You might not immediately recognise Anna Samson without her sun-soaked, sandy backdrop and her signature waistcoat. The 35-year-old actor made her British primetime telly debut last year as the stony-faced sleuth Mackenzie Clarke, who solves murders in the Death in Paradise spin-off Return to Paradise. Like the original cosy crime series, her show – set down-under in Australia’s fictional Dolphin Cove – garnered millions of viewers for the BBC and cemented Samson as a “Paraverse” star, as well as its first leading lady. “A female lead hasn’t changed the DNA of the show at all,” she affirms, as the mystery series gears up for its second instalment. “And it hasn’t lost us viewership, thank goodness. Death in Paradise viewers are sophisticated.”
They are also deeply devoted. Death in Paradise has been running for 14 seasons and counting, and has also spawned another spin-off, Beyond Paradise. Some have criticised the franchise for its predictable plot lines, but it might be precisely because of its formulaic, easy-watching nature that it is so loved. “You see, a lot of people say that the programme is like escapism for them,” Samson reflects of Return to Paradise’s popularity. “In the world at the moment, it’s quite rare that justice is served; that the bad guys get got – Mackenzie’s always going to get her baddie and there’s something comforting in that, in a world that doesn’t offer us much ease of justice.”
