Death in Paradise: Season 14, Episode 1 (Red Planet Pictures, BBC, Région Guadeloupe, Film Commission of Guadeloupe, aired February 19, 2025)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2026 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night at 10 I watched a charming PBS mystery show called Death in Paradise which was celebrating the first episode of its 14th season with this program. It’s set on a fictitious Caribbean island alternately called Saint-Marie and Honoré (played by the real Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, whose actual film commission is listed as one of the production companies). Previous episodes have gone into the racial politics of the islands and in particular the presence of white people on the local police force in command positions. Alas, the entire dramatis personae of this one were Black, and the lead police detective on the show is Mervin Wilson (Don Gilet). He’s retiring and leaving the island to move to London when literally on his way to the airport he stumbles onto a police investigation of the seemingly accidental death, but really murder, of newly hired police officer Benjamin Brice (Anthony J. Abraham). Benjamin Brice becomes a genuinely pathetic (in the good sense) figure since we meet him first using his smartphone to make a video expressing how he rose out of a criminal family to seek out a career in law enforcement. The sequence includes a flashback in which Benjamin and his brother Karlus (Stephen Odubola) are shown as teenagers. Karlus has just stolen a car and wants Benjamin to go for a joy ride with him, but Benjamin demurs. Benjamin explains in his video that that’s when he first realized his purpose in life would be to enforce the law, not break it. Alas, Benjamin doesn’t show up on his first scheduled day of work as a police officer; instead he’s found dead in a ravine, having apparently taken an accidental fall off the bicycle he was riding to get to work. Wilson deduces that it was actually murder because, though Benjamin had taken all the other correct safety precautions, he wasn’t wearing a bike helmet. He also figures out that the killing was conducted as part of the fallout from a burglary of a rich white woman on the island who was in the throes of dementia. The burglary took place a year before and Karlus was actually arrested for it and served a year in the local prison, but though the police recovered the victim’s knit handbag the cash and jewels also taken were never found. Midway through the story, the local police precinct is broken into, and though nothing was taken the office is left in a state of disarray indicating that the crooks, whoever they were, were searching for something rather frantically.

One cute gag that was done as part of this episode even though it had nothing to do with the main plot was that Wilson had made a grocery order to be delivered to his new home in London. Later he tried to cancel it when he missed his plane, but he forgot about the time difference between London and the Caribbean and his order had already been delivered when he called to cancel it. Wilson is genuinely shocked when his co-workers inform him that food delivery services exist on Saint Marie, too. In fact, a lot of the best gags on this show are about how technically retro the police office is; they’re still using overhead fans and fax machines in the age of air conditioning and the Internet; in one scene, as the other cops are trying to hold a memorial for Benjamin, Wilson cranks up the fan in the precinct room to maximum and the strain on its ancient motor causes it to collapse and fall off the ceiling. Three suspects emerge: Karlus, his and Benjamin’s mother Paulette (Michelle Greenridge), and Damon Clarke (Mike Holden), who was Karlus’s cellmate in prison. All have alibis, but Wilson and the other police determine that [spoiler alert!] Karlus was the real killer. His motive was he was after a valuable stamp that had been used to mail an envelope inside the original burglary victim’s handbag (earlier I’d thought it would be a slip of paper with a clue inside as to the whereabouts of the stolen cash and jewels). His alibi was his girlfriend, with whom he was supposedly in bed at the time of the murder, though he moved back the hands of his alarm clock from 8 a.m. to 7:45 so his partner would think he was in bed at the time of the murder (a gimmick also used in at least one previous Death in Paradise episode). Karlus had been concerned that with Benjamin actually working in the precinct office where the handbag was stored, he would one day discover it. Karlus had already been ratted out for the original burglary by his mother, so this was not a clan with much in the way of family loyalties. This Death in Paradise episode was clever and genuinely moving – we truly feel sorry for Benjamin, who worked so hard to escape his family’s criminal past only to get sucked into it again and literally killed for it – and there was a subplot in which Wilson’s immediate superior, Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington), is informed that his position is being eliminated and he’s going to be out of a job. But I do tend to agree with the Guardian critic Jack Seale, who called it “an undemanding detective show, with nice Caribbean scenery.”