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Your questions were answered by Tim Key and James Hall from Death in Paradise.

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Hello and welcome to "Ask the Write Questions" with Tim Key and James Hall, a podcast from 大象传媒 Writersroom. If you haven’t watched Death in Paradise, all episodes are available to view on 大象传媒 iPlayer now or there may be some spoilers!

In this series we asked you the viewer to send in questions for Tim and James about their latest show and their writing career. We’ve collated all your questions, thrown them into a bowl and we’re going to ask them to choose them now at random – they’re not sure what is coming next…

Tim Key: Hello. I'm Tim Key. I'm the Executive Producer of Death in Paradise. Very nice to be here and with me is James Hall.
James Hall: Hello. I’m James Hall and I'm a writer on Death in Paradise. And I'm also the story consultant. It's really good to be here.
Tim Key: So James and I have worked together on the show for quite a long time now and we also worked together in a past life at The Bill, where I was Series Producer and James was Series Script Editor, I think, and also produced episodes. I started out working in Liverpool at what was then Mersey TV, working on Brookside and Hollyoaks and stuff like that. I’ve worked on Emmerdale since then, and then The Bill, Waterloo Road. I produced the second series of Death in Paradise. I then produced another series for the 大象传媒 and Red Planet Pictures (who are the company that make Death in Paradise). And then I came back to Death in Paradise as Executive Producer on season four. I've been there ever since.

James Hall: Yeah, I started many years ago as a runner on a kids’ TV drama and then I worked in casting for a little bit as a Casting Director up in Manchester and that's when I realised I wanted to work on scripts and got some work story lining and script editing on some shows up north. I did a little bit on Coronation Street, worked on Emmerdale and then worked as a Script Editor on EastEnders. Then that's when I joined The Bill as a Script Editor and did some producing as well on that show. A few years later, I reunited with Tim here at Red Planet on Death in Paradise. I joined as a Story Producer and then having done a few series, I started to write as well. And now, I story consult on a part-time basis and write episodes for Death in Paradise as well.
Tim Key: Thank you to everyone who sent questions.

How tricky is it coming up with fresh murder scenarios on a small island?

Tim Key: My short answer is incredibly tricky, really, really tricky. I think it's the, without a single doubt, the biggest creative challenge every year is, not so much the murder scenarios, but the puzzle, the trick. The trick is the thing that's the hardest, and creating six, at least usually six suspects. Each one of whom has a motive and one of whom has two motives - because there's one that takes you to them in the first place and then the other one, which is the actual reason they did it. And it's probably the biggest misunderstanding about the show when everyone talks about it being a whodunnit. It's really a howdunnit - and the “how” is always the hardest part. Thinking of a world in which to set the crime is, we think, quite easy and quite often people come to us with a sort of headline puzzle, but without a solution. So, without a shadow of a doubt, the trick is the hardest part of the entire thing in my opinion and keeping coming up with them is really, really difficult.

James Hall: Yeah. It is. It's really hard. I think it only gets harder because the more episodes we make the more our audience become perhaps savvy to the kind of tricks we use. So, it only gets harder because we have to think up new methods and there's kind of no rules to it. It's kind of a very hard thing to approach. Every trick and every world presents its own different kind of choices and every season it’s as daunting as it is the previous season.

What is your top advice for screenwriters trying to break into the industry?

