Beyond Paradise’s Kris Marshall: "It’s an utterly standalone show"
The series reunites viewers with Marshall's former Death in Paradise character, DI Humphrey Goodman.
Upcoming series Beyond Paradise might be a spin-off from long-running drama Death in Paradise, but star Kris Marshall has promised fans that the new programme is an "utterly standalone show".
Marshall is reprising the role of DI Humphrey Goodman in the series, which will follow the character as he explores his new life in the countryside with fiancée Martha Lloyd (Sally Bretton) – with his detective skills once again put to the test.
And speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com ahead of the show's premiere on Friday 24th February, Marshall described it as "truly unique".
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"I love the work and I love the character of Humphrey and I loved working with Sally," he said. "And I love seeing how that would forward move with their new life now he’s moved back to the UK. What do they do? Where do they go? They can’t just fade into the ether.
"So I was very keen on seeing that side of things. But then when the first scripts came in, I saw how you can absolutely see where they've come from, they share that same DNA, they come from the same stable, there’s Paradise in the title, but it’s an utterly standalone show and that was really exciting to me."
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He added: "I was like, ‘Wow, okay.’ And that was the first script. A lot of effort always goes into the first scripts because it's a new show. The challenge is to keep it going. And then I read the second script and it’s even better and I still believe that now. And now we've got all six scripts and they're great. They're so different."
Marshall explained how the show dealt with the challenges facing Humphrey and Martha, but also his integration into a new police force with a quieter lifestyle and different form of policing than he was used to in Saint Marie.
"[It's] one that's maybe a little more quirky, a little more off the cuff," he continued. "They’re very different shows. We couldn't really make the same show where you have cocktails on the beach. It’s not going to work. And we wouldn’t want to anyway – we couldn’t keep doing that. It’s not going to work in Devon and Cornwall."
Writer and executive producer Tony Jordan recently teased another way in which the show is different from Death in Paradise, too: the manner in which each episode ends.
"At the end of the crime story in Death in Paradise, the detective gathers all the suspects together and explains what happened and who the guilty party is in an Agatha Christie fashion," he said.
"We knew we couldn’t do the same thing on Beyond Paradise. We had to find something as distinct, but different.
"We came up with the idea of Humphrey cracking the case and while explaining to the team and the audience, we lift him up from the station and take him back in time, replaying the crime exactly as it happened but this time with Humphrey in the scene as it’s taking place."
Beyond Paradise will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Friday 24th February. Classic episodes of Death in Paradise are available to watch on BBC iPlayer and on BritBox – you can sign up for a 7-day free trial.
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