Saint Marie (fictional island)

Deshaies on Guadeloupe, which is used for the town of Honoré in Death in Paradise.

Saint Marie is a fictional island in the Lesser Antilles which serves as the setting for the BBC crime drama television series Death in Paradise. The series is filmed on Guadeloupe, and Deshaies doubles for the fictional town of Honoré.

Saint Marie is described in Episode 3.3 as a "pretty island" that is "situated in the Eastern Caribbean Sea" and "one-tenth the size of its north-west neighbour Guadeloupe". This would make Saint Marie about 63 square miles in size. The location and name of the island suggest that it is based on the real-world island of Marie-Galante, which has a matching size and location, although the real-life Marie-Galante is part of Guadeloupe and not independent of it. Saint Marie's population is assumed to be around 10,000.^[1]

In the series, Saint Marie has a volcano, rainforest, sugar plantations, a fishing harbour, an airport, a university, a convent, approximately 100 public beaches, and a Crown Court. It also has its own newspaper, The Saint Marie Times. Honoré, the main town, has a leisure/commercial marina, market, bars, and restaurants as well as the police station. The island is a British Overseas Territory, but was handed over to the British from the French only in the 1970s, such that about 30 percent of its people are French citizens, with the French language still widely spoken. Its main economic ties are to Guadeloupe, the UK, and France. The island's main religions are Catholicism and Vodou, with several Vodou religious festivals.

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