1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 81: Midsomer murders: The killings at Badger’s Drift
[D.S. Troy:] “Why would they want to kill her? Unless it was adultery. I suppose it could have been ass bandits.”Poor Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) must fight on three fronts: professional, domestic, and, of course, criminal. Bucolic Midsomer County is “the deadliest county in England.” People aren’t just murdered there: they’re speared with pitchforks, beheaded with guillotines and swords, poisoned with mushrooms, locked in freezers, tied down and then bludgeoned with wine bottles launched from catapults. Motives include: incest, ancestral loyalty, class hatred, religious mania, orchid covetousness, and every flavor of vengefulness. One outwardly mild killer, bored with England, murders while hallucinating that he lives in the Old West.
[D.C.I. Barnaby:] “What?”
“In the wood.”
“You mean homosexuals, Troy?”
“Well, that’s what I said.”
“You are as politically correct as a Nuremberg rally.”
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[Mrs. Barnaby:] “Was that Sergeant Troy just now?”
[D.C.I. Barnaby:] “Yes.”
“I’d like to meet him one day.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
The first episode, “The Killings at Badger’s Drift” (1997), is based on Caroline Graham’s novel. A kindly old spinster, searching the woods for orchids, stumbles upon a person or persons in flagrante delicto. Horrified, she flees … is pursued … is dispatched. Barnaby and young Troy (Daniel Casey) are called to the scene. Troy is eager to conclude that the death was accidental. But a neighbor suspects foul play, and a nosey parker blackmails the killer. Bodies soon pile up.
Barnaby studies a connection with a previous death, the (allegedly) accidental shooting of the first wife of a rich landowner. This odious man is now engaged to his much younger ward (Emily Mortimer), whose casual untruthfulness piques Barnaby’s interest. Her brother, an artist (Jonathan Firth, Colin’s brother), is quarrelsome and perhaps slightly unhinged. But he’s less alarming, and certainly less revolting, than the smarmy undertaker who drives a too-expensive car and lives too harmoniously with his mother. Familial relations in the County are, as a rule, either discordant or perverse.
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It’s with some relief, then, that we also view Tom Barnaby’s utterly bland home life. His daughter, the winsome Cully (Laura Howard), is an aspiring theatre actress who bounces from gig to gig (and, in other episodes, from boyfriend to boyfriend). Tom’s wife, Joyce (Jane Wymark), engages in cultural pursuits of virtually every form. Tom is the casualty of Cully’s and Joyce’s hobbies. In this episode, he complains of the daintiness of Joyce’s cooking: she serves him quail instead of chicken.
Unsurprisingly, then, he relishes eating out of the house – in the pub or police canteen – or would relish it, were he free of that obnoxious greenhorn, D.S. Troy.
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Barnaby – English for Barnabas – means something like Son of Encouragement. Grumpy as Tom can be, the name is apt. Barnaby treats suspects with respect, and he gives Troy his due. In time, Troy will earn Barnaby’s trust – and a promotion to Detective Inspector, away from Midsomer County.
Other young sergeants will come and go. (How many of them will fall for Cully?) Tom and Joyce will age into curmudgeonliness. After thirteen seasons, Tom will retire; John, his cousin, will replace him as Detective Chief Inspector. John’s family will replace Cully and Joyce. The parade of sergeants will continue. (Medical examiners, too.)
The body count will rise.
The show has now aired for twenty-four seasons and in twenty-seven different years, lampooning/celebrating every English trope under the sun. Boys’ schools? Check. Pagan ritual? Check. C. of E. bellringing and grave-tending? Check. River punting? Racehorse breeding? Pub-keeping? Landscape painting? Check.
There’s the occasional sequence in Wales or on the Continent, but the scenery is overwhelmingly Southern English. Picture-postcard settings are preferred. (In the show’s first scene, the doomed spinster happily pedals by a sign commemorating Badger’s Drift’s “best kept village” status.)
Off-camera, cast and crew would rise early and ride trains to far-flung locations. Fed-up regulars would leave the show to escape the grind.
Meanwhile, the nation’s best actors would take turns as guests. Anna Massey, Toby Jones, Joss Ackland, Olivia Colman, agèd Bond girls, members of the sprawling Fox family: all lent their talents to this show, this national institution.
Midsomer Murders is a showcase for cottages and pubs and manors, for lawns and fields and forests, for customs respectable and insane; but also for actors trained in old-fashioned, theatrical, British craft.
