BEYOND PARADISE

BBC One, 8pm

The second series of Robert Thorogood and Tony Jordan’s Death in Paradise spin-off, a pleasing mix of detective story, family drama and knockabout comedy, starts with that favourite standby of television writers – an episode set around an amateur dramatics company where, you’ve guessed it, a fictional murder becomes reality when one of the actors is stabbed with a real knife. Added value is given here as DI Humphrey (Kris Marshall) and DS Esther (Zahra Ahmadi) have been roped in by their station colleague and am-dram director Margo (Felicity Montagu) to help the Shipton Abbott

Players in their immersive mystery set on a vintage steam train.

The detectives are on board when the crime occurs and start to investigate, but are put under extra pressure when it becomes a big story in the national media and Charlie Woods (Jade Harrison), their boss at regional HQ, wants a rapid resolution to the case. Away from police matters, Humphrey and Martha (Sally Bretton) are planning to become foster parents, while her mother, Anne (Barbara Flynn), begins “shopping for a companion” on a dating app. As ever, the gorgeous Devon setting remains the main attraction. Veronica Lee charting our rich railway history, from the age of great engineers – including Stephenson, Telford and Brunel – to today’s often woeful services. But its rah-rah description of HS2 – “Britain’s 21st-century railway” – now sounds sadly out of date, as between filming and broadcast much of the planned high-speed line has been axed.

Kris Marshall and Zahra Ahmadi board a murder mystery