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Reviews
Death in Paradise: Episode #13.1 (2024)
Make it make sense
A sign of a weak mystery is when the perpetrator not only has a helping of implausibly good fortune, but is able to act as though he has somehow anticipated said fortune when committing the crime. So we have a criminal who notices a drunk and disoriented man pointing a gun towards the commissioner, and his spur-of-the-moment plan is to PHYSICALLY COMPEL THE MAN TO SHOOT, going as far as to whispher in the man's ear and help him pull the trigger.
Why didn't the commissioner hear anything that was going on behind him? Why didn't the man with the gun resist? Never mind all that, the would-be murderer already knows neither of these things will happen and acts accordingly.
The motives also don't make a ton of sense. The guy with the gun was acting on a grudge he's held against the commissioner for 50 years... because the commissioner beat him to a job as a police officer after arriving late to the entrance exam????? What in the world? This is the event that sent his life careening off the rails? Are you telling me there were no other opportunities to get a job with the police over the ensuing five decades?
(By the way, a major plot point is that the commissioner has supposedly never met this man, yet we see that the two men were the only candidates for the exam. A bit odd that the commissioner completely forgot about him.)
Meanwhile, the murderer tries to take out the commissioner because he's worried he MIGHT be tied to a murder that nobody even knows is a murder at this point. Hardly seems worth the risk but OK.
It's easy to mystify the audience when you abandon all pretence of logic and common sense.
Death in Paradise: Christmas Special (2023)
This was special all right...
Given this show's inexorable decline in quality over the last several seasons, I was reluctant to even watch any of this season. It turns out my fears were justified, as the writers apparently used the additional runtime of a Christmas special to cram some extra nonsense into an already ridiculous plot.
We start off with two of the most hackneyed cliches of the series, both employed in the clumsiest manner imaginable. First is the prerecorded sound meant to establish a false time of death (and therefore line up conveniently with a false alibi or three). Secondly, we have the victim ostensibly trying to identify the killer(s) with his dying words, but resorting to a vague and unhelpful utterance that makes no sense even when DI Parker explains it at the end.
The foolishness doesn't stop there though. We have a file outlining the crime that leads to the murder being left carelessly for others to see, first by the eventual victim and then by the perpetrators. Another tired cliche follows with someone finding the incriminating file and getting conked on the head, but the culprits not bothering to ensure she's actually dead, allowing her to wander off to an ambulance (which nobody else on the crime scene managed to notice for some reason). Having recovered the file, the genius conspirators then hide it in a plastic bottle which is part of a display by the pool, rather than shredding or burning it.
It's not even clear to me why this elaborate scheme needed to be documented in a physical file, which led to its discovery by both the father and the intended victim. All they did was identify a priceless vase from a Zoom call and plan to steal it. And what was the plan if their father hadn't been standing by a ravine, or hadn't screamed, or had struggled and managed to overpower his son?
This kind of show will always require some suspension of disbelief, but when the plot has so many holes, the solution just isn't very satisfying. Let's see if the season gets any better...
On a separate note, the subplots with the pushy women around DI Parker constantly digging into his love life are super tiresome. He isn't interesting or charismatic enough to make this an avenue worth exploring. Here we had to introduce an entirely irrelevant side story involving the fiance of the vanished woman chasing around the island to find her, just so we could get the "payoff" of Parker's mom trying to get him back dating again.
Death in Paradise: Murder on the Honore Express (2019)
Peripheral vision is clearly not a thing in this universe
Admittedly this isn't a new phenomenon on this show (s06e08 and s07e01 being the most recent prior examples) but the convenient lack of peripheral vision in this show can be pretty hilarious at times.
The murder in this case is committed while four people are leaving a bus, and yet no-one notices the emergency door at the back opening and someone being stabbed? Maybe if a couple dozen people were streaming out this could be vaguely plausible, but the movement would have caught at least one person's eye on a nearly empty bus. Of course, the murderer is also aided by another DiP staple: the stab victim who dies quickly and silently with minimal blood splatter.
I actually remembered the who and the how of this one very early on, but was wondering if they had found a way to make that solution somewhat believable. They... did not.
On another note, this marks the end of my rewatch as I realise the horrendous Ruby was introduced in this episode. Yikes.
