Death in Paradise

No doubt many PBS viewers are familiar with the charming BBC mystery/dramedy Death in Paradise. Every episode provides a not-so-gruesome murder or two, a display board full of suspects, a few red herrings and a conundrum. Our hero suddenly has a eureka moment – and gathers everybody together to explain exactly how the murder went down, Agatha Christie style. And all this in a breathtaking tropical island setting no less.

But now the popular series seems to be taking a page from The Doctor Who playbook. After a few seasons of six month location shoots and time away from family, the lead actor makes the difficult but necessary decision to move on to other pastures only to be replaced by another Brit with a comedy background. It appears the DI torch has been passed yet again and right in the middle of Season 6 which just finished airing on BBC1 last week.

Read on to find out who's the new sheriff of Saint Marie.

There’s a three part mini-series that aired in the UK recently called Very British Problems. Based on, believe it or not, a Twitter feed of the same name, this show gathered a host of British celebrities to talk about social awkwardness as a national character trait.

Topics such as avoiding others, confusing doubletalk and the complicated process of saying goodbye are addressed in a humorous manner. At the same time, it’s acknowledged that straight forward communications would be simpler, but it’s just not the British way.

All this self-conscious discomfort got me to thinking about how the British have the perfect sensibility for fish out of water stories. That universal feeling of embarrassment in an unfamiliar situation is apparently a constant state of being for our friends across the pond so it’s not surprising that it’s a well-utilized device in British telly. Think Life on Mars, Doc Martin or even An Idiot Abroad’s hesitant world traveler, Karl Pilkington. Therefore I thought it might be worthwhile to look at a few more examples. Shall we?

Mystery series Death in Paradise was faced with an unenviable task at the beginning of its third season – how do you reinvent a show whose premise is based on a rather grumpy detective sent to investigate murder in a tropical paradise when the actor who plays said detective has decided to leave the show?

As Season 3 began, that’s exactly what happened. Despite the show’s popularity, star Ben Miller, who played DI Richard Poole, decided he wanted to try other things, and was subsequently written out of the show. He was replaced by Kris Marshall, an actor whom many Americans had probably only known as Colin from popular Christmas rom-com Love Actually until that point. (He’s the guy that travels to Wisconsin in hopes of finding an American girlfriend.)

Brace yourselves, Death in Paradise fans, some big changes are coming to Series 3.

The popular mystery drama – which follows the story of a grumpy Detective Inspector who must investigate murder on a tropical island – will be back for a third season, but maybe not quite the way you think.

The mystery series has proven quite popular with fans on both sides of the pond, so much so that it was renewed for a third season early last year. However, soon after news broke that the series’ would be returning, it was revealed that Death in Paradise would be undergoing some significant changes in its third year. Star Ben Miller, who plays DI Richard Poole, a rather grumpy, quintessentially English (read: stuffy) detective who ends up solving cases in a tropical paradise, announced in April that he had decided to leave the show.

What does that mean for Series 3? Find out below.