Midsomer Murders, review: here's to the beer-boiled monk – pity about the rest
There’s been 20 years of Midsomer Murders (ITV). Twenty years of chocolate-box locations, glib humour and famous names slumming their way to ever more baroque demises. Twenty years of a series which, at it its considerable worst, has boasted episodes that themselves seemed to last two decades. And yet, the script for last night’s episode The Ghost of Causton Abbey felt a little sharper, the mysteries a tad more inventive and the gambits a touch bolder than in the past. Faint praise perhaps, but the striking opening was more reminiscent of Cadfael, as a 16th-century monk at the aforementioned abbey was boiled in beer, having been accused of poisoning the ale, cursing the site in his death throes.
It was a surprisingly effective sequence, instantly undercut by that benighted clarinet striking up its baleful theme and ushering in another tale of homicidal japery. The monastery was now long gone; in its place stood a microbrewery opportunistically peddling “Cursed IPA”. Once the first contemporary corpse (of only two, which felt unusually restrained) had turned up, inevitably boiled in beer, the story ground into action, enveloping reformed East End gangsters, sisterly rivalries, celebrity ghostwriters and the warring factions representing craft beer and real ale.
This week’s game guest stars included Angela Griffin’s sullen care nurse, Tony Gardner’s chippy local councillor and Elaine Paige’s catty grande dame of the theatre. Annette Badland was a sound addition as the acerbic new pathologist, a welcome contrast to Neil Dudgeon’s hammy DCI Barnaby and Nick Hendrix’s colourless DS Winter. I even cracked a smile a couple of times, not least when Mrs Barnaby silenced a room by musing, “I always thought real ale and craft beer were the same thing.” By past standards, this was positively Wildean stuff.
Regardless of the series’ apparent elevation to mere mediocrity, I found myself increasingly distracted by Dudgeon’s resemblance to David Cameron; the vocal cadences, the hairstyle, the sadness in his eyes. Perhaps our erstwhile PM has shelved his memoirs to work up a new detective franchise in his shepherd’s hut, or is considering a second career busting crime on the mean streets of Chipping Norton? It was something to ponder as the action on screen slowly dribbled to an anticlimactic reveal. Twenty years has been a good innings. Perhaps it’s time for DCI Barnaby retired to his writing hut as well?
