Midsommer Murders is one of those British mystery series that fall into a sub-genre called “the village mystery” – though, thanks to Caroline Graham, the writer on whose books the series is based, the setting is an entire county so there’s no one village that’s setting records for enduring enough murders to depopulate it. Also unlike a lot of British mystery series, our protagonists, Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby [John Nettles] and Detective Sergeant Ben Jones [Jason Hughes] are not the next Sherlock Holmes and Watson, or even the Inspector Lynley and Sergeant Havers.
While village mysteries usually feature such brilliant and eccentric characters [whom I enjoy as much as anyone], Barnaby and Jones are more like beat cops who’ve been promoted because of their dogged persistence. Barnaby especially seems like a promoted beat cop with his blue collar approach and neighbourly cheer. Jones, once a Mason, seems like a slightly more pointed fellow who [very] occasionally gets away with taking the piss out of his senior partner. Nettles and Hughes have an easy chemistry, which gives them a formidable combined presence.
Three of the mysteries included in Set 13 – Dances with the Dead, The Animal Within and King’s Crystal – follow the kind of formula that one expects from such a series – a murder is discovered; Barnaby and Jones arrive on the scene; persons, events and evidentiary items are found and explored, and the mystery is solved – and recounted by Barnaby. With a series that’s run as long as Midsommer Murders, though, it’s the variations on the usual themes that intrigue – and the occasional episode that flouts the formula almost entirely… like The Axeman Cometh.
Dance with the Dead opens with a young couple appearing to asphyxiate in a WWII vintage automobile – though when Barnaby and Jones arrive on the scene, only the young man remains on the scene. Evidence of a blow from a heavy object puts paid to any suicide theories, and our intrepid heroes are drawn into a case that will involve a past-his expiration-date lothario; an older woman who leaves clothing and food by the long closed airfield where the murder[s?] took place; a belligerent publican, and at least a couple of affairs.
The Animal Within begins with a visitor from the U.S., here to see her once-estranged uncle – who has told everyone that she and her family died one [or three, depending] year ago in a spectacular plane crash, with the rest of her family. When he turns up dead a few days later – and a proliferation of wills appear, things get very confusing for Barnaby and Jones – especially when someone tries to break into the uncle’s locked study in the middle of the night.
King’s Crystal centers around the owners and employees of a company that makes fine crystal. It opens with one of the owners dying in an automobile accident while in China to look into moving the company’s production. There are cries of foul from the workers and the company’s arrogant accountant is found murdered shortly thereafter.
It’s with The Axeman Cometh that Midsommer Murders takes a brief side trip onto the world of rock & roll. Barnaby reveals his love for the blues and his eagerness to attend the Midsommer Music Festival – which will feature his all-time favorite band, Hired Gun. The first murder doesn’t occur until almost a third of the way into the tale – but it gives us the impression that the members Hired Gun are being targeted.
This ep also includes some of the most unexpectedly witty dialogue, as when Barnaby talks with a priest about why he’s allowing the festival to take place on the church’s property [“It will pay for the new roof”]. Here’s a snippet of the rest of the conversation:
Priest: “Blind Lemon Jefferson changed my life.”
Barnaby: “Oh?”
Priest: “His use of contrapuntal rhythms turned me on to madrigals.”
Barnaby: “A lot of people say that.”
In the end, all four mysteries are solved by what Holmes might refer to as plodding – but Barnaby and Jones make the painstaking search for a solution as enjoyable as any instance of Holmes’ ratiocination, or Poirot’s exercise of his “little grey cells.”
The only features are filmographies appropriate to each episode and a biography/bibliography of Caroline Graham.
Grade: Midsommer Murders – Set 13 – B+
Grade: Features – D
Final Grade: B-