TV Review: Death In Paradise, BBC1

AS a quick glance at the latest round of re-makes, re-visions and sequels coming out of Hollywood will attest, there’s a huge appetite out there for the familiar.

Which might explain why the BBC have taken the oldest murder mystery plots and dressed them up with a sun-soaked setting and a fish-out-of-water scenario to create Death In Paradise.

Last night’s instalment - and that phrase in itself seems quite old fashioned in these days of mini-movie murder dramas - saw Ben Miller’s increasingly flustered Detective Poole struggling to get a good cup of tea. Not an easy task on a sandy beach, made even harder when a bride tumbles out of a nearby hotel window.

All this was the start of a familiar kind of holiday who-dunnit where everyone is a suspect.

The everyone in question was a typical line up of TV favourites like Frances Barber and Robert Pugh as the suspicious grieving parents, Alison Henley as the suspiciously jealous sister, Daniel O’Connor as a suspiciously relaxed diving instructor and even Paterson Joseph as a hotel porter who was helpfully suspicious.