Joel Fry-days: Death in Paradise: Series 4, Episode 2 (2015)

I’ve been aware of Death in Paradise as a long-running British murder mystery show—when you spend enough time on IMDb, you get used to seeing it pop up on British actors’ pages, along with Midsomer Murders, Marple or Poirot, and stuff like that. This is the first episode of it that I’ve actually watched, though.

Very quickly, the series is set on Saint Marie, a fictional Caribbean island that’s part of the British Commonwealth. It follows the local police force, headed by a white British inspector from Scotland Yard. By series 4, that’s DI Humphrey Goodman. In this episode, he leads his team on investigating a puzzling locked-room mystery involving the murder of a surf instructor.

Besides Joel Fry, there are a few other familiar faces in the cast. Goodman is played by Kris Marshall, who I remember best from playing the horny guy desperate to go to the U.S. in Love, Actually (on the grounds that American girls go wild for sexy English accents.) Needless to say, this is a very different role for him. His fellow officers describe Goodman as “brilliant” but “very English,” a euphemistic catchall for his various eccentricities. It’s kind of standard detective stuff: he takes notes at the crime scene on scratch paper despite offers to borrow a notepad, he climbs onto the counter to examine something while another officer is sharing his theory, and he lapses into non sequiturs while musing on the case. And if we want to get really specific about it, he does a Columbo-esque, “Oh, one last thing,” after his initial meeting with the main suspects, and the episode wraps up with a Miss Marple-style “gather everyone together so I can dramatically explain how I solved the case.”

The murdered surf instructor, Jake, is played by Dean Lennox Kelley—I’ve seen him in all kinds of things now, ranging from Shadow and Bone to guest-starring as Shakespeare on new Who, but I still know him best as Kev on Shameless. And Jake’s best friend Karl is played by Will Mellor, who worked with Joel Fry on White Van Man! That’s right, it’s Ollie himself!

The episode is all right. Rather helpfully for me, one of the officers, Florence, was new for series 4, so there are multiple scenes of other characters giving her the lay of the land, particularly about Goodman and how he operates. Not that it’s a difficult show to get a feel for, but I appreciate the added context as I jump into the middle. Some interesting stuff with the mystery, although I guessed a major part of the resolution some time before Goodman got there and the final twist feels too out-there for me.. Most of the characters on the scene at the time of the murder—Jake’s wife, best friend, and surfing students—have a potential motive, while the locked-room aspect of the mystery keeps posing a challenge for the police. 

Joel Fry plays Steve Taylor, an up-and-coming pro surfer who’d been working on some finer points with Jake. While the police force is mostly Black islanders led by the white English Goodman, Steve is the only “local boy” in the group of suspects, surrounded by white English expats and tourists. The racial dynamics on either side aren’t noted at all, but I noticed it.

Although most of his screentime is either at the start or the end of the episode, the subject of Steve comes up a lot for the police during the investigation. The initial rundown of the suspects mentions that he’s had “the odd run-in as a juvenile, but nothing recent,” and that description kind of follows him through the story. It’s the running question—can he be trusted? Has he really cleaned up his act? But we never learn about what kind of past run-ins Steve had with the law, so we don’t know if it was any type of violent crime. Whatever it is, it’s not enough for the police to really zero in on him over the other suspects, and as a result, they talk about him more often than they talk to him. Also, we see them question the others but search Steve’s van.

It’s hard to review an actor’s guest appearance in a crime procedural without getting into spoilers, so I’ll stay kind of general. I like Steve’s reaction during the discovery of the murder. When Goodman is initially interviewing the whole group together, I like that Steve feels the need to clarify to the cops that he wasn’t really one of Jake’s students, saying, “Actually, I’m a pro. I’m just here for some fine-tuning with the main man.” His later interactions with the police feel logical for what little we know about his character, and Fry’s performance makes them feel genuine. And since it’s a murder mystery that’s kind of a light dramedy, we get some nice physicality with a fun bit of gangly running!

Accent Watch

Caribbean. I’m not familiar enough to pinpoint anything more specific than that, and again, Saint Marie isn’t a real island. I’ll admit, to my untrained ears, it sounds kind of dubious.

Recommend?

In General - Soft maybe, if you’re into detective procedurals. It struck me as fine.

Joel Fry - Not a must, since his role is fairly small. It’s still enjoyable, though.

Warnings

Violence, sexual references, drinking, and thematic elements.

Other Doctor Lives: Caught Stealing (2025, R)

I caught this movie in theaters just a week after I saw The Roses, so that’s fun—two Doctors in new movies that are out at the same time! Matt Smith has just slightly more screentime here than Ncuti Gatwa does in The Roses, although his is more condensed. He definitely has more to do, though! While this role is small, it’s both pivotal and memorable.

Hank, a former high school baseball star whose pro dreams were cut short by tragedy, has no idea what he’s getting himself into when his neighbor Russ foists an emergency cat-sitting gig on him. Now shady characters are trying to break into Russ’s apartment—they’re after something, and they’re convinced that Hank knows about it.

I find that Darren Aronofsky is a director that I often appreciate more than I enjoy. His films are undeniably well made, but I sometimes have trouble connecting with them emotionally. I didn’t realize this was one of his until the end credits, at which point I thought, That makes sense. It took me a long time to get into Caught Stealing, probably until the second half of the story, even as I recognized the strong acting and how well it conveyed the feeling of this grimy 1990s New York City atmosphere. A lot of the characters didn’t really grab me, including Hank himself, which made it hard for me to get invested.