James Hall: That's a tough one. I would say, I think there are different ways to do it. And I would say maybe don't rule out any possible route. There are lots of theatres that have writing schemes. Maybe if you want to write for telly, don't necessarily rule out theatre. There’s a lot of great TV writers have a background in theatre. So, I think that's a possibility. I would say any opportunity that gives you a chance to write, take it. Whether it's a poetry evening somewhere or a writing competition or entering a piece for a magazine. I think, do anything because it’s just writing that’s important and practising writing. You only get better at it the more you do. And, I think, if you put yourself out there, that's when you start to meet people and get to know people and start to generate a kind of momentum for your own career. So, I say, don't rule anything out really. Even if your ultimate aim is to write for television, try your hand at everything and anything because it's all practice and it's all experience. In terms of beyond that, I mean for me, I got into it as a Script Editor. I came in from the other side. I didn't set out to be a writer in life, it kind of found me. So, the benefits of that, I've seen it from the other side and you get good experience in editing other people's scripts which mean, you learn a lot about structure and character voices and how TV drama works. So, I'd say that's an option as well. There are many routes to it. I would say, just try all and any of them because there's no one defined way to get to writing for telly.

What was your favourite TV show as a child?

Tim Key: I did like the A-Team. I mean, I did.
James Hall: Yeah, I liked it when they made something in The A-Team, when they made a contraption.
Tim Key: My favourite one was they made a contraption that fired cabbages. They were trapped in a barn and they made something and it just blew cabbages out of a hose at people.
James Hall: I remember that one.
Tim Key: It was very good.
James Hall: I think this is where I've ended up in the right job. I used to love Poirot on a Sunday night when I was about... I don’t know, 10 or 11. That really got me into murder mystery and Agatha Christie.
Tim Key: There was a great 大象传媒 drama that really haunted me called Maelstrom that I watched when I was a kid. It was a 大象传媒, I think it was a co-production and part of it was set in Holland, or Denmark. I can't remember. And it had this incredibly spooky thing where there was this house this woman had inherited and it have dolls in it. She went to visit it, and each time she went back something had moved and you didn't know if it was haunted or what. I remember that made a profound impression on me because there was something, like James said there’s something quite cool, especially when you're young, about being quite scared and I remember that being quite scary. Mainly I'd say it was the A-Team and Monkey Magic.
James Hall: I think it was just called Monkey, wasn’t it?
Tim Key: Was it? I don't know.

What inspired you both to work on Death in Paradise?

Tim Key: Well, in my in my case. It was originally it was producing job. I got approached about producing the second series of the show. I was excited about the idea of working abroad. It was the second series which is quite an important factor because a first series is exciting, but when you take on the second series you're sort of inheriting something that has learnt from its mistakes and systems are in place and people are a little more confident about what the show actually is. And there's the opportunity to, kind of, hone it and really bring it home. So, I did it as what I thought was a one-off gig in 2012, I think… I’ve lost track of time now. I spent six months out in Guadeloupe, which was wonderful. It was very hard work. It was much harder than I thought it was going to be, but it was very rewarding. When I finished, I said goodbye to it and saw post production through and moved on to the next job. But something about the show kind of gets under your skin a little bit and the response to it was really exciting too and you quite quickly realised that there aren't that many programmes that have such affection amongst the audience and that people kind of look forward to viewing. So, when I got asked - I was in touch with Red Planet still because I was working on another show for them - and they asked if I'd come back and exec it in the fourth series. It was sort of a no-brainer really.

James Hall: I kind of echo all of that. I think, in terms of what inspires us still on it is, is surprising our audience and delivering them even better episodes than we've delivered before. I guess that we try and make it as fresh and joyful and imaginative and bold as we can for each series. So I think that's where the inspiration comes from - is our genuine love of it, the passion for it and hopefully kind of delivering all of that through the episodes for our audience and keep them as engaged with it in the way that we are.

Which superpower do you wish you had and why?

Tim Key: Sometimes professionally, I wish I had the superpower of speed reading. That would help.
James Hall: That’s a good one.
Tim Key: But mainly, I just wish I could fly. Just like Orville. I just wish, the power of flight would be very handy, especially now during lock down. I'd just whizz up into the sky.
James Hall: Invisibility would be quite cool. I quite like creeping around and people not knowing.
Tim Key: I'm not having that.

As Death in Paradise and many other shows are written by multiple people, how do TV writers keep characterisation consistent between each episode?

