'Beyond Paradise' Returns for the Holidays & Season 3

For those who have not gotten a chance to watch Beyond Paradise’s Season 2 finale, the top half of this post will remain spoiler-free, but it will shock no one that the second the episode ended, the BBC and BritBox dropped a press release announcing the series had been renewed for a third season and it’s second “Festive Special.” The “Para-verse” (listen, that’s what Auntie Beeb is calling it, not me!) has become one of the stalwart network’s successful franchise universes, and Beyond Paradise’s success has been a major factor. The Season 2 premiere was watched by 7.5 million viewers between the BBC, BritBox international’s platforms, and Player, making it one of the U.K.’s most popular mystery dramas globally. Of course, they renewed it.

The success of the various Paradise series has been a bright light for the BBC, which is racing to keep up with trends like having multiple hit serialized shows that all occur in the same universe. The original series Death In Paradise is currently renewed through Season 14 and about to start on its fifth lead detective; Return to Paradise is taking the show down under to Australia, and Beyond Paradise has proven that one doesn’t need to leave the U.K. to film a show about paradise and have it be a success.

Part of that success comes from the show’s focus on character-building and the sublimely ludicrous. Executive producer Tim Key’s statement on what’s coming for Season 3 notably promised, “We’ll be making the viewers laugh, cry, laugh a bit more and then baffling them with a series of ingenious puzzles. There will also be a duck.”