summer murders
Everyone jokes that Midsomer has the highest homicide rates in the world, worse even than Mexico or Haiti. What they forget is that it also has the best statistics in the world in terms of solving crimes.
There is a simple reason for this: dress standards. The detectives from Midsomer Murders (ITV) still know how to dress appropriately.
DI Barnaby and his partner Winter are the last two police officers in the world to wear a suit and tie, with the top buttons of their shirts fastened.
DS Winter even likes vests and lace-up shoes that he keeps shiny with shoe polish. In most other British forces the three-piece suit is as old-fashioned as a bowler hat and a rolled-up umbrella.
Young Morse in his scruffy corduroy trousers, Vera in that hideous trench coat and that shapeless hat, even Jimmy Perez in his Shetland knitwear, they could all learn something from Midsomer. Smart suits are the only plausible explanation for how quickly 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 partner DS Winter investigating a suspicious murder with Lyra Kaine (played by Kate Robbins)
The root was a cover-up, following the escape of a pandemic virus from a bioresearch laboratory, deep in the English countryside. An infected scientist drowned to avoid spreading the disease. Her body was buried in the forest by conspirators who lived in perpetual terror of the end of the world, until they were murdered one by one.
Here’s the punchline, told by the only scientist who survived: said virus turned out to be no more dangerous than the common cold.
If the backstory sounds crazy, the murders made even less sense… although Midsomer’s plots move so quickly that it doesn’t really matter.
When the local GP locked himself in a huge underground bunker, the killer closed the air vents and the man suffocated within a minute. It was not explained how all the existing oxygen instantly disappeared.
His surviving partner, who was sleeping with the GP’s wife, went for a walk in the woods and died after triggering a tripwire. This caused a boat to self-inflate so quickly that the guy bounced 20 feet in the air and fell headlong into a tree trunk.
When a third body was discovered, it was immediately clear that his injuries could not be fatal; in Midsomer, that happens only through incidents that defy the laws of physics. As it turned out, the victim wasn’t dead, just drunk.
Pathologist Fleur (Annette Badland) had the best lines, as always. Admiring the bunker, she said: ‘Food, medicine, bathrooms, beds. It’s better equipped than a rock star’s tour bus. And I should know, I’ve been to a few.
The very high mortality rate means that police tend to ignore other crimes. When Winter nearly tripped over the iron teeth of a spring-loaded mantrap, set by an overzealous poacher, he simply grimaced in disgust.
Worse still, no one batted an eye at the shelves of fake books in the GP’s house, an illusory library made of wallpaper. Decoration like this deserves a harsh prison sentence.