Jan 09, 2015 23:12
An admission: Death in Paradise is one of my guilty TV pleasures.
Yes, it's a bit quaint and some elements of the set-up are perhaps problematic (from a certain perspective it could be summarised as "clever white detective comes to Caribbean island and solves mysteries that baffle the less perceptive local cops"), but it's essentially a 'fish out of water' / outsider / culture clash detective show. And there's a grand tradition of those.
It's also survived a couple of cast changes without losing its identity, as police officers move on (or manage to end up on the wrong end of a murder mystery, in one case...).
Season 4's first episode cheered me up in two ways: with the team a man down, Commissioner Patterson (the excellent Don Warrington, who seems to have a lot of fun playing such a deadpan role) steps away from his desk job and rolls his sleeves up to help the murder investigation.
Secondly, at the end of the episode we get to meet the new permanent replacement for our departed officer... who's likely to shake up the series dynamic a bit, I think. We've now had three seasons of "the boys' club and Camille", but not any more, it seems...