Plagiarism in Pop Culture: Death in Paradise 2

Jonathan BaileyApril 5, 2023

6 minutes read

Back in February 2021, we took a look at the popular British TV show Death in Paradise. The show, in an episode in season 2, used plagiarism as a central plot element to one of its mysteries.

For those unfamiliar with the show, it is a crime drama series set in the fictional Caribbean island and UK territory of Saint Marie. It features a detective inspector (DI) from the UK who is sent to solve murders on the island.

The show has been a major hit both in the UK and abroad and is currently in season 12. Over its run, the show has cycled through four different DIs and many other characters, but the format remains largely unchanged.

That makes it all the more interesting that, in the first episode of the twelfth season, Death in Paradise revisited the issue of plagiarism with yet another murder mystery surrounding the topic.

The untitled episode features a new murder, a new plagiarism, and a new story for me to analyze. That said, from a plagiarism standpoint, this one is surprisingly similar to the season two one, with only a few small, but important, changes.

Content Warning: Spoilers for Death in Paradise Season 2, Episode 7 AND Season 12, Episode 1. Also, general discussion of suicide and murder/violence.

The Plot

The episode opens on a shot of five astronomers with telescopes eager to see a cosmic event. They are led by Dr. Bertrand Sworder, who notes repeatedly that his life’s work has been leading up to that moment.

However, after the event passes, Bertrand is nowhere to be found. After searching, they find him dead at the bottom of a nearby cliff.

DI Neville Parker is given the details of the case, but is already aware of Bertrand. According to DI Parker, he’s seen Bertrand many times on TV that he was a “great inspiration for amateur astronomers” such as himself.

The team finds a suicide note, which reads in part, “Sorry to Abandon You My Love, But I’m Not Sure I can Endure What’s About to Happen in My Life…” However, in addition to the note, they also find a half-finished crossword on the body itself, indicating that Bertrand did not intend to die that night. That theory is confirmed when they learn that he ripped out the crossword at the top of the cliff while waiting for the event.

Going into his background, the team learns that Bertrand became famous for his discovery of “The Great Occulation”, which is a theory he published in a popular book with the same. According DI Parker and others, he came up with the theory when he was 25 in the early 1980s.

It was then that journalists, expecting a press conference, arrived at the police station. Confused, the team pressed on and learned, in an examination of Bertrand’s emails, that he was being accused of plagiarism by Jeremy Herbert, one of the other viewers on the cliff.

Jeremy did not deny this. He claimed that he came up with the theory of The Great Occulation, but never wrote anything down and never had any proof. He said that he had resigned himself to do nothing, as a grudge only served to hurt himself more than Bertrand.

However, Jeremy said he recently received audio files through Sunil Singh, another astronomer that was on the cliff, and had planned to extort Bertrand for 750,000 pounds, or roughly $934,000. According to Jeremy, Bertrand had agreed to pay, and the press conference was just his backup plan. However, Bertrand died before he could pay the money.

Suspicion then was cast on Miriam, Bertrand’s wife, after it was learned his estate was placed in a trust with her name on it. Miriam said she had her own money and denied that the plagiarism took place.

After that, plagiarism briefly fell on Singh after it was revealed that he was Bertrand’s son, born out of wedlock. Singh was the one who found the audio files after his mother died and sent them to Jeremy.

After the discovery that Bertrand’s scooter was hidden in bushes nearby, even though he drove in his car with Miriam to the cliff, DI Parker was able to piece together what had happened.

Bertrand had planned to fake his own death by climbing down a rope ladder and pretending to have committed suicide. However, when everyone else was going for help, he was to have gotten up and, using his scooter, hidden at home with Miriam reporting that his body had washed out to sea.

All went to plan but, when he climbed back up, Miriam pushed him back down the cliff, saying that she was disgusted that he was a fraud and that he looked “pathetic” to her. She confessed to the crime and was arrested at the end of the episode.

Understanding the Plagiarism

The plagiarism in this episode is both simple and familiar. Bertrand took a theory first presented by a colleague and fellow student and published it as his own, leading him to fame and wealth.

In that regard, it’s actually very similar to the plagiarism in the first episode we looked at. An academic plagiarizes the work of a lesser-known researcher in a book meant for popular consumption, becomes famous or furthers their fame with that book, and eventually leads to a murder for the DI to solve.

The main difference is that, in the previous episode, the plagiarist murdered the person he plagiarized from to try and hide it. Here, the plagiarist was killed because of the plagiarism (though not by his victim).

Both cases feature academics plagiarizing the works of other researchers in works intended for popular consumption. As such, both cases have the same obvious solution: Share the attribution.

In academia, attribution is often a thorny issue. Debates and discussions about who should be credited and how they should be credited, are common. In one case, credit was given to someone undeserving soley for the point of making a bad pun.

However, it’s rare for one person to take sole credit for a discovery, as there are almost always secondary authors who contributed.

There was simply no reason for Bertrand to completely cut Jeremy out. He could have included him as a secondary author and continued on the same trajectory.

I also find it difficult to believe that Jeremy never wrote anything down about this theory. Academics, even students, tend to write down most of their thoughts and ideas. However, even if he didn’t, we know that there was at least one other person present at this conversation that could have supported Jeremy’s claim.

In the story line, she likely didn’t because she was romantically involved with Bertrand at the time, but it’s still remarkable that Jeremy didn’t tell anyone else or that the other woman didn’t come forward over the course of nearly four decades.

This seems like a case that should have either been easily resolved with a line of credit in the 1980s or through witnesses coming forward at that time. It doesn’t feel like something that should have festered for 40 years only to be blown wide open by the discovery of audio recordings.

Furthermore, it’d be interesting to see how impactful those audio recordings would have been as evidence in 2023. AI makes it possible to simulate someone else’s voice saying almost anything. Bertrand could have just denied saying it and, apparently, the only other witness is already dead. It would have been hard to prove otherwise.

In short, it’s a fairly implausible plagiarism. However, that is apropos for the series, as the murder and its resolution was far more outrageous. Furthermore, as I mentioned when analyzing the first episode, it does play to a very real fear academics have. We’ve seen this both with the Tom Lehrer song Lobachevsky and an episode of Young Sheldon.

So, though it is a fairly difficult plagiarism to believe, it’s completely in line with the show and certainly not any more outrageous than anything else in the episode.

Bottom Line

The main difference between this episode and the first one we looked at was the analysis given to the plagiarism.

In the previous episode, DI Poole came down hard on the plagiarist, making it clear that “plagiarism is abuse” and the episode specifically addressed many of the arguments I made here.

However, in that episode, the plagiarist was alive and being accused of murder. Most of this conversation happened as DI Poole was revealing how the murder took place and accusing the plagiarist of murder.

Here, the plagiarist died in the first few minutes of the episode. Though the plagiarism is literally why he was killed, the team had much more important things to do than to discuss the morals and ethics around plagiarism. It would have been strange if they HAD focused on it.

That said, the first episode is a much better exploration of plagiarism issues in academia. As similar as this plagiarism is, it’s not nearly as deeply explored because of the direction the murder plot took.

So, if you only have time for one episode of Death in Paradise that discusses plagiarism, the first is probably the better analysis.

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