As this episode of Death In Paradise begins, Laurette Duschamps (Leah Walker) fixes a camera for someone and doesn’t charge. Ivan McQuillan (Pearce Quigley) reminds her they’re not running a charity. Petra MacQuillan (Leah Brotherhead) comes in moments later and asks about Ellis. She explains she got a message from him saying he needs to see her urgently. Her dad, Ivan, believes he’s around there somewhere. Ellis Baxter (Ben Wiggins) surprises Petra with an engagement ring. Petra quickly agrees to marry him. Laurette tells her they should celebrate. Ivan approaches Ellis to talk to him about the other thing. Ellis reminds him that they saved him.
He insists this is a new chapter and not an ending. After Ellis goes out, Laurette, Petra, and Ivan talk about him that night. Petra steps out to call him. DI Neville Parker (Ralf Little) continues talking to his fan online, but the autocorrect feature messes him up. Then, the power goes out. Ellis appears to be knocked out in front of the power station. After the intro, Neville meets DS Naomi Thomas (Shantol Jackson) and Officer Marlon Pryce (Tahj Miles) at the substation where Ellis was killed. They believe Ellis tripped or stumbled into the transformer and died instantly. They found his UK driver’s license and a mobile phone. Naomi explains they found a business card with random numbers on the back.
Chayce thinks he might be able to answer what Ellis was doing there. He believes Ellis was stealing electricity. Chayce explains they’d need a direct line for the power to go such as an extension cord or battery. Since those items weren’t found, Chayce suspects an accomplice moved them. Neville says it could’ve been the murderer. He finds it odd that Ellis wasn’t wearing the insulated gloves. Moments later, Naomi tells Neville about Petra McQuillan who found them. They walk to their place two minutes away to tell Petra about Ellis’s death. Petra doesn’t know why Ellis would be stealing electricity. She doubts he’d be meeting anyone since he doesn’t know anyone there.
Ivan admits they’ll have to run a generator if they want to open, but he doesn’t think they should think about opening. Outside, Neville admits he finds it odd that their old computer repair shop has so much security. Marlon agrees to stick around and do some digging. Ivan is shown locking a door. Neville complains about the lack of power. Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington) saves him by getting the generator working since he knew Neville didn’t know how. He urges Neville to solve the crime quickly so the company can fix the problem and restore power. While Marlon snoops around, he is filmed by locals. Naomi tells Neville that Ellis graduated from Cambridge University with a first in data science. He was a tech genius who went to work in London.
He made a lot of money but lost it due to poor investment choices. Darlene (Ginny Holder) reveals that he had a complete breakdown. Ellis eventually turned up at The Hub where he had a whirlwind romance with Petra. Darlene recognizes Laurette Duschamps. Although she was sweet, her parents were bad news. Darlene thinks Laurette might speak to her. Marlon tells them that The Hub backs onto a hidden pathway that goes directly to the substation. He thinks they’re stealing juice for something in a storage unit. Some kids saw Ellis and Ivan arguing yesterday and Ellis threatening to tell Petra everything. They confront Ivan and accuse him of stealing electricity. Ivan tells them to get a search warrant if they want to see what is in the storage room.
They do and find a crypto mining rig. Ivan explains they were mining TallyUm which is the same symbol found on the business card. Ivan admits Ellis came in handy by taking from the rich and giving to the power using the substation. Ivan admits to unplugging the cable, but he is adamant that Ellis was dead when he got there. He insists he wouldn’t kill Ellis because he turned a losing hustle into real money. After a few months, they had mined enough TallyUm to be worth about ten grand. Ivan insists he was there with Laurette and Petra when the lights blew. In private, Neville and Naomi discuss the case and whether someone else knew where Ellis would be that night. Petra panics in her car before driving away while Chancey watches her.
Neville learns Ellis’s phone was damaged and it was heavily encrypted. Petra storms in asking about Ellis’s necklace. She insists he never took it off so someone must’ve stolen it. The necklace was only cheap metal. Petra apologizes before leaving in a hurry. Neville questions why someone else would want to take the necklace. Later, Neville goes out with the others and tells them about the autocorrect incident. At home, Neville finds multiple messages from Sunset_Chaser. The next day, Selwyn tells him that the blackout has exposed gaps in the crisis readiness. Neville believes Rebecca Walmslow has contacted him via his blog. Selwyn agrees to make some calls, but he suspects the fan is just a fan of his writing.
Darlene speaks to Laurette who says Ellis wasn’t as nice as people thought. Darlene asks if only she and Ellis knew about the crypto operation. Laurette says Petra isn’t stupid. Marlon finds CCTV footage that seems to support Ivan’s version of events. At the moment of Ellis’s death, all the suspects are inside The Hub. Darlene tells Neville that Laurette implied Ellis might’ve been having an affair. Marlon receives a call from Petra who reports her vehicle has been broken into. At the scene, Neville questions what kind of thief would leave cash and cards behind. Naomi suggests it was a petty act of vandalism. Neville tells Petra about the rumor that Ellis may have had an affair. Petra admits to confronting him. Ellis promised he’d change. The next time she saw him, he proposed.