Death in Paradise: The Healer (2018)
Uneven season continues with this abomination
I've been rewatching the series focusing almost entirely on the quality of the mystery in each episode, and this season has given me whiplash. The solution in the first episode was absurd, the next two I found to be quite solid despite some gripes with how they were wrapped up, and now comes this tomfoolery.
The "fake your own death and assume someone else's identity" trick was done in the first episode of Season 3, and as implausible as it was then, they at least made a stab at explaining it (the impostor was the killer's sister, and she did some cosmetic surgery to alter her appearance).
This episode wants me to believe that the (original) killer murdered his best friend, somehow used said friend's passport to flee the country (was this a special photo-less edition?), and became a famous faith healer, yet no-one from St. Marie noticed that he had assumed the identity of his dead friend until several decades later? I swear even the writers know this is comically awful stuff, as they don't even offer a token explanation.
On top of that, the police are now investigating the disappearance of the friend, and they even LOOK AT A PICTURE OF BOTH MEN, yet they can't figure out what has happened until they dig up the body and do a DNA test? In fact, how did the investigation at the time of the friend's disappearance not put a stop to this nonsense immediately?
No wonder the "victim" felt compelled to commit suicide and try to frame the murderer. Apparently the St Marie police can't solve a crime if it's too simple.
Death in Paradise: Written in Murder (2018)
Another well-crafted solution
Like the previous episode, this one didn't have me rolling my eyes about the improbability of the culprit carrying out the murder successfully. The means were simple enough to explain, and the motive lined up nicely with the psychology of the murderer as it's been presented to us. Once I realised the solution to the "Otis Falconer" mystery, everything clicked into place logically. (I probably vaguely remembered it from my first watch, but the point is that the who, how, and why were all perfectly plausible.)
Once again, my only complaint is that they categorically refuse to present their evidence BEFORE affecting the arrest. I mean, DI Mooney even mentions that he's sure they will find DNA evidence to corroborate their theory - why not just have them find said evidence first and then use it to refute the usual "this is absurd" half-denial from the murderer? Now that I've noticed this trend I can't unsee it...
Death in Paradise: The Stakes Are High (2018)
Very clever murder, but again no evidence
Very often in this show the murder plots are ludicrously convoluted with such a high risk factor that the killer would surely have been better off just hiring a hitman. This one was quite brilliant in its simplicity - so brilliant, in fact, that there was literally no evidence to tie the perpetrator to the deed. Once again, the show breezes by this obstacle with the DI simply narrating what happened with no objections.
I will say that this is one case where I could actually imagine the murderer breaking down and confessing out of guilt and grief. A little bit of work to modify the usual formula (e.g., the killer comes into the station and admits they did it, DI Mooney says he knows and walks the person through how and why they did it) would have been useful here. In any case, the specific circumstances of this murder are why I'm more willing than usual to accept the tired trope of the murderer's pseudo-confession; it's just that an actual confession - the kind that would be admissible in court - could easily have been worked into the story in a believable way.
Death in Paradise: Murder from Above (2018)
Evidence, anyone?
I realise that it's a trope in this type of show that the brilliant detective will unravel the case largely through ingenius surmise and conjecture. With that said, the last few episodes seem to have completely dispensed with the need to provide even a shred of evidence before arresting people for what usually amounts to first-degree murder. Given how outlandish some of these plots are, one would think the murderers could earn acquittals simply by keeping their mouths shut and forcing the police to prove their case in court.
This case is a perfect example. First of all, it involves three siblings playing parts that could have easily fallen apart at every turn. What if the father had managed not to confuse his own daughter's voice with that of his bride-to-be? What if said bride could not be convinced to meet the son in his room? What if even one bored onlooker - or anyone else on the hotel grounds - had managed to glance towards the balcony while the fiancee was being murdered?
It's such an absurd plan, with a motive so flimsy (three adult children of a billionaire "didn't want" their new stepmother), that it would take extraordinary evidence to back up DI Mooney's theory of murder, and he provides... none whatsoever. He just tells everyone what supposedly happened, and they all accept it as gospel. Could the police not have even lifted one of Pearl's fingerprints from Diane's phone to support the claim that she sent the suicide text? Nope, they didn't even bother with something as basic as that. Of course, Mooney's "deductions" are so brilliant that one suspect immediately breaks down and confesses instead of calling for his lawyer.
