. “If I had done the show, I would have been there.”
Ardal O’Hanlon, beloved as Father Ted’s brainless novice priest, Father Dougal, replaced Marshall, knowing how difficult it would be. Although his children were older, he felt that it was asking too much of his wife Melanie to have to cope alone for too long.
“There are three big grown children living in the house,” he said. ‘She found it increasingly difficult as the years went by. It’s a tough old show in terms of being away from home for so long, and in terms of the conditions you’re filming in: the heat and the humidity.”
Those sweltering conditions, however, are part of the appeal for Death In Paradise’s many guest stars, who can get paid to get a tan.
Murder victims and suspects in the thirteen years since launch 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 one-off performances are not without risk. Tony Gardner (one of the stars of Last Tango In Halifax) contracted the Zika virus after being bitten by an infected mosquito in 2016, developing joint pain, swelling and rashes, as well as painful sensitivity to light.
Of the 250 or more British cases of Zika recorded in Britain by then, a significant proportion were crew members on the show, he said.
It is therefore not surprising that Ralf Little has now decided that enough is enough, even though he says he has no other job lined up.
In Sunday’s unexpected ending, DI Parker literally sailed over 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 rigors of the job. After all, he couldn’t say he wasn’t warned. But he confessed that he found the snobbery surrounding the show irritating and loathed its reputation as “a guilty pleasure.”
“What is there to be guilty of?” he snorted. It’s a high quality show and it looks beautiful. It’s an incredible achievement, something I’m very proud of.”
It’s one the BBC has no plans to give up. Death In Paradise is one of the most profitable productions, selling in more than 240 territories around the world, including major markets such as the US and Australia – and often topping the ratings.
Perhaps the carousel of detectives has proven to be the biggest attraction. Like James Bond or Doctor Who, the show is constantly being revived and reinvented by a new star. Death In Paradise might turn out to be eternal.