Ben Miller has said he would be open to returning to Death in Paradise, but only if the long-running crime drama found a way around the fact that his character was killed off. Miller, who played DI Richard Poole from 2011 to 2014, said he would “love to come back” but added that any return would have to be in a flashback or dream, because “my character gets murdered in the show.”
The actor also joked that the writers could always reach for a more unusual solution, saying Richard might have “a twin brother that we don’t know about.” Miller’s comments are likely to stir interest among viewers who still associate him most closely with the original detective at the heart of the Caribbean-set series.
Miller’s run on the crime drama helped make his name with a broader audience after he had already built a career in comedy and television. He teamed up with Alexander Armstrong and landed Armstrong and Miller in 1997, after studying Natural Sciences at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and staying on for a PhD in solid state physics before deciding to switch to comedy.
His personal life has also remained in the public eye. Miller married producer Jessica Parker in 2013, and the pair live with their son and daughter in the Cotswolds. Before that, he was married to Belinda Stewart-Wilson in 2004; they split in 2011 and have a son together. He was also romantically linked to Rachel Weisz when they were both students at Cambridge.
The return of Richard Poole for the show’s 100th episode in a flashback scene already showed that the door is not fully shut, even if it is only cracked open. Miller has since gone on to appear in Horrible Science, Bridgerton and Professor T, as well as in Paddington 2 and Paddington in Peru, but his dead detective still looms largest in the minds of many fans. For now, the answer to whether Ben Miller would come back is yes — but only if Death in Paradise is willing to bend its own rules to make it happen.
