Revealed: As Ralf Little becomes the latest to quit the show, what's REALLY killing off all the Death In Paradise detectives as favourites emerge to take over next
Like a holiday romance that ends at the airport, Death In Paradise has kissed goodbye to another detective as Ralf Little quits the show.
But, far from being heartbroken, the show's eight million regular viewers are agog to see who they'll be falling in love with next.
The departure of the crime serial's leading man, a catastrophe that threatened to kill off the franchise when it happened for the first time, has now become a running joke.
Bookies are taking bets on who will be next to play a British detective out of his (or perhaps her?) depth on the fictional Caribbean isle of Saint-Marie.
Ralf Little has become the latest Death In Paradise lead to quit the show. Pictured with co-star Shantol Jackson, who plays Naomi Thomas
Current favourites include comedian Romesh Ranganathan (but can he really act?); Jason Watkins (already in a similar show, ITV's McDonald & Dodds); Simon Bird of The Inbetweeners (interesting idea); Jodie Whittaker (but she has already ruined Doctor Who) and Martin Clunes (born to play the role, surely).
But the real question facing all these contenders is — why can't Death In Paradise hold on to its cast? Not only has it lost four Detective Inspectors, enough junior officers have been in and out of the police station doors to fill an airliner.
The only regular who has been on the show since the beginning, in 2011, is the magnificent Don Warrington, who plays Commissioner Selwyn Patterson.
Despite the heinous crime that drives each storyline, the episodes tend to be comfortingly familiar, whoever is playing the lead. Each episode begins with a pre-credits sequence showing the events leading up to a murder and ends with the detective in question unmasking the killer and tying up the loose ends — with lots of lovely Caribbean scenery in between.
It's a formula adored by the show's many fans, but its success was threatened early on when the drama's original star, Ben Miller, who played DI Richard Poole — a detective sent out by the Metropolitan police in London to investigate the murder of a British police officer — quit after three years in 2014.
The show's creator, novelist Robert Thorogood, was so aghast that Miller later revealed the two of thm were no longer on speaking terms. And perhaps in an act of revenge, rather than allowing Poole to exit gracefully, Thorogood killed off his character — murdered with an ice pick in the heart at a university reunion.
Two of the many rumoured stars to take over the reins from Ralf Little are Romesh Ranganathan and Martin Clunes
The Inbetweeners' Simon Bird and Doctor Who star Jodie Whitaker have also been suggested by fans to be next to take over the role
'I can only imagine he resented me for leaving,' the actor said, admitting he felt driven to quit by a combination of problems that made filming unbearable — the heat, the mosquitoes and, above all, the remoteness of the location.
S hot beside the sapphire waters of Guadeloupe, the six-month filming schedule meant London and loved ones were a 14-hour flight away for half the year.
For Miller, who first won TV fame as half of a sketch duo with his Cambridge Footlights pal Alexander Armstrong, the job came at just the wrong time. Recently divorced, he was in a new relationship with film producer Jessica Parker.
'Two weeks after I arrived in the Caribbean,' he said, 'Jessica found out she was pregnant.
'I've just got divorced and I've finally met someone — and now I'm on the other side of the world and we're having a baby. That's a proper curveball.'
But Thorogood wasn't alone in finding his departure hard to understand. Not only was Miller being paid to work in one of the world's most beautiful idylls, he was surrounded by a glamorous supporting cast, including Sara Martins as DS Camille Bordey. 'I constantly get people saying: 'So what bit of spending six months a year on an island in the Caribbean with Sara Martins did you find so unbearable?' he admitted. (French actress Martins played Camille Bordey, a detective sergeant.)
The reality was very different. The whole premise of Death In Paradise is that the detective is utterly unsuited to the climate, and DI Poole wore his suit, collar and tie, even on the beach. Miller tried wearing backless shirts but his skin stuck to the jacket lining. 'You learn to take the heat seriously,' he said, during one break in filming. 'If you're English, you think, 'Oh, I'm just a bit hot,' and you carry on. That's when you run the risk of getting heat stroke.
