Ralf Little has teased that his Death in Paradise character DI Neville Parker will be pushed “out of his comfort zone” in the upcoming 11th season.
The new season is set to include a skydiving sequence, which the more introverted Neville will be at the centre of (although it’s not officially confirmed whether the character will definitely jump out of the plane…).
Little, who has played the Saint-Marie detective since season nine, also teased that Commissioner Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington) “really enjoys making Neville uncomfortable” – as we’ll see in the season opener.
“We’ve established who this guy [Neville] is and what he’s good at and what he isn’t. That said, you’ve always got to challenge characters otherwise they get – it just gets too repetitive,” Little explained during a press event attended by RadioTimes.com.
“It’s always nice to put him out of his comfort zone. [And] in this week’s episode, the Commissioner in particular… really enjoys making Neville as uncomfortable and out of his comfort zone as possible. When Florence does that, it’s like to help him [Neville] out. Whereas the Commissioner has just got a cruel streak.”
At the same press event, Death in Paradise’s executive producer Tim Key teased that the skydiving sequence would be “very true to Neville”.
He said: “We have a skydiving episode, where there was a way of doing it without doing the skydiving but we really wanted to do the skydiving… At the very last minute, everything just fell into place.
“Our amazing line producer and producer kind of made it all happen. And the skydiving team helped us out and we managed to get this incredible footage of that – the bit that I think the audience would be thinking, ‘They never really did it’. And then you’ll see that we did! All I will say is that the entire sequence is very true to Neville.”
Death in Paradise returns with series 11 on Friday, 7th January at 9pm on BBC One. Check out what else is on with our TV guide, and take a look at the rest of our Drama coverage.