Creator of Caribbean cosy crime classic Death in Paradise on how crew overcame Covid

As a young minister Joseph Hulme from Glasgow’s Gorbals preached of paradise to troubled souls.

Four generations on and his screenwriter great-grandson came close to losing his own paradise when the Covid-19 pandemic brought to a halt one of TV’s most popular shows.

As the touch and go 10th series of the BBC cosy crime drama Death In Paradise finally arrived in living rooms on Thursday, creator Robert Thorogood revealed his team’s gargantuan efforts to get back on screen.

From his home in Buckinghamshire, dad-of-two Robert said of the show that is watched by nine million viewers: “We were in lockdown in March. All TV and film production stopped overnight.

“It took a while for TV companies to work out how they were going to film. But we had very good insurance and Red Planet, who make the show, threw everything they had at keeping us safe. We delayed filming by three months but we were one of the first shows to start filming again.”

Shot on location on the tiny Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, the team had to conform to two regulatory systems, British and French. Filming began at the end of July.

“We film in a very unpopulated part of Guadeloupe, so we were quite Covid-friendly,” the writer explained. “We don’t do any studio stuff and nearly every shot is outside or with open windows.

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“It takes five or six months to shoot the eight episodes. It’s a massive commitment and it’s why, understandably, some of our leads, after a period of years, wish to leave. I take my hat off to them. And this year they were not allowed home during the shoot because we couldn’t risk them getting Covid. They were stuck there.

“We finished filming in December – which is crazy. We are so lucky. We have had, as far as I know, only one case of coronavirus in the crew. We had a Covid officer on the set the whole time.”

Thorogood, who wrote a series of Death in Paradise spin-off novels and later this month releases a new cosy crime fiction The Marlow Murder Club, had his start in showbusiness at the Edinburgh Fringe aged just eight but his love for Scotland goes back further.

He said: “I have great-grandparents who are from the Gorbals in Glasgow. They were Joseph Hulme and Mary Mason Hart. They came to Kent, England; my grandfather to be a vicar. They came to educate the Sassenachs and then stayed. I have always loved Scotland.

“I first did the Edinburgh Fringe when I was eight with a school play. Edinburgh is somewhere I have been knocking around for 40 years. I also worked at The Pleasance for a number of years as a ticket tearer from a teenager through to my late 20s. I went every year, either to work or perform. It is the most amazing arts festival in the world.” The writer – who was educated at Cambridge University where he was president of its Footlights theatre group, hanging out with David Webb, Robert Mitchell and Oscar winner Olivia Colman – was nearing 40 and beginning to fear his scripts would never amount to anything.

Then he happened to hear a news report in 2007 about the death of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer at the Cricket World Cup in Jamaica. He was intrigued that police had brought in detectives from Scotland Yard to help with the murder investigation. “It was a light-bulb moment. I imagined an uptight and by-the-book London copper trying to solve a murder in the heat of the Tropics. There was a series in this. I was sure of it,” he said later.

He began approaching production companies who liked the idea but told him it was unlikely the BBC would allow someone without a writing credit to create and write a prime-time TV series.

The tide turned with a script-writing competition organised by Tony Jordan through what was then his new production company Red Planet. He pledged to back any screenplay that grabbed him. Death in Paradise did. The series debuted on October 25, 2011.

A decade on and the 10th anniversary episodes, starring Ralf Little as DI Neville Parker, have some special surprises in store.

Not least the “impossible-to-believe fact” that Divisional Detective Inspector Richard Poole, killed off after the first 17 episodes, is returning.

The writer said of Ben Miller’s character: “I am not going to say any more than that, because obviously, how we managed to get Richard Poole back into the story is a surprise.”

Josephine Jobert, who plays DS Florence Cassell, returned for the series’ start and DS Camille Bordey, aka Sara Martins, is also coming back. Thorogood said: “Camille is back for episodes five and six as a special for our 10th anniversary.”