Death in Paradise

Murder in the Polls - S6-E8

Plot hole: When we see the murder happen in flashback, the killer stabs the victim wearing no gloves whatsoever, nor wipes the handle. In a very sportsman conduct, the victim also decides not to literally scream bloody murder as he gets stabbed, nor make any sort of sudden, noise inducing movement that would have instantly exposed what was happening. He gives their killer, apparently, all the time to go back to their accomplice before Catherine notices the blood pouring on the floor - how rude of him to silently bleed all over the booth without cleaning after himself. (00:41:45)

Sammo

Murder in the Polls - S6-E8

Plot hole: The murder happens where and when it happens because the candidate "is a very busy man", and apparently then the best course of action to kill him is doing it while he is casting his vote. At this operation, involving the other 2 candidates for the role, there is no press nor any normal voter, for no reason - not safety since Dwayne was not expected. Had they introduced the rich Victor Pearce as some sort of mobster surrounded by bodyguards, it would have been an acceptable plot idea, but the guy travels with his son as sole member of the staff and nothing about his characterization leads the viewer to believe that the only chance to murder him is for a rotund 62 years old lady in clogs to perform a Metal Gear stunt sneaking in undetected while a priest is facing the other way for 5 seconds and pray that nobody else shows up at the voting booth and all the others are taking their time to put a cross on a piece of paper.

Sammo

In the Footsteps of a Killer - S6-E7

Plot hole: Somehow, Jack is so lax in his investigation that he does not ask any detail about the sales representative supposedly the husband had an affair with and that he ended (which could have very well been a suspect nobody considered before, since he ended the relationship to stay with his wife...had she existed, but Jack can't know that he's lying!), but has acquired DNA from Ian Matlock to run an overnight test on the hair sample (which we have to assume was complete with follicles and still in test shape after 8 years in a bag).

Sammo

In the Footsteps of a Killer - S6-E7

Plot hole: Spoiler. The killer needs to get rid of two women. One is his mistress that he just dumped and is acting psychotic about it, the other is his wife. He kills the wife and makes it look like it was his mistress to murder her. So she goes to jail, where she will die two years later due to pneumonia...and in all this time, she never once says anything about the affair! He has been extraordinarily lucky, because had she said anything, and she had absolutely no reason not to in her circumstances, the case would have not been so open-and-close, they would have considered the idea that he could have been an accomplice, but even assuming the past detective (which DI Richard Poole called a good detective) was a total fool, at the very least Jack and his team would have found a trace of this controversial alleged affair in the files and solved the case much earlier. But no, the plan was to send his mistress to jail and that somehow made her cease to be a threat to him, when instead she'd have been much more dangerous to him.

Sammo

In the Footsteps of a Killer - S6-E7

Plot hole: The original murder went unnoticed because of extraordinary incompetence of the police; even if they did not have the ingenuity to extrapolate the background noise, they still had to investigate how a murderer would have gotten away with a corpse in the middle of a carnival, but the issue is never raised. More importantly, the last phone call of the victim came from a place 40 minutes away from the city, which would mean a different cell tower - and since they needed to track down the body that never turned out, monitoring the phone the last call came from is standard procedure.

Sammo

Stumped in Murder - S6-E4

Plot hole: The big climax of the episode involves Humphrey arriving at 1 PM to escort Martha to the airport as he promised, finding the shack empty with a parting letter from her and rushing on Dwayne's motorbike to catch her plane, failing to do so. All very cinematic, but that means that had Martha not left early, she could have not caught the plane at all.

Sammo

The Impossible Murder - S6-E3

Plot hole: With a deadly stab wound he put pressure on with a thin, blood-soaked scarf, the victim shed a couple of droplets on the floor, but did not leave a single bloody fingerprint on the items parts of the deception.

Sammo

The Secret of the Flame Tree - S6-E2

Plot hole: For the murder to happen as described, the victim must have set an appointment at the cliff with a mentally ill, barely coherent person who spends her life holed up in a bungalow and is afraid of everyone, trusting her to remember and be on time - instead of knocking at her door and walk her to the location, that is very close. It's a complete absurdity.

Sammo

Man Overboard: Part 2 - S6-E6

Plot hole: The big locked room mystery is such only because the detectives build it up as one; they don't make any remark about the fact that the door can be locked from inside without the need of a key, they don't check the door frame or the lock (which would have revealed that it was bashed open while unlocked) and they do not even consider for a moment the idea that someone could have made a copy of the keys, which is the first thing anyone would have assumed. Not just that; nobody on the floor who has been working at the bank for years says anything about some cleaning lady they haven't ever seen before and that happens to be the first respondant to the murder.

Sammo

Episode #1.5 - S1-E5

Plot hole: Leon Hamilton is the most hated man in Sainte Marie, with over 900 people on the island conned by him. Yet exactly one person in the whole island knows how he looks like, every newspaper and website never ever published a picture of him even during the very public trial when they were trying to get their thousands of dollars back nor publish an archive picture after his death.

Sammo

More mistakes in Death in Paradise
More quotes from Death in Paradise

Erupting in Murder - S6-E1

Trivia: A bit of the episode has been cut for the streaming releases; at the end of the scene with Humphrey taking Martha's luggage, he would make a date with her for the next day, to cook dinner for her at 8. This has been eliminated probably because it created timing issues with 8 PM being too well lit (in contrast with the supposed timing of the murder) and the ending takes place at Catherine's for a cute drinking scene anyway. (00:22:50)

Sammo

More trivia for Death in Paradise

Show generally

Question: When Richard reminisces about England, he talks about going to the pub and having a pint. Yet the whole time he's in Saint Marie, he is never seen to drink alcohol with the rest of the team; only cups of tea. Why?

Answer: Most likely they had only tropical exotic drinks, he wanted an old fashioned English beer.

More questions & answers from Death in Paradise

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.