Uh oh!

By Abby Robinson

Published: Friday, 05 April 2024 at 20:00 PM


Beyond Paradise’s Shipton Abbott police station has been threatened with closure for some time now following a shift towards a centralised hub, which Kris Marshall (Humphrey Goodman) previously described as an “existential threat”.

“Everything is on a one-way track to being homogenised and centralised, and so that obviously removes the soul of community policing, which is something that’s close to Humphrey’s heart,” he told RadioTimes.com and other press.

“And because of that, the station house, their mini, quirky station house, is directly under threat from being assimilated into the hub.

“How that resolves itself, we’ll just have to find out, but it’s an ongoing thing.”

Alongside the question of whether the merger will go through, there’s also doubt surrounding what that means for the employees of the town’s police station. Namely: are their roles secure?

“You honestly think they could get rid of one of us?” asked a concerned Kelby (Dylan Llewellyn) in the teaser for next week’s episode.

“The chief super said nothing is off the table,” responded Margo.

The cast of Beyond Paradise gathered in the police station
The cast of Beyond Paradise.
BBC

During an interview with RadioTimes.com and other press before season 2 arrived, Felicity Montagu, who plays Margo, said that she doesn’t “think it would have occurred” to her character that she could be the first to go “if they moved”.

In Montagu’s words, she believes herself to be “the central engine of that station”.

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But while acknowledging that Margo could be in for “a very big shock”, she is “very useful”.

“Even if you go to the headquarters, they’ve got to have someone to answer the phones,” said Montagu. “She thinks she’s needed, and I think she is.”

Zahra Ahmadi (DS Esther Williams) added: “They wouldn’t survive without her.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” she agreed. “Not as it stands at the moment….”

But the actor did go on to say that she believes “the station will probably stay as it is”.

There certainly wouldn’t be much of a show if they all upped and left…