Midsomer Murders: The Dogleg Murders

…

Rating 2½


Created and produced by Brian True-May, based on the books by Caroline Graham

Episode directed by Richard Holthouse

Episode written by Andrew Payne

Starring John Nettles (DCI Tom Barnaby), Jason Hughes (DS Ben Jones), Jane Wymark (Joyce Barnaby), Barry Jackson (Dr George Bullard), Nicholas Day (Martin Crisp), Maggie Ollerenshaw (Eileen Fountain), Jamie Belman (Darren Fountain), Luke Neal (Colin Fountain), John Standing (Will Tunstall), Holly Gilbert (Becky Tunstall), Nicholas Le Prevost (Jerry Drinkwater), Graham Seed (Miles Tully), Hugh Ross (Ed Monkberry), Geoffrey Hutchings (Harry Claypole), Peter-Hugo Daly (Archie Kemp), Lin Blakley (Jane Painter), Michael Keating (Derek Painter), Robert Perkins (Clyde Patchett), Kirsty Dillon (WPC Gail Stephens), Nick Fletcher (CS John Cotton), Alison Skilbeck (Sarah Kingslake) and Rupert Vansittart (Alastair Kingslake)


When Alastair Kingslake is bludgeoned to death with a golf club on the dogleg of the notorious “Crisp’s Folly” 13th hole at the Whiteoaks golf club, suspicion points at one of his playing partners, Jerry Drinkwater, with whom he had a £1,000 bet who would win the hole. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby is faced with entrenched class snobbery when he begins his investigation and after a second murder is committed he uncovers evidence of rife illegal gambling taking place at the club.

…


‘Midsomer Murders’ is a British television institution. It began with the pilot episode ‘The Killings at Badger’s Drift’, based on the 1987 novel of the same name by the author Caroline Graham and first broadcast on ITV on 23 March 1997. ‘The Dogleg Murders’ is the sixty-sixth episode and the first of the twelfth season. This season will consist of four two-hour episodes. John Nettles, who has played the lead role of the sleepy police detective Tom Barnaby since the beginning, has announced that he will leave the show following completion of the thirteenth season. Whether it will continue after that is not known, although the genial and deceptively charismatic Nettles would certainly be a hard act to follow.

In his pocket preview of ‘The Dogleg Murders’ in The Guardian newspaper, Will Dean said of ‘Midsomer Murders’ that, “It trundles along like a TV version of Xanax, two hours of murder mystery with a tranquilising effect to take the edge off. Now in its 12th season, it’s proved an enduringly popular sedative.” This sums up the series rather well. Hard hitting it is not, but that is a big part of its appeal. As time has gone by it has settled comfortably into increasingly ludicrous plots, with a knowing twinkle in its eye.

‘The Dogleg Murders’ offers nothing new and there really isn’t a lot to be said about it, but it is all reassuringly familiar. It might leave no powerful lasting impression, but Tom Barnaby is going to be missed when John Nettles says goodbye to the role.

Review posted 23 July 2009



…

Midsomer Murders: Shot at Dawn

...

Created by Brian True-May, based on the books by Caroline Graham

Episode directed by Richard Holthouse

Episode written by Michael Aitkens

Starring John Nettles, Jason Hughes, George Cole, Donald Sinden, Brian Capron, Gemma Craven, Samantha Bond, Barry Jackson and Jane Wymark


It’s difficult to know where to start with ‘Midsomer Murders’, which, over the years, has turned into one of the most preposterous of all crime dramas, deliberately so, I’ve long suspected. ‘Shot at Dawn’, the fifty-eighth and most recent episode of the show, was broadcast by ITV on New Year’s Day 2008. The series began in March 1997.

The show is set in Midsomer, a fictional English region of small villages and towns, populated by eccentrics and the sinister. It is also it would seem a hotspot for outlandish murders, which come thick and fast. These crimes are investigated by the sleepy Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby - played by the excellent John Nettles, who was already well-known for the popular 1980s crime drama ‘Bergerac’. He is assisted by his Sergeant, in this case Ben Jones (Jason Hughes, who joined the show in 2005). Nettles has increasingly underplayed the role of Tom Barnaby over the years, to the point where he now often appears to be virtually inert.

There was a time when ‘Midsomer Murders’ could actually be described as a serious crime drama. The pilot episode, ‘The Killings at Badger’s Drift’, based on Caroline Graham’s original 1988 novel, is a good example. That episode also includes the show’s greatest ever line of dialogue, when the effeminate undertaker Dennis Rainbird first encounters the homophobic Detective Sergeant Troy (a predecessor of Ben Jones) and remarks to Barnaby, “You’ve got a right constable there!”

That was a long time ago and gradually the show settled into what is almost a parody of its original premise, something that was subsequently copied by ‘Rosemary and Thyme’, the remarkably silly show about a pair of gardening amateur sleuths that ran for three seasons between 2003 and 2007.

‘Shot at Dawn’ does nothing to deviate from the long established ‘Midsomer Murders’ template. It centres on a feud between two families that dates back to the First World War, a situation that finally comes to a head and results in murder. The apparently permanently exasperated Barnaby solves the case in his usual bumbling manner.

I constantly question why I continue to watch the show, but it is is addictive and no doubt I will be tuning in whenever the next episode is broadcast.


...