DCI John Barnaby is TV’s dullest detective

Some other crime drama may open with its titular detective cradling a bottle of whisky as she or he listened to Wagner and mooned a couple of misplaced love. However that is Midsomer Murders, so the primary scene of final night time’s episode started with Britain’s best-dressed policeman, DCI Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon), having a light-hearted breakfast along with his spouse and daughter earlier than cheerfully heading off to unravel one more murder.

Now on its 23^rd sequence and 133^rd episode (a great way forward of its nearest rival, Demise in Paradise), Midsomer Murders has not one of the tropes beloved of the likes of Inspector Morse and its bedfellows. Barnaby has no character quirks or vibrant habits – he simply goes about fixing crimes in an unfussy method. That may make him appear boring however when the murders are this elaborately bananas, you want a simple copper. In the latest episode, it was dying by a boobytrapped self-inflating rubber dinghy.

Final night time’s two-hour story, “The Debt of Lies”, was nowhere close to as inventive, settling for severed brake pipes that led to a automotive crashing right into a tree. The sufferer was a newly retired senior police officer, Elaine Bennet (Sabina Franklyn) and it was clear from asides made at her farewell get together that she wasn’t a well-liked lady. Elaine had simply been accepted into an unique retirement house for police prime brass – sadly author Nick Hicks-Seashore didn’t even start to discover the comedian or dramatic potential of such a setting. However in equity, he did have an terrible lot of whodunit plotting to plough via.

Among the many suspects was Elaine’s surly alcoholic husband, Damian (Gary Beadle) who had been drummed out of the power for “malfeasance” and now labored as a personal investigator. There was additionally an embittered ex-con gardener and a dodgy property developer.

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Within the meantime, Tom Conti performed one other resident of the police retirement house, Sebastian Cabot, a former mentor of “younger Barnaby” (as he insisted on calling him). Cabot was now doing a Captain Tom-style marathon and shuffling up and down the backyard for charity. Conti’s character was so twinkly and avuncular that you simply simply knew he was secretly a nasty’un – which he was, though he wasn’t the killer.

The whodunit aspect hung collectively moderately properly, the central thriller relating again to a serious financial institution heist many years earlier. Mild aid was supplied by a village fete, the place Barnaby’s sidekick DS Winter (Nick Hendrix) was persuaded to be put in shares and have moist sponges thrown at him.

Cabot was ending off his charity stroll earlier than he was cuffed however the fete-goers appeared totally unfazed by the arrest of the star attraction and a chase during which the actual assassin was apprehended with the assistance of a retired police canine. However then that is Midsomer – such dramatic scenes have to be tiringly frequent.

There was some amusement not too long ago about ITV’s choice to offer this 27-year-old drama a set off warning – sure it “incorporates crime scenes and/or incorporates violent killing”, isn’t the clue within the title? Maybe, given our preconceptions that fictional coppers are mechanically both corrupt or broken, a greater set off warning can be: “Incorporates a fortunately married policeman with no noticeable psychological and/or emotional issues”.

Writers wrestle a lot to offer their TV detectives a focal point (latterly, with Professor T and the like, by making them neurodivergent) that Barnaby feels refreshingly uncomplicated. Even so, this was minor Midsomer Murders – much less triggering than mildly soporific.