Why is Death in Paradise being shown on a Tuesday night?

The BBC's new series Death in Paradise with Ben Miller as Detective Richard Poole started this week at 9pm on Tuesday night.

I think it was a bit mis-sold (sez Dan).  From the trailers and the publicity it looked like a pretty stretched series of 8 episodes about a British detective sent to solve a murder in the Caribbean; what we got was the first of a set of self-contained whodunnits, that was mostly good, but a bit of a mish-mash.

(Here's where we say that if we were doing 'TWNH' we'd be here all night.  Almost none of it would have ever happened)

The show has elements of other series.  The most obvious two are Life on Mars (cop from the UK is a fish out of water in his new station where they do things differently) and Jonathan Creek (geeky genius solves apparently baffling puzzles), but there's also bits of No 1 Ladies Detective Agency (exotic setting, high budget co-production, in this case with French TV). 

What's good about it is the mysteries.  The locked room murder was explained very well, and the bit with the vase (Poole being a geek stuck all the bits of the broken vase together, then used it to re-create the crime and work out where the bullet landed) was stunningly well done.  If we can have solutions this clever every week then I'm going to like it a lot.  However the first episode was a bit rushed, and the supporting characters (Danny John Jules, DonWarrington) didn't get much chance to establish their personalities.  I'm also not sure that Ben Miller is right for it.  If they'd done it 20 years ago Griff would have been in it, ten years ago Hugh Laurie would have been cast (pre House) but BM hasn't done enough yet that's different to lots of parts he's played in sketches.  He may be too well known - Alan Davies hadn't been on TV very much when he was cast as Jonathan Creek.  Anyway, we'll see how Ben develops.

The other problem is the scheduling.  some shows are perfect for some days - Downton on Sunday. HIGNFY on Friday, Creek on Saturday - but I can't see why this is on a Tuesday.  It's a clever whodunnit starring a comedian, with nothing that means it needs to be after the watershed.  It seems perfect for Saturday night 8.30 - 9.30, but the problem is that these days Saturday night is less flexible as it's become dominated by the talent shows.

I hope that this lives up to its promise, and I hope that it finds an audience, but I think the Tuesday night scheduling is wrong for it.