As you know, I take this blog extremely seriously, and, like the hip chick I am, try to keep it timely and up-to-date. However, last week we were on holiday, and somewhat misguidedly handed control of the remote to our eldest son. I imagined he would push the boundaries a bit, go for something edgy and violent like Deadpool or a spy thriller series where everyone gets blown up. We were slightly taken aback by his decision.

Death in Paradise.

Okaaaay… I mean, I like cosy murder as much as anyone, but it seemed an odd choice for an eight-year-old boy whose chief passions are Minecraft and scoring sips of Coke. Still, at least it’s low on expletives and mortifying sex scenes, so we went with it. Started at the beginning, as you do, which meant going back to 2011, with Ben Miller playing Detective Richard Poole. Christ, things have changed since then. In so many ways…

Just in case you’ve been under a rock for the past decade, Death in Paradise is a very long-running BBC series set on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie, where a procession of bumbling white men from Britain come to head up investigations and teach the locals how it’s done. Like Midsomer and St Mary Mead, this sleepy location has a homicide per capita to rival West Caracas, folk going down like flies; getting stabbed, shot in the head, poisoned with cyanide etc. It’s all great fun, and you get to perve over gorgeous beaches, if you can ignore the corpses littering them, but there’s no denying that there’s an old-fashioned quality to the set-up. I haven’t watched the latest incarnation with Ralf Little, so maybe it’s evolved since then – I hope so. Because I have a few issues.

There is much to enjoy about this first series. Everyone is very good in it. Danny John-Jules, who will always be Cat to me, has a nice double act going on with junior Sergeant Fidel, you get high-calibre guest stars, no doubt drawn by a few weeks’ filming in, well, Paradise. The plots are nattily conceived, enough clues to make you think you’ve got a chance at fingering the villain, with enough surprises to wrongfoot you. There’s a particular denouement involving a skeleton that left me quite giddy.

BUT. In many ways, DiP has not aged well. In the first episode (spoiler alert), the victim and suspects are white, but the murderer is revealed to be one of the investigating officers, who is… not white. In the second episode, victim and suspects mostly white, the baddie is one of the hotel staff - not white. In the third episode, the ‘murder victim’ (not white) is shown to have killed herself in order to incriminate someone else. In another episode, a rival inspector is poised to accuse a white suspect of murder – until Richard bustles in and sets her right by unveiling the real killer, who is – you guessed it… I started to get the uncomfortable impression that Ben Miller has been called in to bring Black crime under control so the expats can get on with enjoying their plush villas. White people are in almost all the positions of authority – police, school, bank - and there are some dreadful stereotypes. Saint Marie’s citizens are laidback, keen to slack off and have a long lunch, while the British are bureaucrats, officious, getting on with important business, whether that’s box-ticking or quaffing Bollinger.

Maybe I’m overthinking it – it’s just a snug Sunday night drama after all – but there’s another thing that makes my blood boil, and that’s Richard Poole’s relationship with his fellow officer Camille. In the first episode she’s working undercover, and there’s the sense that she’s some sort of highly-trained ace detective, but as soon as they settle into their regular roles, she becomes a sidekick whose function is simply to follow Richard around gawping at his investigative skills. Why is the force paying her? She does nothing! What was all that Parisian training for? Moreover, the notion – strongly suggested – that Camille is romantically interested in Richard is BULLSHIT, with the whiff of writerly male fantasy. He’s an uptight, not-very-polite, physically middle-of-the-road middle-aged man, permanently drenched in sweat. She’s smoking hot, and chilled out to boot. She wouldn’t look at him if he was the last man on the island. Which, given Saint Marie’s spiralling murder rate, is admittedly a possibility.

Richard’s team organise a birthday party for him, and he doesn’t turn up. They renovate a boat for him, tempt him with enticing cocktails, stage elaborate beachside lobster feasts, bring food when he has a fever. He never takes off his suit - a running joke, but one which made me increasingly irritated. Just put a T-shirt on! Richard roundly – and rudely - rejects every attempt to get him to integrate and adjust to island life, only relenting when they serve him proper tea and roast beef. But they have to overlook his quirks, work overtime, and be dazzled by his powers of deduction. It’s fucking maddening, and there’s a part of me that’s looking forward to Series 3, when he (spoiler alert) gets killed.

Obviously, there’s another part of me that enjoyed it all hugely. We were on holiday, after all, in front of an open fire, watching an old comedy drama, and my son was lapping it up. Maybe I shouldn’t take it all so seriously, and loosen up a little. But Ralf Little had better watch out – I’m coming for him, and I’ll take no prisoners.

• Death in Paradise – a billion episodes, BBC iPlayer