Ralf Little on Death in Paradise: ‘It was an absolute dream call to get’
The new lead of the Caribbean whodunit talks to Gemma Dunn about crime fighting in the sun
When an image of the latest detective to join Death in Paradise was teased last year, Twitter went wild.
Sitting on a beach hammock, gazing out to sea, the actor in question – only identifiable by the back of his head – had people guessing in their droves, eager to figure out who would be stepping into the coveted role.
“Joe Mcfadden, maybe?” one suggested.
“Richard Madden #thebodyguard would do nicely,” said another fan of the BBC1 hit crime drama.
Those who guessed Ralf Little were right and The Royle Family star soon found his cover rumbled as the fourth actor to take the lead spot since the show began.
“I’d only joined Instagram a week earlier and (co-star) Shyko Amos had said, ‘You better follow me’ so I said, ‘Sure’,” he explains.
“Then a couple of people on Twitter went, ‘It’s definitely Ralf Little, he’s only just joined Instagram, he only follows about five people, one of them is Shyko who plays Ruby in the show and her other half has been posting about how she’s been in the Caribbean for the last two months’.
“I was like, ‘These people are detectives, they should be solving the murders, not me’. It was quite impressive and terrifying at the same time.”
The reaction has been nothing but positive since then, Little, 39, says.
Little takes over the mantle from Ardal O’hanlon towards the end of its ninth series.
The actor will play DI Neville Parker, a British import from Manchester CID who gets more than he bargained for when investigating the mysterious death of a young woman at the unveiling of a luxury timeshare resort.
But how does he measure up to his predecessors, who were played by O’hanlon, Ben Miller and Kris Marshall?
“Neville’s not a hypochondriac and he’s not OCD either but he’s basically allergic to everything – particularly when he gets to Saint Marie,” he teases of the show’s fictional island, which is actually the French region Guadeloupe.
Little adds: “He has asthma and eczema... the salt water in the sea aggravates his condition, the wildlife aggravates that condition. If there’s an issue to be had, he’ll have it and he’ll get it.
“So he manages a lot of these conditions by having a very specific way of getting through life, which gets wearing to the team.”
Little, on the other hand, took the process in his stride even the scorching heat.
“I think I slightly annoyed everyone on set because I was relentlessly positive,” he says.
“Admittedly, I was only out there for half a series so I’ve not done the full five months yet but every day I
“I’ve not legitimately led a show before. So what a joy”
would come in going, ‘Isn’t this great? We’re in the Caribbean.’
“Whereas everyone else was like, ‘Look, I’m hot, I’m tired, I’ve been here four and a half months and I need to go home and see my kids – can you please stop coming in being so bouncy and bright?’ But I just loved it.”
He adds: “I’ve been doing this job 23 years now and you develop a little bit of a cynical side about jobs and saying ‘yes’ to things but with this one, there was literally none of that.
“It was like, ‘Yes, of course I’m going to go and solve murders in the Caribbean.
Why would I not want to go and do that?’ It was an absolute dream call to get.”
There are no qualms surrounding the show’s popularity, as the serial hit continues to pull in anything in the region of eight to nine million viewers per episode.
“It’s lovely to be doing something where I don’t have to worry about whether this is going to capture the public’s imagination because they already love it,” says Little, who will fly back out to film the 10th series this year.
“I said this to my mum and she went, ‘Well, the only way is down now, you can only ruin it for people’. Thanks mum.
“That’s her keeping me honest, same as always. She’s still waiting for me to get a proper job, I’m sure.”
But playing the undisputed lead in a prime-time show is quite the achievement.
Little says: “I didn’t even realise. I’ve been so lucky to be in shows that have this large place in people’s psyche and yet I’ve not legitimately led a show before. So what a joy.
“I’ve never cared about being number one before. I’ve no vanity as far as all that’s concerned.
“But on my first day, I got the call sheet and it said ‘number one – Ralf Little’ and just for half a second I went, ‘Ah nice’.
“It was just a moment to go, ‘Ah, I turn 40 soon, and here we are’. A half beat of recognition and we move on.”
● Ralf Little is on Death in Paradise on BBC1 on Thursdays, 9pm