Well, The Fades finished last week, leaving me nothing with which to watch in my spare time. So I picked up the TV guide, flicked over to this week and spotted the new series 'Death in Paradise'. After reading the brief description given, I decided that it may be worth a watch.
The program is a crime drama about a police officer, Detective Inspector Richard Poole (Ben Miller), who is sent to a small island in the Carribean to handle a murder case. As an Englishman, he refuses to take off his coat or wear anything remotely suitable for the tropical climate, so he's rather uncomfortable. But anyway, here's the plot synopsis.
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The Chief of the local police force is found murdered in a locked panic room inside a rich man's home. DI Richard Poole is called in from London to aid the investigation into his death. However, nothing is as it seems in this case - particularly the murder.
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A very, very interesting idea, in my opinion. Dead man in a locked panic room. The panic room can only be closed from inside. How does the killer kill the man and then close the panic room door without getting locked inside themselves?
This is the question which makes the case a difficult one to close for DI Poole, played by Ben Miller, one of the greatest comedians of our time. His skill with sarcasm is rivalled only by the likes of John Cleese, my favourite of all comedians for his series 'Fawlty Towers'.
DI Poole is on loan from the Met in London to the tiny island of San Marie, where, surprsie surprise, someone got murdered. This person just happens to have been the chief of the local police force. They're a very small police foce, literally having four members including the chief (Charlie) before the time of his murder. As far as their vehicle force goes, they have a sturdy all-terrain police rover and a motorbike with a sidecar (pictured above with one of the San Marie police force members).
Unfortunately, DI Poole has not been sent because of his skill at handling cases. According to the records, the office members threw a party for him when he left - "Popular guy, then," says a policeman - but only after he had left. I think that says all there is to be said.
Then there's the mysterious woman who keeps cropping up wherever DI Poole goes. She pretends to be a cleaner at Poole's place after being at the party on the night of the murder, and then has to get chased around at several other times. I'm not even going to say if you find out who she is in this episode. That's for me to know and you to find out.
Lucky for us, when faced with a crime scene and a baffling murder, he does manage to solve the case (Well, duh. It wouldn't be much of a crime drama if the criminal wasn't caught in the end, would it?). He does so in a pretty clever way, too, though most of it was based on speculation and sealed with a confession and some tads of other evidence.
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Of course, I shall, as always, end this off with a rating and a parting note. I very much enjoyed this story, and am looking forwards to seeing the rest of the series. Lucky for me, it's an eight-part series, so lucky me, I'm set until Christmas.
I thought the acting cast was brilliant, particularly in casting Ben Miller as the Detective Inspector. He makes a brill copper, and has ample opportunity to excercise his sarcastic muscles and employ his arsenal of witty remarks and bored-looking expressions.
As well as all this, the crime was a good one. It got me going, for sure. It was also easy enough to follow Poole's reasoning, to a point, though it did get a little hazy after a bit, particularly when it came to things picked up when Poole talked with the culprit.
However, possibly the best thing is that it's a stand-alone episode. You could watch it and never see the rest, and sure, you'd be left not knowing how things end up with certain loose ends, but it wouldn't be anything that you would fret about too much. respectively, if you turned on the TV and just decided to watch, say, the fourth episode, you'd probably manage to work out what had been going on so far. Not that I've seen the fourth episode. This is all just speculation, for the sake of argument.
I am going to give this a seven and three quarters of ten on my scale. It had a good crime at the heart of it, a set of convincing characters (for the most part), a fair amount of plausible reasoning, and of course the cast was great.
So what are you waiting for? Look it up on YouTube or follow the link to iPlayer, if you live in Britain:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b016mw99/Death_in_Paradise_Episode_1/
I'll be back next week with a review for the next episode. That is, unless NaNoWriMo eats me.
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