Strange Affairs

The countdown is nearly over. Return to Paradise, the sunny Australian spin-off of Death in Paradise, comes back for Season 3 on November 6, 2026. UK viewers can watch it on BBC One and BBC iPlayer, and this time they get it first: ABC has the Australian premiere pencilled in for later in November. The new season has six hour-long episodes and kicks off with an art fair murder that you can't solve at first glance. If Mack and her team slipped off your radar after last season, this week is a good time to get back up to speed.

First, a quick refresher. Anna Samson plays Mackenzie "Mack" Clarke, a sharp, prickly London detective who was forced back to Dolphin Cove, the New South Wales beach town she grew up in and couldn't wait to leave. At the end of Season 1, none other than DI Jack Mooney (Ardal O'Hanlon, the link to the original Saint Marie series) called to tell her she'd been cleared to return to London. She stayed anyway. Season 2 kept her in town, still dreaming about the UK and still tangled up with her ex-fiancé Glenn Strong (Tai Hara), the local pathologist whose love life keeps running into hers. The rest of the gang is as you left them: Lloyd Griffith as DSC Colin Cartwright, the homesick Englishman, Catherine McClements as Senior Sergeant Philomena Strong, Celia Ireland as the unflappable Reggie Rocco, Aaron L. McGrath as Constable Felix Wilkinson, and Andrea Demetriades as Daisy Dixon.

Season 3 picks up with a fun bit of trouble. Mack has wrecked yet another of Glenn's weddings, and she's sworn she will never follow her heart again. Knowing this show, that promise won't last. Her romantic guilt is what drives the season's comedy, and as usual, murders in Dolphin Cove give her the perfect excuse to look away from the mess she's made of her love life. The official synopsis says it plainly: Mack was meant to be back in the UK, living the life she has always wanted, and she is still in Dolphin Cove, where her compulsion to solve impossible cases keeps her distracted.

Read the full article