Back in 2017, Death In Paradise fans were gripped by the conclusion of DI Humphrey Goodman and Martha Lloyd’s will-they-won’t-they love story.
Humphrey followed Martha back to London to declare his undying love for her, leaving Saint Marie’s sunshine behind and living happily ever after.
But what happened after the happy couple disappeared into the sunset?
In new spin-off series Beyond Paradise, we catch up with Humphrey and Martha – with Kris Marshall and Sally Bretton reprising their roles – back on British soil as they begin a new adventure in Martha’s Devon home town of Shipton Abbott.
Having left London, the now-engaged couple are starting a new life by the seaside, with Martha pursuing her dream of running her own restaurant and Humphrey joining the local police.
At the station, he meets his new colleagues: DS Esther Williams, played by EastEnders’ Zahra Ahmadi, PC Kelby Hartford (Derry Girls’ Dylan Llewellyn) and Margo Martins, played by Felicity Montagu of Alan Partridge fame.
Beyond Paradise has plenty that Death In Paradise fans will love – crimes and puzzles abound – and the series brings the same lightness, humour, mild peril and gorgeous backdrops.
“When you first talk about the potential of coming back with anything, never mind a spin-off, it’s incredibly heartening,” said Marshall, 49, of being asked to return to Humphrey. “And I think for it to happen with a character that I love so much is even better.
“When I got the first two episodes to read, I just loved it.
“It’s got the DNA of this show that everyone loves, Death In Paradise, but it has its own sort of strand of DNA, its own uniqueness to it. It’s like it’s an offspring, but it’s a completely different offspring.”
“I first heard about the possibility of Beyond Paradise in the middle of the first lockdown,” adds Bretton, 42.
“When it was all really quiet, and we were all just sitting there, and the phone rang one day. It was just sort of finding out whether I’d be interested, you know, they were looking at the scripts and just wanted to know whether it was something that I wanted to do, and pick Martha back up again.
“It was just such a ‘the sun coming from behind the clouds’ moment of just: ‘Oh my goodness, that would be so wonderful. And the thought of it, somewhere in the future when the world got back to normal, was just lovely.”
Beyond Paradise, BBC1, Friday, 8pm
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