Beyond Paradise's Peter Davison shares how he really feels about big episode 4 twist

After deciding not to spend the evening with new beau Richard out of respect to her late husband on his birthday, she later changed her mind in tonight's episode of Beyond Paradise. But Anne was only there for a couple of minutes before she was met with a shocking and unpleasant surprise.

Richard's name is actually Peter, and he's also a married man.

"Was any of it real?" she asked him, dazed by his deceit. "Or were you just stringing me along the whole time?"

"No, it's complicated," a flustered Peter responded. "I was going to talk to you about it. I'm sorry."

But she wasn't interested in his excuses.

"Not as sorry as I am!" yelled Anne, before driving off.

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Speaking to RadioTimes.com and other press about the reveal, Peter Davison said: "It is rather baffling because he does seem very nice, doesn't seem like a conman, but that was obviously the whole idea, of writing it in that way.

"It's important that the audience are disappointed because that's the idea, isn't it? That they seem like a great couple, and then it all goes horribly wrong."

Davison went on to say that he "quite often gets cast as people who turn out not to be very nice nowadays".

"I think because I've made most of my career playing nice people, even though I turned out to be a cad, they think people won't hate me as much as they might do," he added. "So I did it in At Home with the Braithwaites and a series called Life, where I wasn't the nicest of characters."

But is this the last we've seen of Richard/Peter? Apparently so.

"One of the last things he says before Anne storms off is, 'Let me explain,'" said Davison. "I think I said to [producer] Lindsay [Hughes] at one point, 'Am I going to get a chance to explain?'

"Maybe his wife's been involved with other people as well. I don't know. Whether he's done this before or not, or whether he's happy or unhappy in his marriage, we may never know.

"There must be something behind it because he doesn't appear to be after her money. Maybe he's just after nice dinners and that feeling of being romantic again at his age."

Barbara Flynn, who plays Anne, also floated a far-fetched yet entertaining route back for Peter.

"Barbara came up with the idea that maybe he go to prison and they could continue a kind of prison romance, like people do," said Davison. "We were searching for ways to try and persuade Lindsay to find a way to bring me back because it was a nice series to do."

Beyond Paradise season 2 continues on BBC One and iPlayer on Fridays.

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