The blurb for the Death in Paradise special (BBC One) promised “a ray of Caribbean sunshine this Christmas time”. I’ve seen more sunshine on a wet weekend in Hull. Pity this episode’s guest star, Juliet Stevenson, who must have packed her case in preparation for a lovely week on location, only to find overcast skies and torrential rain.
To brighten things up, Danny John-Jules made a welcome return to the island as Officer Dwayne Myers. You will remember that he left in 2018 after seven series – the character to spend time with his dad, the actor to appear on Strictly Come Dancing. He greeted Ralf Little’s DI Neville Parker with the words: “You’re even more pale and pasty than they said you were.”
If only they’d given John-Jules a cracker of an episode to work with. Instead, this feature-length mystery had a convoluted plot. I won’t ruin it for you if you’re yet to see it, but it involved a billionaire shipping magnate – the budget didn’t stretch to using a property that a billionaire would actually have lived in – being found dead at a party, with a list of suspects including his ex-wife (Stevenson) and her replacement (Elizabeth Tan).
