my guilty pleasure: death in paradise
it's guilty because its premise is awful. a British detective inspector joins a Caribbean island police team for a few seasons at a time, with hijinks.
at first, most of the inspectors (by and large, up until the latest season, white British men) struck me as neurodivergent coded; Humphrey Goodman for example could well personify unmedicated ADHD; Neville Parker, autism, perhaps. but I realised that – really – all the inspectors are just written as “weird outsiders”.
many of them have poor social skills and/or strike the rest of the (painfully neurotypical) team as weird, erratic, rude, or awkward. many of them have beloved routines they carry over from the UK which they insist on bringing to Saint Marie, and their story arc always involves some level of compromise – some adaptation to a place they have to consciously accept as a new home.
and equally their weirdness comes with a preternatural gift for observation, attention to small details, their ability to make connections and spot patterns – all traits commonly described with autistic and ADHD worldviews.
in each of these arcs, their outsider status pushes them to an overseas outpost – but is also what makes them exceptional. and excepting the colonialism and the whole... cop show schtick, is a rather hopeful message, all things considered.