As this episode of Death In Paradise begins, Stanley Drake is questioned about opening a fifth Drake Resort. Drake claims he just wants to help people up the ladder. He won’t say how he is going to pick the winner. Catherine Bordey (Elizabeth Bourgine) arrives and speaks to Stanley. Stanley introduces Mayor Bordey to Celeste Duvall who is this year’s recipient of the Drake fund. Andrina Harper follows him around and learns more about the chefs. Before long, Drake begins testing the dishes. He won’t declare a winner until he sees the clear-up. Andrina sits with Catherine and learns Selwyn is happy to be back at work. Andrina speaks to Drake in private about picking a winner. He ends up collapsing and dying.

After the intro, DI Neville Parker (Ralf Little) and DS Naomi Thomas (Shantol Jackson) arrive at the scene. Naomi tells Neville about Stanley Drake who moved to the Caribbean in the ‘90s. He was running a competition to find his next head chef. The chefs forage the raw ingredients on the morning of the competition. They notice Drake’s watch is broken and stopped at 9 p.m. yesterday. Drake was hosting a welcome event for the chefs that ended at 7. Naomi realizes Drake was wearing makeup as if he was trying to cover a bruise. Neville suspects he ingested some type of poison. Darlene Curtis (Ginny Holder) thinks it might be poison from a local tree called furium or the fury tree.

Marlon Pryce (Tahj Miles) talks about how shady and dangerous the tree is. The trees have signs so whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing. Darlene reveals Drake refused breakfast because he wanted an empty stomach. Andrina handed over her Dictaphone and camera. Naomi has taken her statement as well. Andrina is sure she only saw Drake eat the competition food. Neville says the chefs ate the food as well so one of them should be dead. He wants to speak to them individually. Marlon tells Neville that they cleared the plates. Neville asks Darlene to check Drake’s hotel room to see if there is any food there. Then, he tells the chefs that they can’t go anywhere. Naomi doesn’t understand why they’d kill Drake when he was offering them the opportunity of a lifetime.

Later, one of the chefs tells another what type of questions the police are asking. Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington) shows up and tells Andrina (Genesis Lynea) he thought he should come. She agrees to let him drop her off on her way to work. Miss Duvall is questioned by Neville and Naomi. She tells them how Drake always picks a chef to fund each year. She was his choice this year. Duvall was a fan for years although they had never met. She seems upset when she learns Drake was poisoned. Once Duvall leaves, Neville questions why someone would kill a man like Drake. Catherine enters to tell Neville about one of the chefs. Lucky Clayborn was friends with Catherine, but she left the island suddenly. The competition was the first time Catherine had seen her in 30 years.

During the judging, she saw Lucky steal Drake’s hotel key fob from his pocket. All fobs are logged on an internal system. The clerk confirmed there was only one key fob for Drake’s room and it wasn’t on his body. Neville and Naomi check in with Darlene at Drake’s private suite. She hasn’t found any food or wrappers. She found a laptop charger but no laptop. In Drake’s diary, it shows he was on a video call with the board of the hotel this morning. They wonder if Lucky took his key fob to get his laptop. Neville and Naomi confront Mr. and Mrs. Clayborn. They notice a burn on Tristan’s knuckle. He offers Neville one of his cookbooks before Lucky joins them. Neville asks her why she joined the competition when she didn’t need the fame or money.

Lucky says Saint Marie will always be her home. She met Drake about 30 years ago when she was looking for funding to start a small partnership in Saint Marie. He encouraged her to open a restaurant but she hasn’t seen him since. Naomi tells Lucky that they have an eyewitness who said they saw her taking Drake’s room key. Lucky quickly denies that allegation. They believe Catherine is the eyewitness in question. At the station, Darlene and Neville talk about Andrina being there when Drake died and how she must be upset. Naomi gets in touch with Catherine who stands by her original claim. Neville talks about his blog which isn’t getting a lot of engagement. He is testing new mosquito sprays for his next entry.

Darlene urges him to make the blog more personal. Darlene reminds Naomi it was her idea to set up all these double dates. Marlon doubts it’ll go well. Tristan confronts Catherine to tell her she was mistaken about Lucky taking Drake’s room key. He suggests Catherine wants to punish Lucky for what she did to her. Tristan says she’ll retract the statement if she ever cared about Lucky. The next day, Darlene wants to tell Marlon about last night but Naomi stops her. Darlene will only say that it was pretty crazy. Then, Neville enters and learns Drake was poised by Furium. He had enough in his body to kill him within an hour. Neville asks how someone managed to poison Drake without poisoning themselves.

Naomi tells Neville that nothing stands out in Drake’s notes. They have absolutely nothing to go on. Darlene called her friend Shanae at the council and learned Drake had put in an application to extend the original site of the hotel. Someone put in a formal complaint because Drake’s plan would bulldoze the local barbecue house, The Phoenix. The objection came from the chef of the Phoenix who was a contestant in the competition. Neville is told it was Dionne Bertrand. She claimed that Drake tricked the elderly owner of the business into signing the land away. The council rejected her complaint. Neville and Naomi confront Dionne to see what she has to say. Naomi learns the owners of the restaurant love Dionne who is a model citizen.

Dionne tries to downplay the complaint. She tells them that the owners saved her life so she wasn’t going to let Drake bulldoze the place. She wanted to show everyone that Drake being a great philanthropist was only a sham. She made posters that we in a bin on Fishery Street. Dionne promises she didn’t kill him. Catherine runs into Lucky who thinks she’ll never forgive her. Catherine reminds her that she needed her back then. They were supposed to buy the bar together, but Lucky left a note and abandoned her. Lucky insists it wasn’t about Catherine. Naomi manages to confirm that Dionne was planning a demonstration against Drake. Darlene creates a timeline of photos. They notice that Tristan already had the scrape on his hand so it didn’t happen during the competition like he said.

