I’m not a TV watcher. Movies are often too long for that last hour before falling asleep. In recent years, we’ve watched two whodunit series, available on Netflix, that stand out for their excellence in conception and stylish, culturally embedded filming: “Death in Paradise” and “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.”

A whodunit generally dispenses with the act of murder, culprit unseen, in the first five to seven minutes. They spare sensitive people like me the dread, even terror, of many police and detective genres. Instead, these dramas follow one or more investigators as they d...