
Beyond Paradise, BBC One’s fresh new programme, features the return of DI Humphrey (Kris Marshall) and Martha (Sally Bretton), two characters from the channel’s hugely successful murder-mystery thriller, Death in Paradise.
Viewers may recall Humphrey Goodman and Martha Lloyd from an earlier era of the programme, which is presently led by Ralf Little, who portrays DI Neville Parker. They bid farewell to life on Saint Marie in season six, and we’re now following up with them in Shipton Abbot, a lovely village on the Devonshire coast.
When the BBC initially commissioned Beyond Paradise, it was termed a “Death in Paradise spin-off,” thus many people wondered if the show would be the same, with just a different setting.
While there are some similarities between Beyond Paradise and Death in Paradise – the crime-fighting team, solving a case every week, not to mention two of the same characters – Beyond Paradise is a completely new show in its own right, as creator Tony Jordan and executive producer Tim Key made clear during their recent conversation:
‘We didn’t want to develop a cynical spin off,’ Tony said.
‘I believe that’s bound to fail; you have to do it with a little of integrity and develop a programme that’s worthy of being on television in its own right, not simply as an add-on to the main show. We attempted to create a fresh manner to communicate the DNA of Death in Paradise, which we believe the audience enjoys the most. Take almost the same stuff but make a different dish if you like. We knew that location was crucial, that sight and sensation of beauty, fresh air, escapism, and that we needed to choose an extraordinarily lovely section of the UK.
He went on to explain the structural differences between the two shows:
‘The sense of puzzle that you get from Death in Paradise. Every episode, although they are all murders, all have a puzzle at their heart that the audience have to engage into and try and unlock. Beyond Paradise has that but there isn’t a murder every episode, we are free to tell different kinds of stories. The other element that is the same is the emphasis we put on the characters.
‘I think people love Death in Paradise as they do because they really would love to sit in Catherine’s bar at the end of the day! The reason that works is because of the characters, the essence of family that we create too. It’s not just a crime fighting team, but family too.’
Tony said that, while there are many similarities between the two programmes, they wanted to make sure there was some difference between them. So, while it may feel similar, it isn’t an exact replica of what happened in Death in Paradise:
‘The other ingredient that people love about Death in Paradise is the denouement’, he said.
‘Classic detective drama – they explain what happened and we see it all unfold right at the end. We wanted to do that, but we didn’t want it to be the exact same way. It’s completely unique, the way we do it, in Beyond Paradise. We take our detectives and we put them in the crime as it happens, and the action is happening around them and through them. I think you’ll see there, there’s a lot of instances where the two shows share the same DNA, but they are also completely different.’
‘We have the freedom to tell stories in a different way with this show’, Tim added.
‘We have created a format where it is almost slightly format-less. We can start the show without a pre-title sequence, episode 1 doesn’t have a title sequence, episode 2 does, we can tell our stories in very different ways, whereas Death in Paradise is slightly more formatted in that sense.
‘The big thing that we can do in this show is really go into the lives of our characters and tell some really moving and truthful stories about where they’re at and, in a way, I think will surprise viewers who are familiar with Death in Paradise too.
‘We’re able to shake things up and keep it fresh and surprising, which is what we have to do with Death in Paradise, but the show is so known for its format that you can’t bend and break that, but Beyond Paradise doesn’t really have any rules.’