A Talent for Life

It is 2003, and the sixth series of Midsomer Murders opens, with "A Talent for Life," on a pair of bludgeoned corpses and no obvious explanation for either. Two local residents have been clubbed to death, and the official line is that something is fishy, which is detective-speak for "we have bodies and we have no idea what happened." Barnaby and Troy get the case, and the sheer size of the suspect pool tells you how seriously the village is taking it.

The Goff family sit at the heart of it. Duncan, Angela and Dixie Goff all give the sort of statements that sound helpful and probably aren't, and around them drifts Isobel Hewitt, played by Honor Blackman. There is real pleasure in watching Goldfinger's Pussy Galore turn up in Midsomer and treat a murder inquiry like an inconvenient garden party; Blackman is exactly the kind of performer this show loves to borrow. Quentin Roka and Dr George Bullard complete the professional picture, and Joyce and Cully Barnaby hover in the background keeping the home front recognisable. Every face here is a potential witness, a potential suspect, or both, and the village's opinion of the victims shifts with every interview, which is the kind of small human detail the show is quietly good at.

David Hoskins and Caroline Graham wrote the script, Sarah Hellings directed, and the episode settles into the stately rhythm the series had perfected by this point. And nobody rushes. The killer certainly doesn't, and neither does the show.

It ends the way these episodes usually end, with the mystery unravelled and the village letting out a long breath. The opener is a comfortable reminder of the deal the show has struck with its viewers: death will keep arriving in Midsomer, and Barnaby will keep sorting it out in time for supper. It is not the show's boldest hour, but it is a solid one. You could do a lot worse for a Friday night.