Neville looks at the watch and suggests Drake’s bruise was caused by someone hitting him before the competition. He theorizes that Drake lifted his hand to defend himself leading to the broken watch. They return to Tristan and Lucky to ask about the scrape. Tristan admits to hitting Drake. He tells Lucky not to judge him after what she’s done. Tristan suspects Lucky cheated on him with Drake and that’s why he attacked him. Tristan says he confronted Drake who confirmed it. Lucky says it was only one night. When she told Drake she wasn’t going to take part in the competition, he threatened to release photos of them together. Those photos were stored on his laptop. She asks Tristan why he didn’t say he knew. Tristan worried that’d make it real and she’d leave.

Lucky says infidelity didn’t fit the Clayborn brand so it couldn’t come out. Marlon tries to get Darlene to tell him about last night. Neville returns and learns that the laptop was another dead end. They talk about their suspects. Darlene receives an update on Neville’s blog. He took her advice and thinks the views will start rolling in. Darlene had other ideas though. Selwyn asks Andrina about visiting her. She decides to leave. Selwyn chases her down because he doesn’t think she is okay. He reminds her that he is there for her. Andrina asks how he deals with seeing those things. Later, Neville begins wondering if he should delete his blog. He changes his mind when he received a comment from SunsetChaser.

The next day, Neville tells the team that Dionne’s file is empty until 2014 when she came to Saint Marie. It’s like she never existed. He checked her date of birth with the records and found her as Emilia Bertrand who has a criminal record. She was charged with criminal damage in 2013 for smashing her boss’s windscreen with a baseball bat. At the time, her boss was Stanley Drake. Naomi speaks to the Stanley Drake Foundation and confirms Emilia was one of the first recipients of Drake’s scheme. They find Celeste speaking to Dionne. Once Celeste leaves, Dionne claims Celeste was upset about Drake and wanted to talk about him. They ask her about her arrest. Dionne says she wasn’t ready for the pressures of an elite kitchen and didn’t cope well with it.

She says Drake provided her with a character reference. The charges came from the foundation. Marlon can’t get Naomi to talk about her night out. At the station, Dionne’s statement is confirmed. Neville wonders why Celeste was so upset when she only met Drake the day before the competition. He worries that Celeste may be poisoned too because of her behavior earlier. They find her passed out and call for an ambulance. A drunk Tristan tries to get more rum from Catherine who thinks he should call it a day. He says Lucky isn’t his wife anymore because she cheated on him with Stanley Drake. Catherine tells him to get out or she’ll call the police. Neville and Noami confirm Celeste was poisoned with furium as well. They believe Celeste can be discharged shortly. She is refusing to speak though.

Darlene has been looking at Celeste’s messages to her mom. She was excited about meeting Drake. When asked what it was like to work with him, Celeste only said it was fine. The rest of her responses after that are only one-word responses. Naomi believes something happened. Catherine sits down with Lucky. They talk about when they decided to buy the bar. Catherine never asked why Lucky didn’t tell her to her face instead of leaving a letter. She suspects something happened. Catherine asks what Drake did. Lucky leaves without telling her. Naomi and the others look at the pictures and notice that Celeste looks upset in one. In a recording, Drake says everyone has a pattern and he can always spot it.

Catherine enters to tell them about her conversation with Lucky. She thinks Lucky spending the night with Drake was something else and Neville does too. All the suspects are brought together without Tristan. Neville tells them they know everything that happened and how Stanley was killed. He says they all killed Stanley by putting a small amount of poison in their dishes. Neville thinks their dishes were intentionally wrong to cover up a small dose of furium. Naomi and Neville go over the evidence against them. Neville believes they all had something in common and thought murder was their only option. He urges them to set the record straight because they deserve to be heard. They begin telling them how they were taken advantage of by Drake.

Lucky admits they decided to stop Drake their own way. They agree they’d do it again because he needed to be stopped. Later, Catherine tells Neville they shouldn’t have to pay for what Drake did. Neville says hopefully the judge will be lenient. There is no guarantee unless more victims come forward. Catherine thinks they should encourage them to do so. Lucky finishes giving her statement and says the others will too. Catherine promises to do everything she can to make Drake’s crimes come to light. Andrina thanks Selwyn for being there for her the other night. She is going to write an expose on Drake when she gets home. They’ll set up a helpline to ensure his victims can come forward. Naomi begins telling Marlon about her night out with Darlene.

She explains she volunteered to do karaoke and Darlene recorded it. She is embarrassed although Marlon says it’s amazing. Marlon tells Neville that Naomi is crazy talented. They make her sing for them.

 

Death In Paradise Review

This episode of Death In Paradise was at least trying to be different although it didn’t hit the target. On a plus side, it wasn’t a Neville bashing episode even though the writers are still making him a twerp. The runtime makes the series atrociously slow to the point that it’s just grueling to get through. The episode was pretty dry just like the episodes prior to it.

It has never been easy to care about any of the characters, especially with half of them belittling a colleague at every turn. After 13 series, this has probably run its course and should end on a high note. There isn’t enough here to prevent this from being a mundane, formulaic experience with rehashed stories.

The episode scores a 5 out of 10. Recaps of Death In Paradise can be found on Reel Mockery here. Find out how to support our independent site at this link. Learn more about advertising with us here. See what others are saying about Death In Paradise at the Reel Mockery Forum.