Around the Dial

• Mystery Fanfare reports that Beyond Paradise, a spin-off series from the long-running comedy-mystery Death in Paradise, is set to debut simultaneously on BritBox (in the United States) and BBC One (in the UK) on Friday, February 24. It will find actor Kris Marshall returning as Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman, a role he occupied in the original series for more than three seasons. You’ll recall that Goodman left the police department on the Caribbean island of Saint Marie partway through Season 6 to head back to England with his new girlfriend, Martha Lloyd (Sally Bretton). Beyond Paradise finds them “arriving in Shipton Abbott, Martha’s hometown near the beautiful Devonshire coast ... As they embark on their new life whilst temporarily living with Martha’s mum, Anne Lloyd [Barbara Flynn​], the couple is quickly thrown in at the deep end as Martha sets out to pursue her dream of running her own restaurant, and Humphrey joins the local police force. Each week the team will face a new crime with a unique puzzle at its heart. As Humphrey gets stuck into his new job, he and Martha must also navigate life’s ups and downs, as faces from the past, the decisions they make, and the challenges of setting up life in a new town put their relationship to the ultimate test.” Also among this show’s cast will be Dylan Llewellyn (Derry Girls) playing Police Constable Kelby Hartford, and Zahra Ahmadi (Innocent) as Detective Sergeant Esther Williams. UPDATE: The Killing Times says that Season 1 of Beyond Paradise will run just six episodes long.

• Well, I didn’t see this coming: CBS Studios has ordered up a gender-swap reboot of the popular 1986–1995 legal drama Matlock, replacing the late Andy Griffith with Kathy Bates as series lead. “The Matlock reboot,” explains In Reference to Murder, “is centered on Madeline Matlock, a brilliant septuagenarian who rejoins the work force at a prestigious law firm, where she uses her unassuming demeanor and wily tactics to win cases and expose corruption from within.” Actress Bates previously played an attorney on the 2011–2012 series Harry’s Law. If this version of Matlock does, indeed, wind up on the CBS schedule, that will be its third television network home. It started out on NBC, but moved over to ABC in 1992.

• Amazon Studios is developing two new small-screen series based on Michael Connelly’s police procedurals. The first would return Jamie Hector to his Bosch role as Detective Jerry Edgar, but send him from Los Angeles to Little Haiti, Miami, on an undercover FBI mission. “In this glamorous city,” says Deadline, “he is forced to balance his new life with the gritty underbelly of the city, while being chased by his mysterious past.” In the meantime, L.A. police detective Renée Ballard, who was first introduced in Connelly’s 2017 novel, The Late Show, is set to star in a different as-yet-unnamed drama that finds her “tasked with running the LAPD’s new cold case division. Beyond simply investigating unsolved crimes, Renée is dedicated to bringing credibility to the department and justice to the community. Having learned from retired ally and mentor Harry Bosch, Renee does things her way—solving cases in unconventional ways while navigating the politics of being a woman on the rise in the LAPD.” There’s no word yet on when or where these new programs might debut.

• Happy Valley, the award-winning BBC One TV series starring Sarah Lancashire, just ended its third-season run in Great Britain. It’s not expected to reach U.S. screens until this coming May. If you can’t wait to learn more, check out the following reviews of individual Season 3 episodes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

• The blog Crime Fiction Lover is already hoping for the launch of a novel series to continue the character stories from Happy Valley.

• Hallmark Movies & Mysteries has begun filming a brand-new whodunit series titled The Cases of Mystery Lane. It will star Aimee Garcia and Paul Campbell as Birdie and Alden Case, “a married couple who find a new way to keep to keep the mystery alive … quite literally.” Hallmark Media’s director of development, Laura Gaines, is quoted as saying this show will combine “romance, humor, and intrigue, reminiscent of some of my favorite stories of amateur sleuths, in over their heads,” such as McMillan & Wife and the later Hart to Hart. Again, there’s no news regarding a premiere date.​

• And as part of the promotions campaign for his latest Peter Diamond detective novel, Showstopper—which concerns the supposed jinxing of a TV crime drama—author Peter Lovesey recounts here a jumbo-sized case of bad luck that struck Cribb, the 1980-1981 program based on his early Sergeant Cribb mysteries.