Well over 100 years ago, Sherlock Holmes was taking more pains over gathering evidence that could actually hold up in court than these guys have in recent episodes. It's just lazy writing.
Death in Paradise: One for the Road (2016)
One of the better ones during Goodman's run as DI
I've been rewatching this series from the start, and this season has been quite strong following two desultory efforts after Goodman took over as DI.
This was one of the more plausible murders you'll find on this show, with both the method and motive making logical sense. Without remembering the solution itself, I did have a hunch early on as to how the murder was committed, but again, the reason that method never occurred to anyone before was believably explained.
The acting performances were also strong across the board - I find that there's a lot of overacting on this show, especially from the guest characters putting on "Caribbean" accents, but that wasn't the case here. Also, without spoiling anything, the murderer's final bit of dialogue was nicely executed.
Death in Paradise: Murdering Lyrical (2022)
Nonsensical solution
After nearly 11 seasons it figures we would end up with ridiculous episodes like this from time to time. Of course these murder plots generally require you to suspend your disbelief, but this one was outrageous even by those standards.
We're meant to believe that the murderer (who just happened to be being blackmailed by the victim): managed to overhear a ridiculous plot involving a fake gunshot fired in the dark; quickly acquired an identical gun (how????) along with a silencer; shot a man from five metres in the dark and hit him dead centre in the forehead; and then located and cleaned up the shell casing while the police were already on the scene. OK then.
(By the way, I'm thinking anyone who could produce such an accurate shot from that distance using only the light of a cell phone for aim should have some level of weapons training which the background checks should have uncovered. The ability to obtain a specific type of gun and a silencer so easily also seems like the kind of thing that wouldn't just come out of nowhere for a regular civilian. But I digress.)
The real question though is, how did no-one hear the second shot? I thought we were dealing with one of these magical movie silencers that make a gunshot sound like a fart, but no, even in the reenactment the shot is very loud. Yet nobody mentioned hearing an additional shot, and they never address it when the crime is being explained. They didn't even try to make this one remotely plausible.
(Don't ask me about anything involving DI Parker's sister as I skipped all those scenes.)
Death in Paradise: Chain Reaction (2021)
Clever mystery
I've said before that I pretty much judge these episodes on the strength of the mysteries, and by that standard this one was quite strong. The behaviour and motivations of not only the murderer but the other parties involved was entirely believable, and the way the murder was committed was mostly plausible (although the suicide note was a bit of a stretch). Once THAT moment arrived - you know, where the DI makes a mundane observation that suddenly gives him the epiphany that solves the case - I was immediately able to piece the whole thing together based on all the clues presented earlier, which had previously seemed incomprehensible. Very solid all round.
Death in Paradise: Now You See Him, Now You Don't (2020)
Weak ending
I've noticed that the last two episodes featured a great deal of padding to compensate for the thinness of the mysteries. This time it was the recycling of the "young officer is nervous about the Sergeant's* exam but passes with flying colours" storyline from the second season, with JP taking the place of the now-departed Fidel, as well as the oh so predictable decision by DI Parker to stay on the island after weeks of wanting to leave.
As for the murder itself, the "how" was fairly farfetched (reliant as it is on the mythical TV/movie "silencer" that can apparently render a revolver blast inaudible, and on an action by the victim's wife that could hardly be predicted with enough certainty to plan around) but the "why" was utterly ludicrous. The husband's initial plot had more holes than a cheese grater - both in terms of the execution and of the potential results if successful - and the motivation for his son's decision to murder himwas tenuous at best.
I'm not sure what's more irritating: the numerous medical issues that the writers have inflicted on DI Parker in lieu of a personality, or the fact that his colleagues are always so exasperated with him when they can literally see the evidence that said issues are legitimate.
All in all, a fairly weak handful of episodes to close out the season.
* One day someone will have to explain the significance of becoming a sergeant when the police force consists of five people and you're still fourth in the pecking order. I guess a nice pay bump is in order...
Death in Paradise: Death in the Salon (2020)
A bit light
I mentioned in my overall review that I'm only here for the solutions to the mysteries at this point, and this one was fairly unsatisfying. The twist where the murderer knocks the victim unconscious, "discovers" them, and then commits the actual murder while everyone is distracted has been done as recently as the second episode of this season! Disappointing that they went that route again and in a far less plausible way than previously. Also, speaking of recycling ideas, by my count this is the FIFTH episode in seven where a cheating man was at the heart of the murder.
