Death in Disguise

A New Age commune is not the most obvious setting for a police investigation, but that is where the deaths keep happening. Barnaby needs all his wits about him as he looks into a string of unexplained fatalities at the community, where spiritual talk and plain malice appear to be sharing a bed. The deaths come one after another, unexplained, and the commune's promises of a better, purer way of living only make the bodies harder to explain.

The commune makes a fine puzzle box. Its members talk about peace and enlightenment while eyeing each other with the suspicion of people who know something, and Barnaby's steady, unimpressed manner is the right instrument for the place. May Cuttle, Arno Gibbs, Ian Craigie and the Beavers: the group closes ranks in the way that groups always do when the police arrive. The mystery is not just who did what, but why a place dedicated to harmony should be producing corpses. Whatever the commune has found, it is not inner peace.

Douglas Watkinson and Caroline Graham wrote it, with Baz Taylor directing. John Nettles is Barnaby, Daniel Casey's Troy at his side, and the Barnaby household is present in Jane Wymark's Joyce and Laura Howard's Cully. The commune is populated by Judy Cornwell's May Cuttle, Charles Kay's Arno Gibbs, Michael Feast's Ian Craigie, Colin Farrell's Ken Beavers and Diane Bull's Heather Beavers, with Barry Jackson's Dr Bullard providing the professional gloom. Every one of them talks about harmony and means something different by it.

The remote setting does half the work. The commune is cut off from the ordinary world in a way that suits both its members and the story, and Barnaby's visits home to Joyce and Cully give the strangeness somewhere to bounce off. And it is a solid hour of the show doing what it does well: pastoral scenery and dark behaviour, with a detective who refuses to be impressed by any of it.