Tim Key: James might have a slightly different opinion on this to me. I think that that is part of the responsibility of people like me, I guess; the Execs and the Producers – to make sure that when you've got lots of different people writing a show that there is a consistency of tone and that someone is responsible for sort of overseeing it and pulling it all together, and making sure it all feels like part of the same thing. And it's not just my responsibility, by any stretch of the imagination. You have a Script Editor. You have a story team. You have a Producer. You have consultants like James. Some of our writers have written the show before and obviously come to it with more knowledge of the format and the characters. The actors themselves are always heavily invested in their own characters and very quick to kind of tell you if they feel that something is sort of deviating from what their character would say or do. And obviously you're always employing writers who have studied the show and watched it and read it. And I do feel like the team that remains constant or more constant on the show are probably the custodians of it, to ensure that by giving the notes that we give everything feels like it's part of one consistent series. Do you think that's fair, James?

James Hall: I think that's absolutely the case. There is a great team, script team here whose one of their main jobs is to make sure that there is character consistency. I'd say, in terms of the writers who are kind of new to the show, we're quite strict with them in that we’ll make sure they watch lots of episodes and we’ll make them read lots of scripts, and make sure they get it under their skin, so they can enjoy it more than anything. It's only when you really sort of know our characters in the world that you can run with it. So, we do as much as we can to support them.

Tim Key: What's funny is that, I know everyone who works on the show will always say this, but I feel like our show is deceptively hard. I think when we've nailed it, you watch it and it seems like the easiest thing in the world. It's an easy view. It's a very traditional genre. It should in the best possible way, sort of wash over you like a kind of warm bath. It should be a real treat to watch and you shouldn't be watching it going “God, this must have been hard to make’. It should seem effortless and one of the things that happens quite commonly is that people, whether it's writers (as it's quite often writers) but it can be directors and producers as well. When they come on board, they think it's going to be much easier than it is, and they don't expect necessarily the kind of rigour, we subject every single script to such intense scrutiny to make sure that that puzzle is watertight, that the investigation is watertight and it feels fresh and exciting and different. And when we get it right, it should appear fairly easy when you watch it. Even if the puzzle itself might seem quite complicated, the execution of it should appear fairly effortless, but the reality is quite different.

James Hall: It wrongfoots everyone who works on the show, myself included
Tim Key: And me!

You’ve had quite a turnaround of main protagonists how you approach each new character? Do you know in advance which actor will join before writing for them?

Tim Key: In terms of the main characters, again it's a collaboration. We'll have an idea for a type. If you take our current detective, Neville, for example, we knew broadly speaking the type of character we wanted to bring in. We knew the energy that we wanted that character to bring and we knew why that character needed to be different to, particularly to Jack who had been the detective before, but also our other detectives. So, we had some headlines and we had some directions of travel. But then when you find the actor, you interrogate it even more. You start to really put flesh on the bones of that character around the actor that you've got, and I always feel like, you know, it's half a journey until you've got an actor playing the character. And even then you are still finding the detail of that character as you move forward. So, for the main cast, I would say that's largely how we work. We know that there's a type that we want. We know that there's an energy that we want them to bring. We look at who's out there and available. And then we meet with some people and flesh the character out more beyond that.

I've written a speculative screenplay for an episode of Death in Paradise, what would be the best way to get it considered by the producers of the programme?

Tim Key: This is really difficult because obviously you know you want to find new ideas and find new writers, but at the same time we are constantly coming up with ideas and you never want them to be a sort of horrible grey area where something that we're already working on lands on a desk unsolicited from somebody. And we know there's a slight kind of grey area of who created what, and how it worked. It's really tricky because on one hand, we want to be incredibly open to receiving ideas from people, but we do not want to find ourselves in a situation where somebody could say “Well, I sent that in and now you've developed something similar” when it was actually just a total coincidence. So that's me being really honest. I don't know what you think James. Probably for me the best thing to do would be to get in touch with a headline with a sentence or something like that. And if we've got something on the go like it already, we can just be very honest with you and say you know, we can't consider this. We can't look at this because we're already doing something like it. That's why most places, don't want unsolicited screenplays. But at the same time, what most places do want is to find the next generation of writers and programme makers. So, it's a very difficult one. It really is.

