Sat 12 Sep 2020
A Locked Room Mystery TV Episode Review: DEATH IN PARADISE “Arriving in Paradise†(2011).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[8] Comments
DEATH IN PARADISE “Arriving in Paradise.†BBC One. 25 October 2011 (Season 1, Episode 1). Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole), Sara Martins, Danny John-Jules, Gary Carr, Lenora Crichlow, Don Warrington (Police Commissioner). Created & written by Robert Thorogood. Director: Charles Palmer.
Switching from watching all of season eight and going back to season one required a lot of adjustment from me. The only member of the cast that is common to both is Don Warrington, the commissioner who is in charge of the police force the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie. Everyone else was someone new who had to be introduced to me as the story went on.
Not only that, but the active members of the force themselves are forced (…) to deal with the murder of their former boss, DI Charlie Hulme, who has been found dead in the locked panic room of a resident English aristocrat’s home while a party was going on. Sent from England to investigate is an uptight detective, DI Richard Poole, who is a fish out of water if there ever was one.
He doesn’t like the heat, nor his accommodations, nor the small creatures he is forced to share them with, and he especially doesn’t like the heat. Why, then, does he travel around on the case wearing a black suit, white shirt and tie? Probably because he doesn’t intend to stay on the island any longer than he has to. Which means that he has to solve the case as soon as possible and get on a jet plane back home.
A panic room is, according to Wikipedia, “a fortified room that is installed in a private residence or business to provide a safe shelter, or hiding place, for the inhabitants in the event of a break in, home invasion, tornado, terror attack, or other threat,†and a dead body found in one, locked from the inside, makes for quite a puzzle, and this is a good one.
Without trying to give away too much [WARNING] this is a prime example of a tale told in which nothing is what it seems to be [END OF WARNING]. As such, even though DI Richard Poole is going to have some getting used to — and yes, no surprise, he’s going to stick around — this is an impressive beginning episode for this long running series.
September 13th, 2020 at 6:50 am
Catherine Borday, the restaurateur and future Mayor, as well as the mother of Camille Borday, the first Sergeant, is the only other character in every series, though she might not have been in the first episode. She was considered a “recurring” character in season one.
September 13th, 2020 at 9:44 am
I do not believe that Catherine Borday was in this first episode. If she was, it was for such a short time that I don’t remember it. The many many cast changes over the years that we have talked about before were so spread out gradually over time that they seemed natural. Going backward from season eight to first one was quite a shock. Everyone (almost) was new!
September 13th, 2020 at 9:26 am
Actually D.I. Poole is by a slight margin my favorite of the Inspectors.
The kinda pretty boy one who followed Poole I did like at all. Though the setting, other characters, and especially plotting remained very strong.
September 13th, 2020 at 9:47 am
Sometimes, I think, your favorite actor in a part is the one you saw first, such as Sean Connery as James Bond. The island’s police force are shown in the image at the bottom of my review, and if you can make out the subtitle, someone is muttering “Pencil-pusher.” They hadn’t known yet what to make of DI Poole either.
September 13th, 2020 at 12:51 pm
I can’t agree. Richard Poole had a stick up his butt and he never took it out. He was also humorless, which didn’t make him a favorite. He never took off that damn black suit once.
That’s my opinion, anyway.
September 13th, 2020 at 1:23 pm
I was wondering about Poole and his black suit. To me that’s sad news. I was hoping he would mellow out after this first episode. I guess they wanted to play up the “fish out of water” aspect of his tenure at the police station for as long as they could.
September 13th, 2020 at 7:22 pm
The stick up his fish-out-of-water ass is what makes him so funny to me. He’s his own comedy relief…
September 13th, 2020 at 8:05 pm
Poole is a fairly standard character in British mystery set abroad, the fish out of water, who, despite that proves good at what he does. I always think of it as a throwback to Colonial rule and the idea of Western civilization bumbling its way to triumph in exotic locales, though here some comedic and satiric elements are added to the trope as well as modern recognition of the dark side of Colonialism.