Just Mad about the girl

THIS time last year, I was having a slight difference of opinion with Daily Express reader Madeleine O'Broin, a regular correspondent from Cambridgeshire.

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I don't mean we fell out. No, we simply failed to see eye to eye on a Death In Paradise spin-off that had just begun on BBC1.

Me, I'd suggested this new cosy crime series, set in Australia, was "perfect Friday night fare" (don't ask me why I'd started speaking like that; I can only imagine I'd taken a recent blow to the head), whereas Madeleine felt differently. RETURN TO PARADISE, she wrote to tell me, was a disappointment. "The actors are not good at acting," was her view. (Quite a stinging criticism, I felt, since "being good at acting" is a quality I believe many actors consider quite important.)