Hank is a very damaged character whose damage is extremely self-evident. The hints of the tragedy that changed the direction of his life aren’t subtle, and the main things we learn about him—obsessed with the San Francisco Giants, mama’s boy, drinks heavily to deal with his regrets—are immediately writ large. Austin Butler gets the job done in the lead role, but it’s not until Hank starts becoming more proactive in the story that I begin to feel for him. I’m more sympathetic to his sort-of girlfriend Yvonne, played by Zoe Kravitz. Yvonne is a long-suffering paramedic who’s tired of Hank’s self-destructive merry-go-round, and she struggles to offer him empathy without enabling him. Unfortunately, the character is underused and ultimately functions in service to Hank’s story.

The cast is stacked pretty deep. We get Regina King as a no-nonsense NYPD detective, along with Vincent D’Onofro and Liev Schreiber as a pair of Hasidic mobsters. Benito Martinez Ocasio (a.k.a. Bad Bunny) plays a drug kingpin, while Carol Kane, Laura Dern, and Tenoch Huerta (Namor!) make brief appearances. I was excited to see D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, who I loved as Bear on Reservation Dogs, in the credits, but his role is very small as well—he plays a figure from Hank’s past, one who only appears in the flashbacks in Hank’s traumatic dreams.

Matt Smith plays Russ, the neighbor who gets Hank into this mess. Every inch a London punk, Russ is all emotion and aggravation and “go ahead, try me.” He sets off the story with a whirlwind, announcing that Hank needs to watch his cat while he flies to the U.K. to visit his father in the hospital.

As the film wore on, I started to worry that this was going to be Smith’s only scene, that Russ had set the ball rolling, disappeared offscreen, and wouldn’t come back. But he does pop up again later in the film. Smith and Butler play off each other really well—by this point, Hank is both freaked out and pissed off, and Russ somehow manages to understand the full gravity of their current situation while almost completely discounting the hell that he’s put Hank through. Their scenes together lend a slightly madcap air to the action that’s a lot of fun.

Accent Watch

London.

Recommend?

In General – A cautious maybe. The performances are all good, and from a technical standpoint, it’s very well-made. It’s not really a film for me, but it might be more up other people’s alley.

Matt Smith – I might. Even though it’s a fairly small role, I love Smith’s irreverent energy in it. The film definitely holds my interest the best whenever he’s onscreen.

Warnings

Graphic violence (including torture,) sexual content, language, drinking/smoking/drug use, and strong thematic elements.

Dexter: New Blood (2021-2022)

 

*Premise spoilers.*

I resisted this show for quite a while. To be fair, I haven’t had ShowTime since Black Monday ended, so I didn’t have a convenient means to watch it. But I’m wary of TV revivals in general, and while I loved the original Dexter, it varied a lot in quality throughout the different seasons. Over the last few years, my brother and I have joked about the expanding “Dexter Cinematic Universe.”

But then I picked up Paramount+ with ShowTime for a while—my immediate motives were Joel Fry-based, although there was other stuff I wanted to check out too—and I wondered whether I wanted to include the new Dexter shows. When I found out that Peter Dinklage is in Resurrection, that clinched the deal. I wanted to go back and start with the first of the new series, though. I went nervously into New Blood, but I wound up enjoying it more than I thought I might.

Years after faking his death, Dexter Morgan has cultivated a safe, simple life for himself in a sleepy little hunting town in upstate New York. He has an assumed name, sticks to his routines, and is dating the police chief. When he “slips,” it’s with the worst possible person (the A-hole son of an important local businessman) at the worst possible time (his teenage son Harrison has just shown up looking for answers.) As his girlfriend Angela starts the search for the missing man in the woods near Dexter’s cabin, he tries to stay one step ahead of the investigation while also navigating his strained relationship with Harrison.

In a way, it actually helps that Dexter’s quality rises and dips across the years. That show trained me to kind of view each season as its own separate unit, where even the worst ones are still anchored by Michael C. Hall’s always-excellent performance as Dexter. From that perspective, I’d call New Blood a pretty decent midrange season for the series-turned-franchise.

The main mystery/antagonist is good—suitably creepy, and this story leads to some nice showdowns. It’s interesting to see Dexter scrambling to cover his tracks when he’s gotten rusty and makes some clumsy mistakes you wouldn’t have seen from him at his height. I like some of the Harrison story, especially Dexter’s desire to connect with his son feuding with his need to protect his secrets. I like Angela as the largest police presence in the show, along with the thread about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. And yeah, it’s just great to watch Hall do his thing. He’s always been so great as this character!

On the other hand, I’m not a fan of using Deb as Dexter’s inner voice/conscience/headmate/whatever the person Dexter talks to in his head is. I feel like they kind of overdo that whole thing—I was never overly fond of the device when he used to do it with Harry, and I don’t think it works that well with Deb. Some of the Harrison stuff gets a little rote, and while I like some of the characters introduced for this series, others feel too tropey to me. And although I really like the idea of including a true crime podcaster, I think the execution is too cheesy.

Besides Hall, Jennifer Carpenter’s noncorporeal Deb is the only main actor from the original series to carry over, although we also get some brief callbacks and cameos. Jack Alcott does a nice job as Harrison—his interactions with Hall are very good. For the new characters/actors, I particularly like Julia Jones as Angel and the consistently-reliable Clancy Brown as Kurt, the father of Dexter’s “slip.”

On the whole, a mixed bag, but I’d say I liked it more than disliked it. As I said, it’s still watching Hall do his thing as Dexter, and you can never go totally wrong there.

Warnings

Strong violence (including offscreen depictions of rape,) strong thematic content (including allusions to child sexual abuse and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Woman,) language, and drinking/smoking/drug use.