Midsummer murders
Everyone jokes that Midsomer has the highest murder rate in the world, even worse than Mexico or Haiti. What they forget is that it also has the best crime-solving statistics in the world.
There is a simple reason for this: tailoring standards. Detectives on Midsomer Murders (ITV) still know how to dress modestly.
DI Barnaby and his sidekick Winter are the last two police officers on Earth to wear a suit and tie, with the top buttons of their shirts fastened.
DS Winter even prefers a waistcoat and lace-up shoes that he shines with polish. In most other British armed forces, the three-piece suit is as outdated as a bowler hat and a rolled-up umbrella.
Young Morse in his dirty cords, Vera in that hideous mac and shapeless hat, even Jimmy Perez in his Shetland knit, they could all learn something from Midsomer. Smart suits are the only plausible explanation for the speed with which Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) solved a mystery that seemed to satirize Britain’s lockdown panic.
DCI John Barnaby played by Neil Dudgeon and DS Jamie Winter (Nick Hendrix) in the hit ITV drama Midsommer Murders
DCI Barnaby and his sidekick DS Winter investigate a suspicious murder involving Lyra Kaine (played by Kate Robbins)
At its heart was a cover-up following the escape of a pandemic virus from a bioresearch laboratory deep in the English countryside. An infected scientist drowned himself rather than spread the disease. Her body was buried in the forest by conspirators who lived in constant fear of the end of the world – until they were murdered one by one.
Here’s the punchline from the only scientist who survived: the said virus turned out to be no more dangerous than a common cold.
If the backstory sounds crazy, the murders made even less sense… although Midsomer’s plots flow so smoothly that it doesn’t really matter.
When the local doctor locked himself in a sprawling underground bunker, the killer closed the vents – and the man suffocated within a minute. How all existing oxygen immediately disappeared was not explained.
His fellow survivor, who slept with the doctor’s wife, went for a walk in the woods and died after triggering a trip wire. This caused a dinghy to inflate itself so quickly that the guy bounced twenty feet into the air and hit his head on a tree trunk.
When a third body was discovered, it was immediately clear that his injuries could not have been fatal; in Midsomer this only happens through incidents that defy the laws of physics. It turned out that the victim was not dead, but drunk.
Pathologist Fleur (Annette Badland) had the best lines as always. As she admired the bunker, she said, “Food, medicine, toilets, beds. It’s more stocked than a rock star’s tour bus. And I should know: I’ve had a few.’
The skyrocketing death rate means police tend to ignore other crimes. When Winter almost ran into the iron teeth of a spring-loaded trap set by an overzealous poacher, he just tutted.
Worse, no one even flinched at the shelves of fake books in the doctor’s house, an illusory library of wallpaper. Such a setting deserves a heavy prison sentence.