James Hall: Yeah. I'd say, not to sound too harsh, but I'd say if you're writing a spec script, I would not write a spec script of an episode of something. I'd write a spec script of your own choice and devising, your own show, what your dream kind of project would be. Because when you send that in to companies or agents it will show what you do, what's in your heart, more than an episode of someone else's show. And will obviously exhibit your voice and your talent and your own writing style, more than emulating another show. That would be my advice, is to not write a spec script of Death in Paradise or another show. But, yeah, write what you want to write, the show that you'd like to see on television.
Tim Key: I think that's a really good answer.

Describe your writing style in three words.

Tim Key: Well, I'm going to leave that to the writer to answer.
James Hall: I don't know. It's tricky. I don't know if I'm slightly avoiding the question. Yeah, but I don't think of myself as having a writing style. I know what kind of genres I like and they're sort of all of the same family in that I love crime and murder mystery and thrillers and horror and I'd say there's a kind of crossover between all of those. The kind of writing that I enjoy most is when I'm writing scenes or scripts that are just playing with people's expectations and anticipation and teasing them and using, I guess, mystery and a little bit of spookiness to toy with the audience. I'd say that's the kind of writing that I enjoy.
Tim Key: This year is our tenth anniversary and James wrote the two episodes that were at the heart of the series this year. We don't often do two-parters, although we have done them before. They're incredibly difficult to do in our show. It's very much a self-contained story of the week show. Although we've increasingly serialised the show over the years, creating a true two-part story is very hard. To try in that two-parter, reward our loyal, long term viewers and pay tribute to the history of the show, but also not to feel like we're wallowing in the past and that we are moving things forward is, is really difficult and James nailed it. The feedback on that two-parter has quite rightly been that it's amongst the best stuff we've ever done, I think, and the ratings back that up as well.
James Hall: The nice thing about writing for Death in Paradise is that you get to do a little bit of everything in most of the episodes. We are a murder mystery show, so there are spooky moments, there are heightened high-drama moments and emotional scenes and we have a little bit of comedy as well. It's a show that requires a lot of the writer, but that's really the joy of it as well. You get to flex a lot of muscles.

Who would you choose to play you in a movie and why?

Tim Key: Well, there’s who you’d choose and there’s who you’d get, isn't there? They're two different things.
James Hall: Speak for yourself. I would choose… I choose Bob Mortimer, because I’m told occasionally that I look a little bit like him and we both have not much hair left. Yeah. And I'm a big fan of his, so I think I'd go for Bob Mortimer, even though he's a little bit older than me.
Tim Key: I think that's inspired casting and then for that reason, then I'll go for Matt Allwright off The One Show on the grounds that all I ever get is that I look like Matt Allwright off The One Show. I met him once and told him that everyone told me that I look like him and he told me that we didn't look anything like each other. So, you know, he can still play me in the movie of my life.

How do you keep an audience interested when the attention span is decreasing nowadays?

Tim Key: My cat has chosen this exact moment to scratch the chair to highlight that point. How do you keep an audience interested when he attention span is decreasing nowadays?
James Hall: I think we're quite naturally, we're very naturally interested in surprising our audience and not repeating ourselves and thinking, “What's the new thing we could do here?” “What's new ground for Death in Paradise?” I think, I hope we're quite good at that because like with the series we've just done for the tenth anniversary, we brought back a couple of characters from the past. We did a full two-parter which was very different to the two-parters we've done before. We tried some new tricks, some new murders. We're sort of constantly checking ourselves and making sure that we're not repeating ourselves. It's about being vigilant. I think that if you're interested in, if you're enjoying a show and loving making a show, you kind of do that naturally anyway because you just want it to be as good as it can be. And a good show is not repeating itself, it is always moving forward and pushing itself.

