Discussing how challenging it is to write the script, however, the screenwriter admitted: “I’d put money on it being the hardest TV to write.
“You have one hour to kill someone at the start, catch the murderer at the end, reel off the denouement, so that’s 20 pages of script spoken for before you get to the fun stuff.
“It’s hard to get the balance and tone right, the complication of the mystery, the warmth of the characters, make the detectives loveable but still good at their jobs.”
While Thorogood continues to serve as an executive producer on the show, he stepped back from writing the scripts of the Caribbean crimes after 11 series.
He has now turned his attention to adapting his Marlow Murder Club books for the screen, centring on amateur sleuth Judith Potts and her unlikely band of crime-solving friends in Buckinghamshire.
Asked about writing and producing for the enduring “cosy crime” genre, he said: “In a chaotic real world on fire, it’s lovely to go somewhere for all your vicarious thrills, skullduggery and betrayal, posh people all lying and cheating, in beautiful but confined spaces.”
He said the genre was set apart because “it’s a tonal thing”, adding: “People are killed, but with a relatively clean method of dispatch, and you barely see the body.
“We take the murders seriously, but characters tend to be heightened, an entrepreneur or a fading rock star. The world is dialled up, which keeps it frothy and fun.”