October 20, 2022

Here be Dragons.

Original Title: Here Be Dragons.

Language: English.

Statistics: 5 pages, 1059 words.

Read on

October 20, 2022

Here be Dragons.

Original Title: Here Be Dragons.

Language: English.

Statistics: 5 pages, 1059 words.

Read on

October 20, 2022

Here be Dragons.

Original Title: Here Be Dragons.

Language: English.

Statistics: 5 pages, 1059 words.

Read on

Introduction

Midsomer Murders is a British crime drama television series, adapted by Anthony Horowitz and Douglas Watkinson from the novels in the Chief Inspector Barnaby book series (created by Caroline Graham), and broadcast on two channels of ITV since its premiere on 23 March 1997. The series focuses on various murder cases within small country villages across the fictional English county of Midsomer and the efforts of the senior police detective and his partner within the fictional Midsomer Constabulary to solve the crime by determining who the culprit is and the motive for their actions. It often identifies itself differently from other detective dramas by featuring a mixture of lighthearted whimsy and dark humor and a notable soundtrack that uses the theremin instrument for the show's theme tune.

Midsomer Murders remains popular in British television schedules and broadcast internationally in over 200 countries and territories. The program has featured two lead stars—from its premiere in 1997, John Nettles as Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Tom Barnaby, until he retires from the drama in February 2011; then Neil Dudgeon as DCI John Barnaby, Tom's younger cousin, since March 2011. Both main stars have featured a list of supporting actors who worked alongside them, including Jane Wymark, Barry Jackson, Daniel Casey, John Hopkins, Jason Hughes, and Gwilym Lee. Nick Hendrix is the current co-star working with Dudgeon.

Summary

Midsomer Murders is a detective drama set in modern-day England. The stories revolve around the efforts of Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby and later his successor, cousin John Barnaby, to solve numerous murders in the picturesque but deadly villages of the fictional county of Midsomer.

The Barnabys have worked with several different sergeants throughout the run of the show: Detective Sergeant (DS) Gavin Troy (Daniel Casey), DS Dan Scott (John Hopkins), DS Ben Jones (Jason Hughes), DS Charlie Nelson (Gwilym Lee) and DS Jamie Winter (Nick Hendrix).

Production

Filming of Midsomer Murders began in the autumn of 1996, and the first episode, "The Killings at Badger's Drift," was broadcast in the United Kingdom on 23 March 1997. This inaugural episode was the highest-rated single drama program of 1997, watched by 13.5 million viewers. Throughout its run, the feature-length drama has attracted many well-known accomplished actors from the stage and screen in guest-starring roles.

Anthony Horowitz and the original producers, Betty Willingale and Brian True-May, created the series. Horowitz adapted the majority of the early episodes from the original works by Caroline Graham. Current writers include Helen Jenkins, Jeff Povey, Nicholas Hicks-Beach, Julia Gilbert, and Chris Murray.

Actor John Nettles originated the role of Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby. Nettles' character retired at the end of 2010, after the 13th series of eight episodes; his last episode was "Fit for Murder." Neil Dudgeon replaced him in the 14th series, playing Tom Barnaby's cousin, DCI John Barnaby, who was first seen in a series 13 episode, "The Sword of Guillaume." Dudgeon appeared in Midsomer Murders in the series 4 episode "Garden of Death," in which he played the role of a tongue-in-cheek gardener, Daniel Bolt, who is somewhat interested in sex.

Series 20 began in the UK on ITV on 10 March 2019, with episode 1, "The Ghosts of Causton Abbey." In the US, the entire six-episode series was immediately released on Acorn TV and BritBox and became available on Netflix after the UK broadcast schedule finished. The show was removed from Netflix in October 2019; only the first 19 series had been shown on the service. Series 20 onward have never been shown on Netflix in US or Canada. As of January 2021, series 1–20 can be seen in the US on IMDb and Tubi TV.

As with series 20, series 21 will be initially released in the USA. It will premiere on Acorn TV and BritBox on 1 December 2019 before airing in the UK in January 2020. The show's official social media confirmed that production of series 21 began in March 2019. As of October 2020, filming had begun on series 22 after being delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Setting

Midsomer is a fictional English county. The county town is Causton, a medium-sized town where Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby lives with his wife and where the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is located. Much of the series' popularity arises from the paradox of sudden violence in a picturesque and peaceful rural setting. Various clues in several episodes hint that Midsomer might cover Berkshire and part of northern Hampshire. This may be supported by the episode "Dead in the Water," where a body is found in the River Thames.

Many of the villages and small towns of the county have the word "Midsomer" in their name; this is inspired in part by the real county of Somerset, specifically, its actual town of Midsomer Norton, and became a naming convention within the show. Midsomer Wellow and Causton are derived from the names of authentic Somerset villages Wellow and Corston.

Each episode usually contains several murders, the high body count being a well-known feature of the show. Despite this, the culprit is seldom a serial killer—very frequently, the murderer is driven by circumstance to compound their crimes and keeps killing to cover up the actual murder.

Humor is a prominent feature of the series. There is often dark comedy, such as a woman being murdered with a wheel of cheese, and many scenes are examples of "dramedy" (comic drama or dramatic comedy). According to Radio Times when describing the episode "Death and the Divas" (series 15, episode 4): "Midsomer Murders never takes itself too seriously, but here it's got its tongue so far into its cheek, it hurts."

Nostalgia has also been a feature of the show, especially in its Nettles era. Most episodes have been set in hermetic rural villages that were already changing rapidly by the time the series began, Nettles opined in a 2003 interview. The old-fashioned settings are proper to the Graham novels: "Although the books are set in the present," wrote one reviewer, Graham's country villages "seem to come from another time." "The spirit is obviously of the '50s", Nettles remarked, and the less crowded, less complicated village/world was part of the book's appeal.

In recent years, Midsomer County has become highly diverse, and it is not unusual to find a high percentage of multiple ethnic minorities living in one village. Series 22 featured villages that, along with Caucasians, one village might be home to South Asians, East Asians, Southeast Asians, Afro-Caribbeans, and others of mixed heritage.

Filming locations

Several towns, including Thame and Wallingford, in Oxfordshire, represent Causton.

The Six Bells, a pub in Warborough, Oxfordshire, repeatedly features as the Black Swan in the Midsomer village of Badger's Drift. The Bull & Butcher, the village pub in Turville, Buckinghamshire, featured in both "Murder on St. Malley's Day" (renamed The Chalk and Gown) and "Schooled in Murder" (renamed as The Spotted Cow).

Filming occurred on Sunday, 11 August 2013, at White Waltham Airfield, southwest of Maidenhead, for episode 4 of Series 16, "The Flying Club."

The Buckinghamshire tourism authority announced in 2021 the launching of three themed tours of locations in the county that have been used to film the series.

In "The Killings of Copenhagen"—number five in the sixteenth series and the 100th episode overall—several scenes are filmed on location in central Copenhagen, like Rådhuspladsen ("the City Hall Square"), Nyhavn ("New Port") with its canal and old colorful houses, a Danish countryside church, and at the circular courtyard inside the Copenhagen Police Headquarters building. The murder in Copenhagen is one of three within the entire series (until episode 114, at least) that take place outside the fictional County of Midsomer, the others being in Wales where DCI Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) and DS Ben Jones (Jason Hughes) travel in 'Death and Dust' and Brighton where Inspector John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) is introduced.