There’s comfort in crime

SHOULD you ever hear anyone complaining that TV lacks fresh ideas, please tell them they’re an idiot. Not because they’re mistaken but because they’re missing the point. Fresh ideas are not what TV thrives on, fashionable though it is to suggest otherwise.What TV thrives on is comfortingly familiar ones.At the heart of pretty much every long-running series is a tried and tested formula, a storyline that hardly varies from one week to the next.

Last Of The Summer Wine, for example, which ran for 37 years? Three daft old geezers in a runaway bathtub. Doc Martin? Grumpy medic on a final warning.

SilentWitness? Pathologists catch the killer because the cops are all clowns.

EastEnders? Cross people shouting.

Question Time? Ditto.

Not that I’m complaining about any of this.While I do appreciate inventive, challenging television, I spend significantly more of my time perched in front of programmes that demand the brainpower of a fruit fly and for the most part they leave me perfectly content. Come on, it’s only telly.

Which is why I’m thrilled by the return tonight of DEATH IN PARADISE (BBC One, 9pm), beginning its ninth series.

No nasty surprises here, rest assured.Well, other than for the poor soul destined to get bumped off before the opening titles, in keeping with its time-honoured tradition – in this case a businessman’s wife, meeting a sticky end at the hands of a nut in a devil mask.

Every familiar Death In Paradise ingredient remains satisfyingly in place: a killing that can’t be explained, a set of suspects who all have cast-iron alibis and a sense of shock throughout this sun-baked Caribbean island, even though there’s been at least one murder a week there since October 2011, so you’d have thought they’d be used to it by now.

That said, we do need to brace ourselves for the imminent departure of its key character, Ardal O’Hanlon’s Detective Inspector Father Dougal. But with Ralf Little arriving shortly to replace him, there should be little disruption to the show’s continuity, nor to its jaunty tone.

As Ben Miller and Kris Marshall so amply demonstrated in earlier series, if you want to catch a killer, hire a sitcom star.

Elsewhere, BRITAIN’S BEST HOME COOK (BBC One, 8pm) must plough on without IT consultant Sean, the “selfconfessed peacock and show-off” whose food “represents me on a plate”. Sean began week one by boasting that he likes “to be centre of attention”.

He ended it by becoming the first contestant sent packing. Still, nice to see he got his wish.