The investigative aspect was similarly uninspiring - not much evidence of note was gathered after the murder was committed, and it became clear who did it and why well before the episode ended. DI Parker's brainstorm to find the murder weapon was a complete wild stab in the dark based on nothing in particular.
Still waiting for Parker's endless parade of medical issues to become funny.
Hopefully they close the season on a stronger note in terms of the actual mystery; this one was nothing to write home about.
Death in Paradise (2011)
Gone stale
The original setup with the irascible DI Richard Poole (Ben Miller) adjusting to life in the Caribbean while solving "impossible" murders was simple but effective. Miller has since left and been replaced by Kris Marshall (an awkward goofball), Ardal O'Hanlon (better but a bit too earnest and cheery for my taste), and now Ralf Little (a neurotic mess). Somehow these completely disparate characters all solve cases in exactly the same way: interview a few suspects, dig up some hidden motives, and then have a brainstorm with 15 minutes left in the episode that allows them to crack the case. (I did crack up at Little asking "Why are they all here????" when all the suspects were gathered in the usual manner for him to reveal the culprit.)
Unfortunately, the various cast defections have weakened the overall product and made the flaws stick out more to me. DS Camille Bordey (Sara Martins) was a good foil for Poole with her mix of respect for his ability and exasperation at his various annoying tendencies. Her replacements, played by first Joséphine Jobert and now Aude Legastelois, seem to have no other function than to look pretty and utter the most obvious questions and observations imaginable. Danny John-Jules offered some comic relief - with varying degrees of effectiveness - as Officer Dwayne Myers, but new addition Shyko Amos is as funny as coronavirus in her role as the ditzy and erratic Ruby Patterson. I also think Poole's ornery personality (and his clashes with the fiery Bordey) made for a nice change of pace compared to the current situation where they're all the best of pals and never have any conflicts whatsoever. It's all so corny and schmaltzy.
I rewatched Miller's two seasons last year, and it confirmed to me that the show has stuck more and more slavishly to the same formula over time. There are almost always four suspects, they're always hiding something that is soon uncovered and becomes a possible motive, and the DI always solves the case at the same point in the episode. The local cops never make even a single useful deduction - the genius DI just receives all the information, has a "Eureka!" moment, and tells everyone how it happened. That formula works when you have a consistent main character like a Holmes or a Poirot, but how are there this many Holmes clones (with wildly varying personalities) just waiting to be dispatched to Saint-Marie every time the incumbent DI bails out?
Speaking of formula, would it kill them to try something other than bringing a British white guy in to fill the DI role EVERY... SINGLE... TIME? This isn't even a race thing - I get that they're going for the original "fish out of water" theme, but it's beyond played out now. The latest iteration's shtick is that he suffers from a variety of maladies, including hypersensitivity to sunlight! And he's now stuck in the Caribbean! Oh the hilarity!
There are also a few nonsensical elements that seem to be thrown in to hammer home the idea that this is a small Caribbean island. The "official police accommodation" is a shack on the beach? An island with a murder rate that would make us in Jamaica blush has a total of four police officers, all unarmed? Every DS shows up to work dressed in sleeveless blouses and skimpy shorts? (Not that they're hard on the eye, but you get my point.) A woman who owns a bar and restaurant just randomly decides to run for mayor - and wins? OK then.
At this point, I'm basically just watching this show because I enjoy trying to work out how the crime was committed (and assessing how believable the eventual solution is). I find myself trying to skip through anything that doesn't have to do with the case at hand, because to me that's the only source of interest now.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force (2000)
Amusingly absurd, but still not very amusing
It was written 8 years ago but I think buddhadan-1's comment sums up this show for me. I do derive some sporadic amusement from the absurdity of the concepts (3 sentient fast food orders living together, the pointless concoctions of Dr. Weird, etc.), but by and large the jokes themselves aren't really that funny. At some point you have to go beyond strange characters doing strange things for strange reasons, and after 8 episodes I've given up hope that this show will accomplish that.
To be honest, I'd completely forgotten about this show until I listened to DangerDoom's "The Mouse and the Mask" album, which made me decide to try watching it for the first time. Unfortunately, the ATHF references and skits have proved to be a lot more entertaining than the show itself.