As Britain enters its miserable weather phase, Return to Paradise arrives on BBC One to deliver a welcome shot of sunshine. It’s a Death in Paradise spin-off, but more in spirit than in detail. Bar a brief appearance by Ardal O’Hanlon (the last-but-one star of DiP) there is no direct link to the original.
But it has an awkward detective – DI Mackenzie Clarke (Anna Samson) – and an idyllic beachside setting, plus a tiny police station staffed with quirky characters. It’s set in Australia, and a tiny community called Dolphin Cove. Clarke is a local who moved away six years ago to work for the Metropolitan Police, and also to escape the fact she jilted her fiancé at the altar. She’s not happy to be back.
Of course, she finds herself drawn into solving a crime within hours of her arrival. It’s a small world, because her ex (Tai Hara) is also the town’s resident pathologist. Also, he doesn’t often wear a shirt. The script has fun with the fact that these shirtless scenes have been thrown in for no other reason than the actor being extremely handsome.
The first episode is really a masterclass in writing this kind of show, because we get Clarke’s back story, an introduction to all the main players, and the murder of the week, all wrapped up with a bow in the space of an hour. The body of a local estate agent washes up on the beach with a knife in his back. It’s a whodunit with an additional mystery to solve: CCTV appears to reveal that the victim never left the house he was showing to a buyer, so how did he turn up dead two kilometres away?