Ring Out Your Dead

The week before a big bell-ringing competition is not, on the face of it, a promising setting for a murder spree. The village of Midsomer Wellow would beg to differ. But someone is methodically killing off the parish church's bell ringers, one by one, in the run-up to the competition, and the atmosphere in the tower goes from competitive to terrified in a hurry. A bell-ringing competition is the sort of event that brings the county out, which is presumably exactly what the killer was counting on.

The choice of victims is the interesting part. Bell ringers are a community within the community: Hugh Barton, Dennis Ebbrell, Greg Tutt, Reggie Barton, Marcus Steadman, Rosalind Parr, Sue Tutt. They meet in the tower and argue about changes and peals, bound together by a shared obsession that outsiders find mildly baffling. And now someone is removing them one by one, which suggests the killer knows the tower's business very well. Barnaby and Troy have to work out what connects the victims beyond the ropes and the bells. The answer, when it comes, is buried somewhere in the peals, if only anyone had been listening properly.

Christopher Russell and Caroline Graham wrote the episode, and Sarah Hellings directed. John Nettles and Daniel Casey lead, with Jane Wymark as Joyce. The cast is a strong one: Hugh Bonneville as Hugh Barton, Harry Burton as Dennis Ebbrell, Dugald Bruce-Lockhart as Greg Tutt, Graham Crowden as Reggie Barton, Jamie de Courcey as Marcus Steadman, Carmen Du Sautoy as Rosalind Parr and Clare Holman as Sue Tutt.

There is something faintly absurd and entirely fitting about the whole business. Church bells, the sound of a village announcing its own existence, become the focal point for murder. The title says it all, really: they ring out your dead. In Midsomer, the bell ringers get the full treatment before the competition has even started.