How did you create the balance between comedy and serious, meaningful moments like Florence's grief process?

Tim Key: Well, I would say that that the show at its best has always balanced, obviously someone gets murdered every week, so you’re kind of dealing with real emotion in a heightened world. I think that, we've talked a lot about surprising the viewer and part of those surprises come from challenging our characters and trying to play out some of the reality of what people would go for, and to try and keep the show fresh and to keep the actors challenging themselves. You want to make sure that each character is going on a journey rather than just sort of resetting at the end of every episode. So one of the changes that we've made to the show over the ten years it's been going is to increase the amount of serialisation there is, whilst always making sure that it is still a standalone story of the week show and that people can just join it for one episode and not feel like they need to have seen anything before. When you've got good actors and strong characters, it's quite easy, I think, to make sure that you respect the history of those characters. And to take the Florence one as a case in point, when we knew that Josephine was coming back, you think “Well, what's her story now?’. And because we'd taken her out on a sort of sad note, it was very obvious that the story was to rebuild her a bit on screen and that immediately gave us lots of ideas and some journeys to go on and some stuff to play. I think that we sometimes get described as a comedy drama, but I don't know that we are a comedy drama. I think we're sort of drama with humour in it, if that makes sense. I don't think we set out to be a comedy. We take the kind of emotional side of it very very seriously. We use words a lot on this show. Joy is one of them. Treat is another one. You just want to make sure that the audience when they sit down to watch it, they get what they expect to get. But then beyond that, the other word we use a lot is surprise. And I think that developing the characters is the way of surprising the audience and keeping things feeling fresh. So I think when you have good writers who are able to navigate at times, some quite difficult gear changes between a brutal murder and then a moment of comedy and then some heartfelt kind of emotional material and then some investigative stuff that needs to feel compelling and real. And there's also these sort of milestones in each act that you kind of have to tick, however you approach them. We need a scene where you meet the suspects. We need a scene where the puzzle is positive. We need a scene where the puzzle is cracked. We need a denouement of sorts, however that one appears. So you need really good writers who can kind of blend all of that together and surprise the audience and reward them emotionally at the same time and make the whole thing feel light and funny and not like an hour of sort of bleak harrowing television because that's absolutely not what we're setting out to deliver. Do you agree James?

James Hall: Yeah, I do. I think the other word that we use a lot is heart and I think it's the heart, the heart in the show that kind of glues it together. It's often at the lead detective’s expense, but it's never cruel in any way. And I think because of that warmth and the heart that’s there amongst the team, is how we can go from slightly silly humour to the more meaningful stuff like Florence’s grief because It's all about heart and being heartfelt and there being a warmth to it. Even if we're exploring something that's maybe a little darker or sadder.

Is Death in Paradise available to watch worldwide? How does that process of selling the show abroad work? Are there changes that need to be made for different territories? And how much involvement would you have in it?

Tim Key: That’s quite a long question and the answer is, yes. It's definitely available to watch worldwide. It does very well internationally. Last I heard it sells to something like 230 territories. I’m never quite sure how a territory is defined, but it sells very well. There's a sort of international appeal to the show. And the process works in that it's handled by a broker, I guess, which in our case is 大象传媒 studios who sell it internationally for us. We don't make any changes for different territories. We make the show we want to make. The only change we have to make for the international versions is to take some time out of them. I won't lie that process is incredibly painful because the international versions need to be, I think it's something like, five or six minutes shorter. In a show as densely packed as ours, it's very hard to take that time out and in an ideal world, we'd create a kind of an episode where there was five or six minutes of easily removable material, but it just doesn't work like that. You want every frame of the episode in every page of the script to be sort of special and rewarding. The versions that are available on Netflix, and another SVODs internationally are the full-length versions, I believe, but some of the countries need shorter versions, so that they could put advert breaks and things into them.

