TV is so full of inverted snobbery that it’s quite nice to sit down to Midsomer Murders, which is as middle class as you can get. So on Sunday night we veg in front of John Nettles, fresh from the same plastic surgeon as Kryten from ‘Red Dwarf’.
The plots are usually the same. Somebody is murdered in unusual circumstances, and their body is found by a man walking a dog. Later, somebody else will be wasted, invariably at a ghastly-looking ‘village event’, right in front of Nettles and his wife.
Everybody involved lives in a nice cottage. Several will be suspiciously rude and uncooperative with the police, for no reason whatsoever. Others will cast aspersions on the ‘locals’. These occasional characters, young, scruffy and often riding motorbikes, are not specifically referred to as ‘pikeys’ by the script, but the suspicion is that they are of vaguely gypsy origin and/or a threat to The World As Daily Mail Readers Know It.
Of course, these youngsters didn’t do it – far too obvious – although as a subplot they may well have been engaging in a little petty ne’er-do-wellism/secret good acts/banging the local landowner’s daughter etc. Rather, a fact comes to light involving an outrageous coincidence, Nettles’s wife’s interest in local history and some questionable leaps of logic, that leaves you cursing your naivety in bothering trying to work it out beforehand.
Of course it was the elderly local church historian spinster who’d killed the village rugby team with her bare hands, and Nettles regretfully arrests her after thwarting some mortal danger to his own family.
Cullie’s got a nice arse, but she’s so WET – you just… couldn’t.
This week it was all focused on witchcraft. What was all that about then?!?