Tag: detective shows

#oneaday Day 496: Farewell, DI Parker

I am still watching Death in Paradise on my lunch breaks, and I've just got to the end of Ralf Little's run as the lead, Detective Inspector Neville Parker. He follows Ardal O'Hanlon, Kris Marshall and Ben Miller in taking the central role, and I think his run on the series might have been one of my favourites to date.

I enjoyed Miller, Marshall and O'Hanlon's time in the leading role, too, but Little's time in the hot seat felt like it had one of the most coherent character arcs for the central character. It helped that he, as a character, probably had the most room to grow of all the show's leading men to date — and the fact he was in place for about three and a half seasons, which is longer than his predecessors.

Death in Paradise is a heavily formulaic show, and to some people, that sort of thing can be annoying. Hell, formulaic shows are, at times, anathema to me — I can't stand reality TV shows that all adopt the "one of them gets voted off after a long, pregnant pause" format, for example — but for some reason, I find the relative predictability of Death in Paradise enjoyable, even comforting.

That extends to the role of the lead character, too: they're always a fish-out-of-water detective who has been brought across from some British police force (O'Hanlon's character, despite being Irish, was part of the Metropolitan Police in London before joining the Honoré gang) but the exact form of that varies somewhat. Miller's DI Poole was a grumpy old fart who gradually softened as he spent time with his comrades, until he was murdered, anyway; Marshall's DI Goodman was clumsy and scatterbrained but brilliant; O'Hanlon's DI Mooney was by far the character who was most at ease on the island; then Little's DI Parker went to the other extreme.

Initially resistant to everything the island of Saint-Marie had to offer — and allergic to everything — Parker was gradually brought out of his mosquito-repellent shell by his DS, Florence Cassell (Josephine Jobert), who had been a fixture on the show for some time, and showed some real character growth, culminating in him developing feelings for Florence. It was not to be, however, as not only did she reject him, at least partly because she was still smarting from the murder of her former fiancée, but a case forced her undercover and subsequently into the witness protection programme, conveniently bringing her time on the show to a close for a while.

Parker had a number of other good storylines along the way, too. They were ridiculous if you stop to think about them for a moment, but the same is true for the entirety of Death in Paradise. If a single locale had the murders per capita that Saint-Marie has, I suspect the authorities would declare it a complete lost cause and just firebomb it into oblivion. But I digress.

Probably the best of Parker's storylines was his holiday romance with a woman named Sophie. This initially appeared to be a complete mirror image of Goodman's romance with Martha, which ultimately led to him departing the show (and the pair getting their own spinoff series) but subsequently developed into something much more interesting. I doubt any of you reading this particularly care about Death in Paradise spoilers, but for the sake of anyone who might fancy watching this silly show, I will refrain from giving any further details for now.

Parker's finale, which saw him all set to depart Saint-Marie on a worldwide journey of self-discovery — just in time for Florence to return to the island and realise her feelings for him — was a good one, too. The promotional material for the episodes on BBC iPlayer did a good job of implying that it might be Parker who ended up murdered in his last episode — as previously noted, it wouldn't be the first time the show had killed off its lead — but he ultimately got a good, happy sendoff. I was glad about that; as a character, it felt like he deserved a happy ending. Not that Miller's poor old DI Poole didn't, but the surprise, sudden nature of his departure was very effective, and I'm not sure it would have worked for a second time, even with multiple seasons in between them.

Anyway, I'm surprised at a few things about my enjoyment of this show. Firstly, quite how attached I am to the various characters. Secondly, how well it handles feeling coherent despite a core cast that has been almost completely replaced multiple times over the course of its various seasons. By firmly grounding the show in its geographical setting, and having characters like Commissioner Patterson and bar owner-turned-mayor Catherine, the show establishes itself as a firm base that the rotating core cast builds atop, and it works. It helps prevent the show feeling too stale — and it's nice to see that some characters do get the chance to come back, too. I was particularly pleased to see the return of Danny John-Jules' Dwayne Myers, especially since his former squeeze Darlene had become an officer of the Honoré force in the meantime.

It's ultimately all rather silly comfort TV, and I suspect as soon as I've finished watching its complete run, I'll forget all about it. But for now, Death in Paradise has been a thoroughly pleasant watch — and I look forward to seeing where it goes from hereon.

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#oneaday Day 407: More Death in Paradise

My slide into middle-age is ongoing as I find myself continuing to watch Death in Paradise, the murder mystery show about a fish-out-of-water detective from jolly old England finding themselves solving murders on a Caribbean island with probably the highest murders per capita figure in the entire world.

I'm up to the fifth season now, which is well into second lead Kris Marshall's tenure on the show. His arrival at the start of the third series, thanks to the impressively ballsy move of murdering the former lead, DI Poole (played with aplomb by Ben Miller), marked a notable shift for the show, but it handles it well. Most crucially, it continues to be enjoyable and appealing for much the same reasons as when Miller's Poole character had the leading role, and I suspect that later changes in the core cast will continue this trend.

It's not just the lead that changes, either. While Danny John-Jules' excellent Officer Dwayne Myers remains in place for a significant portion of the run — I believe he finally stops being a regular around the seventh season or so? — the other "main characters" shift around a bit. The lead detective's second, initially a young woman named Camille (Sara Martins), departs the show partway through the fourth season after having been a failed love interest for both Miller and Marshall's characters, and is replaced by Florence (Joséphine Jobert), who initially takes the place of Fidel, one of the uniformed officers in the show, and is subsequently promoted to take Camille's place after the latter takes a job in Paris. The open "second uniformed officer" slot is then taken up by JP (Tobi Bakare), who stays in place, as far as I can make out, until the end of the show's present run.

Anyway, point is, the cast undergoes some quite substantial changes over the course of the show's complete run to date, but it still feels coherent. There's a good sense of "handover" from prior cast members to new ones, and the overall "feel" of the show remains remarkably consistent.

Part of this is entirely deliberate, and somewhat lampshaded by the structure of the show — especially the denouement, during which the lead detective gathers all the main suspects and witnesses together, then dramatically explains whodunnit, how and why. Early in Marshall's run on the show, he is introduced to this format as being how DI Poole did things, and there are plenty of jokes in subsequent episodes when certain individuals talk about going to arrest a suspect, only to be told "that's not how we do things around here".

It's intensely, extremely formulaic, but in many ways that's what makes it so comforting. The details of each case are different enough to keep each episode feeling fresh, but the structure of the storytelling is always the same. It's a structure that works, and is effective at telling a fun murder-mystery story over the course of each hour-long episode.

I've always had a real spot for detective stories. I read all the Sherlock Holmes stories as a youth, in a book that basically reprinted all the old Strand magazine pages they originally appeared in, in extremely tiny print. I played a bunch of detective-style adventure games with my mother as a kid — and continued to do so into my adult life. And I don't think there's a detective-style TV show that I've watched to date that I haven't enjoyed.

There are some today who would probably argue that this sort of show is "copaganda", and I get that. There are many things one can criticise the real-world police for, and in more recent years I really feel like I understand why some people feel quite so aggrieved at the very existence of police forces.

But at the same time, a good old murder mystery is a classic story format with good reason, and a cast of police officers is an ideal vehicle for telling a story like that. So I don't feel the slightest bit guilty in unironically enjoying shows like Death in Paradise simply for what they are. The real police may, in many ways, suck, but that doesn't mean you can't root for fictional detectives to crack each case!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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