'Beyond Paradise's First Look Loves Devonshire More Than Saint-Marie

American shows get rebooted, reimagined, and remade with alarming regularity since the beginning of the 21st century. It was only a matter of time before other countries caught on to the idea. Poldark and All Creatures Great and Small did it on PBS, and Father Brown also recently spun off The Sister Boniface Mysteries to great fanfare in 2022 on BritBox. Now the streaming service is going for a second helping of Death In Paradise with spinoff Beyond Paradise, based around one of its most memorable leads, Kris Marshall, whose DI Humphrey Goodman left the show in 2017.

The British–French crime comedy-drama television Death in Paradise first debuted in 2011, starring Ben Miller (Professor T) as DI Richard Poole, sent to the fictional island of Saint-Marie to solve a crime, only to wind up staying on as a chief detective. However, Miller only lasted two seasons before deciding he couldn’t take that much time away from his family for filming. He was then replaced by Marshall’s DI Goodman, whose schtick was that he was kind of bumbling and hated living in Saint-Marie. But his character was popular due to his nail-biting will-they-won’t-they romance with Martha Lloyd, played by Sally Bretton (Not Going Out). When she left for London, he decided to follow her.

Since then, Death in Paradise has gone through two more leads, with Ardal O’Hanlon (Father Ted) as DI Jack Mooney and Ralf Little (The Royle Family), who leads the show currently as DI Neville Parker. Marshall, meanwhile, has gone on to have roles in Sanditon as Tom Parker and guest star turns in shows like We Hunt Together. But now he’s reprising his character, along with Bretton as his now-fiancée Martha in the new spinoff, where he won’t have to return to Saint-Marie but will find a new paradise to solve cases outside of London.

Here's the synopsis for the new spinoff series:

A new adventure awaits in Shipton Abbott, Martha’s hometown near the beautiful Devonshire coast, having left London. As they embark on their new life, the couple are quickly thrown in at the deep end as Martha sets out to pursue her dream of running her own restaurant and Humphrey joins the local police force. Each week the team will be faced with a new crime with a unique puzzle at its heart. As Humphrey gets stuck into his new job, he and Martha must also navigate life’s ups and downs, as faces from the past, the decisions they make and challenges of setting up life in a new town put their relationship to the ultimate test yet. 

A new cast joins Marshall and Bretton, and as a police procedural is wont to do, most of them are part of the eclectic Shipton Abbett squad. There's Zahra Ahmadi (The Beast Must Die) as DS Esther Williams, Dylan Llewellyn (Derry Girls) as PC Kelby Hartford, and Felicity Montagu (The Durrells in Corfu) as Margo Martins. The founder of Red Planet Pictures, which produces the spinoff, Tony Jordan, acts as showrunner, writing with Death in Paradise veteran Ian Kershaw, as well as Amy Guyler (Mrs. Wilson) and Chloë Mi Lin Ewart (All Creatures Great and Small), and directors Sandy Johnson (In the Long Run) and Matt Carter (Agatha Raisin) split helming duties.

Beyond Paradise has not yet been given a firm release date, but the six-episode series is expected to debut in 2023 on BritBox.