Electric Vendetta

A dead criminal found in the middle of a crop circle is the kind of sight that makes reasonable people reach for the science fiction. The locals do exactly that, blaming extra-terrestrial activity for the death, and honestly you can hardly blame them. If you found a body in a field stamped into a perfect spiral, your mind would go somewhere unusual too. So would mine, to be honest.

But Barnaby is not convinced. He deals in motives and footprints, and the pattern in the crop strikes him as scenery, not evidence. His scepticism is not popular. The villagers have decided they prefer a mystery with flying saucers in it to one with a neighbour at the bottom of it, and you can understand the appeal. He and Troy work the case while the village enjoys itself enormously with the alien theory. It is the perfect Midsomer collision: folklore against forensic reality, with the gossip in the pub more entertaining than either. Steve Ramsey, Lucy Ramsey, Michael Rycroft, Lloyd Kirby and young Isabel all drift through the inquiry, each with a theory and none with a straight answer.

Terry Hodgkinson and Caroline Graham wrote the episode, and Peter Smith directed it. The cast includes Patrick Baladi as Steve Ramsey and Daisy Bates as Lucy Ramsey, with Michael Bertenshaw as Michael Rycroft, Kenneth Colley as Lloyd Kirby, Jonie Broom as Dave Hedges, Graham Bill as the driver and Amy Darcy as young Isabel, around the usual solid centre of John Nettles, Daniel Casey and Jane Wymark.

The truth, when it comes, is thoroughly earthbound, which is the point. Midsomer can wave at the supernatural and then politely escort it off the page. The crop circle is just a field with a pattern in it, and the hand that made the pattern was human. That is somehow more unsettling than any little green men.