ReviewBBC First’s Beyond Paradise transplants Kris Marshall’s awkward Detective Inspector Goodman from the Caribbean to southwest England
- Socially awkward DI Goodman is back in the UK with sensible Detective Sergeant Esther Williams (Zahra Ahmadi), solving some colourful crimes
- Meanwhile, in Netflix K-drama Doctor Cha, Uhm Jung-hwa stars as Cha Jeong-suk, who picks up her medical career after 20 years of raising a family
You can take the detective out of Saint Marie, but you can’t take Saint Marie, or London, out of the detective.
Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall) quit the fictional Caribbean island several series of Death in Paradise ago. But now he has come ashore (after a backstory stint with London’s Metropolitan Police) in what is, despite the new crime drama’s title, another: Shipton Abbott, on England’s southwest coast, to star in Beyond Paradise (BBC First).
Goodman followed significant other Martha (Sally Bretton) back from Saint Marie; post-London, he has joined his local Devon force and she has opened a restaurant in the picturesque town. And as colourful as the scenery are the crimes, dreamed up by the same Death in Paradise creative team.
Disappearing families, vanishing paintings, arson, crop circles, even a 17th century witch are all grist to a mill livened up by the diffident, socially awkward DI Goodman, pitched perfectly by Marshall as a bumbling, irritating-yet-endearing klutz whose professional brilliance isn’t guaranteed to be recognised in his new surroundings.
More Columbo than Poirot, rumpled rather than dapper, meticulous but disorganised, Goodman comes to be known locally as “a bit odd”. Which naturally puts him in the premier league of renowned British television detectives.