This tropical mixture is a joy on winter evenings
Death In Paradise BBC1, Thursday
Quiz RTÉ One, Sunday Operation Transformation RTÉ One, Wednesday
RTÉ Sports Personality Of The Year RTÉ One, Thursday
If ever a television show was welcome in the times in which we now live, it surely must be Death In Paradise. Set on the fictional Caribbean island of SainteMarie (in reality, Guadeloupe), it brings sunshine, colour and heat into the house every Thursday night, exactly what we needed in a cold, locked-down January. That’s not the only reason, though – the main one is that the brain remains resolutely untaxed throughgout. Every single episode is structured identically. There’s a murder that no one can solve. Then the British or Irish detective inspector (there have been four – Ben Miller, Kris Marshall, Ardal O’Hanlon and, now, Ralf Little) has a lightbulb moment after spotting a single abstract clue. The native police will marvel at his acumen before all the people who have featured in the episode are gathered together. Then, with no solicitors present or anything resembling due process, the detective reveals the culprit.
In this he is aided by copious use of flashbacks, which make up a solid ten minutes of a broadcast hour, and everything is explained so meticulously it could be shown on the RTÉ School Hub – then everyone goes for drinks at a beautiful beach bar as the sun is setting (sadly, this did not feature in this week’s episode, leaving me oddly discombobulated).
Of course, it is mildly offensive that the blow-in puts the native population’s finest to shame every week with his brilliance, but there’s something very cosy about it too.
The elephant in the room is that the population of the island is allegedly only around 10,000, yet it seems deadlier than Cabot Cove and Midsomer put together.
What ultimately saves the programme is the performances, because the plots are doolally. In one of this year’s episodes, we were expected to believe that a hairdresser from Oldham had seafaring skills that allowed her steal a yacht, single-handedly dump a dead body overboard, then return the boat safely to the dock.
Fortunately, there is comedy running through it, from the current
Death In Paradise
Everything is explained so meticulously that it could be shown on the RTE School Hub
RTÉ Sports Personality Of The Year
It was a reminder of how much sport we had missed out on last year
Operation Transformation
Suesanna’s dance when she heard of weight loss was the second most joyous moment of the week
Quiz
It felt like a relic of an age when TV fuelled watercooler chats
detective inspector’s allergies and phobias and his brittle relationship with the police commissioner (Don Warrington, who decades ago played Philip in Rising Damp) to the cheekiness of new recruit Marlon Pryce (Tahj Miles) and his equally fraught relationship with Sergeant JP Hooper (Tobi Bakare). Their singing an infectiously catchy reggae song, Tiny Winey, down the phone to try to put JP’s newborn twins to sleep had, I suspect, everyone watching it singing all day ever since. I know I have.
All in all, Death In Paradise is the most undemanding show of the week, every week. That usually would be a criticism, but in the middle of pandemic, it actually is a joy, and I’m already looking forward to this week’s double helping (it’s on Friday as well).
Also terrific is Quiz, which I missed when it was on ITV last year but now has popped up on RTÉ One. It’s the story of Major Charles Ingram, who cheated his way to the jackpot on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in 2001 by listening to coughs from the audience as the correct answer out of the four options was read out.
As it happens, the meat of that plot was not really covered in the first episode at all; instead, it was a thrilling account of how the world’s most popular gameshow, hosted by Chris Tarrant (Michael Sheen, proving yet again that he is a staggeringly good mimic), came into existence at all.
The format languished in development hell for years before ITV decided to run with it, and the first 10 episodes were shown on consecutive nights, which never had been tried before and proved a spectacular success. Having launched to nine million viewers in the UK, it had hit 19 million within a week, the sort of numbers executives can only dream about nowadays.
It felt like a relic of a different time, when network TV fuelled those watercooler conversations.
I also watched my first episode of Operation Transformation of the year, after hearing of team leader Suesanna, who I was reliably informed mildly misinterpreted the word ‘transformation’ by actually putting on half a pound rather than losing the three asked for.
This week, she finally got the hang of it and lost five pounds, and her delightful dance when she heard the good news was the second most joyous moment of the week after Marlon and JP’s dance to Tiny Winey.
Finally, the RTÉ Sports Personality Of The Year Awards, usually a highlight of the Christmas schedules, was instead conducted without an audience, and neatly despatched in half an hour. In a show that should have featured successful Olympians, we instead were treated to yet another win for Katie Taylor.
It was a reminder of just how much sport we missed out on last year, with little in the way of guarantee that the likes of the Euro football finals or the Tokyo Olympics will happen this year either. At this stage, so long as they keep making Death In Paradise, I don’t care. I’ll keep mixing the cocktails on Thursday nights and living for the day I can get to a beach bar again.