What makes a good writer for Death in Paradise, i.e. humour / mystery chops?

Tim Key: Well, Mystery Chops is my nickname for James. So, I'll let him answer that.
James Hall: A lot of people ask this. I think primarily a love of Death in Paradise makes a really good writer because I think for reasons we've already said, it's a really hard show to write for, in terms of constructing an episode and everything that involves. I would say going into that without a love and passion for it is going to make it quite a tricky process. Beyond that I think being a bit of a good all-rounder as a writer, so you have a bit of knowledge about how crime drama works. But you're not bad at turning your hand to a little bit of comedy and also tackling more serious emotional stuff as and when it's needed for some of the interviews or if it's an episode that's exploring something a bit more serious with our regulars. So, a bit of an all-rounder who really likes the show is the kind of writer, we'd be looking for, I think.

Why do you think death in paradise has been so successful? What are the key ingredients?

Tim Key: I sort of have rehearsed answer for this because I get asked quite a lot. I think that it's sort of joyous and it doesn't take itself too seriously. It doesn't take you to an incredibly dark place. It's not a harrowing hour of television; it is a treat. It's fun. It is funny. It is intriguing. It's a parlour game. It’s a show the family can watch together and play along with. Obviously, the setting helps, the scheduling helps. It's just a sort of perfect mix of lots of different elements that all come together to create something that doesn't ask the audience to do anything other than enjoy it.
James Hall: The only thing on top of that I'd add is that I think that you can play along with it as well. A lot of our audience enjoy playing the game of ‘Who did it?’, at guessing “who did it?’ and how they did it. And why they did it. And I think certainly from watching the Twitter feeds go out when the episode transmits that there's a lot of families out there who play along.

What was the last book you read or the last show you watched?

Tim Key: I tell you what I'm reading right now. It's the new book by my namesake, Tim Key who I love. It's his book of poetry that he wrote during lockdown where he comes increasingly off the rails and it's genius. I think he’s fantastic. And I've been watching lots of TV like everyone has. I get overwhelmed by how much there is available and also my mind goes blank when I'm asked what is the last thing that I watched. But, we're watching a bit of French stuff at the moment. We just watched Lupin, which I really enjoyed and I’m finally watching Call My Agent, which I know I'm late to the party with, but I'm enjoying very much.

James Hall: I'm just starting to read an Agatha Christie which is One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. But I'm only in the first few chapters and Poirot’s dentist has just been murdered, so I can't wait to see how that plays out. In terms of telly, I've just finished watching Behind Her Eyes on Netflix, which I enjoyed very much and surprised me an awful lot in the second half of the series. It took a direction I wasn't expecting, which was a really nice experience to be surprised and I think the twist has been quite controversial, but I quite liked it because I love a good twist.

What's next? And what have you got coming up?

Tim Key: Well, next is series 11, which we're in the thick of already, in terms of script development and very early production. And, I think it's going very well so far. We're sort of gee’d up by the response to serious 10. We were very pleased with how that was received so we're running at full steam already for series 11 and 12 because we were commissioned two series. We're thinking ahead. We are looking to the future.

James Hall: I feel very excited about the next series because it feels like we've sort of… I don’t want to say, got the hang of it. We're dressing things up and developing them in new ways, so I kind of already with this next series… I feel we're pushing the show forward and have some clever new murders, that use methods that we've not used before, so I don't know how we do it or why or how that's happened, but I don't know but It feels like we're just getting started.

Thank you for listening to "Ask the Write Questions" a podcast from 大象传媒 Writersroom. All episodes of Death in Paradise are available to view on 大象传媒 iPlayer now. Find out more about 大象传媒 Writersroom and keep up to date with news and opportunities on 大象传媒 Writersroom website and follow us on social media. Thank you.