He has something important to tell her, but he never got the chance. Petra believes he wanted to come clean about Ivan’s crypto mining. She blames herself for not putting a stop to it sooner. At the station, Darlene tells Neville that the amount of power stolen was off the chart. Marlon shows Neville video of Ellis speaking to Chayce. When they bring Chayce in for an interview, he admits that Ellis wanted to steal electricity. It seemed like easy money. At some point, Chayce wasn’t needed anymore because Ellis was winding down the operation. Ellis promised to pay him TallyUm, but he never got the chance. Chayce insists he wouldn’t kill Ellis when he was the only one with access to the wallet. He admits Ellis’s stupidity has cost them a fortune.
Ellis was sitting on about 250 grand. Neville suggests Chayce broke into Petra’s vehicle to look for the wallet. Chayce tells him to prove it. Neville shows him the bubblegum on his shoe. Chayce confesses he was looking for the wallet. Naomi mentions the necklace. Later, Naomi says the power company confirmed Chayce’s alibi. He was with several colleagues when the power surged. The postmortem confirms the victim died of a cardiac arrest caused by a massive electric shock. Darlene suggests it was an accident all along. They wonder if Ivan took the necklace. When they confront him, Ivan seems surprised that the wallet contains 250,000 worth of TallyUm. He says Ellis and Laurette took care of the technical things. He gets upset with them for accusing him of being involved in Ellis’s death.
Naomi believes he knows who the other woman is. Marlon offers to pay the kids to let him use the camcorder for five minutes. Ivan insists he didn’t know about the affair. He admits he heard a conversation between Laurette and Ellis that made him seem they were together. Marlon shows Neville a video of Laurette walking toward the substation on the kids’ camcorder. Later, Neville says they know Laurette was with Ellis on the day of his death. Darlene insists the Laurette she knows wouldn’t hurt a fly. She is pretty sure she was Laurette at The Hub and it looked like she was running away. When they confront her, Laurette apologizes for running away. She says it wasn’t really an affair. It was just a drunken one-night stand and another. Laurette told Ellis he had to make a choice because it was making Petra miserable.
Ellis asked Laurette to leave with him. He changed his mind and asked Petra to marry him. When Laruette went to the substation, Ellis was dismantling whatever he’d done to steal the electricity. He told her he wasn’t going to throw away what he had with Petra because of a mistake. Laurette was desperate and didn’t want to believe she was a mistake so she told him she was pregnant with his baby. She threatened to tell Petra about the affair and everything. Laurette insists Ellis was alive when she left so she believes he killed himself. She explains he came after her, gave her the necklace, and said she’d know what to do with it. Laurette wants Petra to take it. In private, Neville says they should give the wallet to Petra. He doubts anyone can access it without the private key.
Neville says there is nothing else to do but to recommend the coroner rule Ellis’s death a suicide. At home, Neville has a scare with water and electricity. He calls Naomi and asks her to get the team back in right away. Once they gather, Neville says he thinks lightning may have struck twice. He shows them the key to the case before saying they should gather the suspects. Neville tells everyone that the case begins and ends with power. Naomi questions how Ellis came in contact with the live wires. Neville says Ellis was murdered by one of them. He begins talking about having the willpower to plan the murder. Neville says it was Ellis’s love for Petra that cost him his life. Only Chayce worked out that the rig had pulled a lot more money. Neville said it was Laurette because she figured out the key.
They got the private key. Darlene says access to the wallet revealed that the TallyUm was sold earlier this morning and the money was moved to a private offshore account under Laurette’s name. Laurette is the only other one who knew what Ellis had created because they managed the entire operation together. Ellis was having second thoughts about leaving together because he was in love with Petra. They believe Ellis gave Laurette the key because he didn’t care anymore. It was “I love Petra” repeated to form 256 binary numbers. They speculate that Ellis died much earlier than the power cut. They accuse Laurette of following Ellis to the substation as he was dismantling the abstraction materials. She allegedly pushed him onto the wires. Chayce explains Ellis disabled the protective measures to prevent the power from going out then.
Then, Laurette allegedly set it up to make it look like Ellis was electrocuted later. Neville explains she likely unplugged the cord and plunged it into water. The electricity was reversed causing a massive short-out and explosion. Laurette insists it wasn’t personal because it was all about money. Darlene arrests her. Later, Darlene tells Neville she wants to apologize for letting Laurette use her. Neville believes her empathy is her strength. Moments later, Selwyn tells Neville that Rebecca has no unsupervised access to the internet. Sunset Chaser must be a fan after all. Neville decides to contact Sunset Chaser back.
Death In Paradise Review
Death In Paradise has really hit a rough patch like Father Brown and other shows that have continued well past their expiration dates. If the drop in quality isn’t evident now, it will be soon enough. In some ways, the investigations still have some clever twists even if there are far too many of them. However, there is no oomph and no real connection between viewers and the characters.
There has to be someone to cheer for at some point, but this series hasn’t provided that at all. The personal dramas have become nonexistent unless it is to belittle Neville who is already difficult to like. The dead are becoming props without giving viewers any real urgency to find out what happened to them. After 13 series, the formula has become incredibly stale and even more so because the characters lack personality and depth.
This may still be a viable, brainless way to waste an hour, but the series has hardly justified continuing beyond this point. 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.
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