Ben Miller was the original lead, playing detective inspector Richard Poole
Kris Marshall (left, with co-star Josephine Jobert) joined as detective inspector Humphrey Goodman, in season three, before quitting the role. Series six saw Ardal O'Hanlon take over, as DI Jack Mooney
'I only got it once in the first year,' he added laconically. 'But I had heat exhaustion a number of times, where you get very light-headed, dizzy and sick.'
Ralf Little took this to an extreme when he arrived in 2020 as DI Neville Parker — allergic to mosquito bites, as well as suffering from eczema and hay fever, and prone to sunburn, even on cloudy days.
Miller believed this was the secret of the show's attraction: 'The world goes to bed happy knowing there's an Englishman suffering for being English.' But other dangers left him shaken. After wading into the water to cool off, along a stretch of beach notorious for its strong currents, he was pulled off his feet and almost drowned.
And when he flew his family out to stay on the neighbouring island of Antigua, his baby son was wretched: 'He hated the flight, he hated the heat, we didn't get any sleep because Harrison didn't sleep.'
In desperation, Miller began taking trips back to Britain every fortnight, making the long haul flight just to spend a couple of days with his family.
His successor, Love Actually's Kris Marshall, stayed for four series but he too found the schedule gruelling.
'It's an amazing job but a really long shoot,' he said. 'We spend six months filming in Guadeloupe and I spend about three of them dying to be at home with my friends and family, among English banter and roast dinners.' Wearing a jacket and tie in 40C heat, he said, was, 'like putting on a wet suit, getting into a sauna and doing Hamlet'. By the time he filmed his last series in 2016, his son Thomas was starting school: 'When they're a little older they're settled with their mates and they've got school, it's not fair on them. So you either go out there alone and don't see them as often as you'd like, or you move out there as a family.
'We could have moved ourselves lock, stock and barrel over there, but our home is in the UK.'
He joked that, when his family did join him, his son became 'a bit too Caribbean — he refused to wear shoes and would only drink coconut water and eat pineapple!
'My baby daughter grew massively between visits. Thankfully, she still recognised me, but it was tough being away from her.'
Four months after he left the show, Marshall's mother died.
'I got to spend quite a bit of time with her before she died,' he says. 'Had I been doing the show I'd have been out there.'
Ardal O'Hanlon, beloved as Father Ted's brainless novice priest, Father Dougal, replaced Marshall, knowing how hard it would be. Though his children were older, he felt it was asking too much of his wife Melanie to cope alone for too long.
'Three big grown-up kids living in the house,' he said. 'She was finding it tougher as the years went on. It's a tough old show in terms of being away from home for so long, and in terms of the conditions that you film in — the heat and the humidity.'
Those sweltering conditions, however, are part of the attraction for Death In Paradise's many guest stars, who can get paid to acquire a suntan.
Murder victims and suspects over the 13 years since its launch include famous faces such as Gemma Jones, Colin Salmon, Sally Phillips, Levi Roots, Charlotte Ritchie and Michele Dotrice — to name just half a dozen.
But even these one-off appearances are not without risk. Tony Gardner (one of the stars of Last Tango In Halifax) contracted the Zika virus after he was bitten by an infected mosquito in 2016, and suffered joint pain, swelling and a rash as well as painful sensitivity to light.
O f the 250 or more British cases of Zika recorded in the UK by then, a significant proportion were crew members on the show, he said.
Hardly surprising, then, that Ralf Little has now decided enough is enough, even though by his own admission he doesn't have another job lined up.
In Sunday's unexpected ending, DI Parker literally sailed over the horizon with DS Florence Cassell (Josephine Jobert) after telling her, 'All I want is for us to be together'. Little rarely complained about the hardships of the job. He couldn't say he hadn't been warned, after all. But he confessed he found the snobbery around the show galling, and loathed its reputation as 'a guilty pleasure'.
'What is there to be guilty about?' he huffed. It's a high quality show and it looks beautiful. It is an incredible achievement, something I am very proud of.'
It's one the BBC has no plans to abandon. Death In Paradise is one of its most profitable productions, selling in more than 240 territories worldwide, including major markets such as the U.S. and Australia — and often topping the ratings.
Perhaps its carousel of detectives has turned out to be its biggest attraction. Like James Bond or Doctor Who, the show is constantly revived and reinvented by a new star. Death In Paradise might just prove eternal.
