“Now the pressure’s on!”
Beyond Paradise’s Kris Marshall praised Happy Valley star Vincent Franklin for his ‘villain’ role in season four of the BBC crime series. Franklin is set to cause contention in the brand new series that places Marshall’s detective inspector Humphrey Goodman in an impossible position.
The teaser trailer for the upcoming season of the Death in Paradise spin-off shows Franklin delivering the devastating news that Humphrey must downsize the Shipton Abbot police team, which means giving one of his beloved colleagues their marching orders.
Marshall teased that Franklin will be the authority figure that Humphrey bucks up against when he told the magazine in an exclusive interview: “The brilliant Vincent Franklin is playing sort of an arch-nemesis this year.”
He expanded further: “[He] does sort of reptilian obsequiousness really beautifully and so it adds to the pressure on Humphrey in that this guy’s not the most pleasant guy. He’s laying on this huge amount of pressure [and] I think it’s causing [Humphrey] issues.”
Marshall went on to tease how Humphrey would handle his predicament this season, stating: “The great paradox with Humphrey is that he’s a policeman and being a policeman is being a member of an institution of authority. The police force is hierarchical and yet he’s your classic sort of fish out of the water, man outside the box.
“Humphrey dislikes authority. Humphrey doesn’t really have discipline. He’s a bit scattergun and a bit all over the place and so any kind of authority he absolutely detests and doesn’t deal with it well. I guess that’s why he functions in these sort of smaller, albeit crime-ridden environments. In these almost backwater police stations or very rural [places]. He likes to be left alone, he doesn’t like being pressured from above or below.
“But now the pressure’s on and so when this authority comes to find him, he doesn’t deal with it very well at all.”
Beyond Paradise‘s season four debut will air at 8pm on Friday, 27 March followed by the final episode of Death in Paradise season 15. Beyond Paradise, Death in Paradise and Return to Paradise air on BBC One and stream on BBC iPlayer.
