Painted in Blood

Joyce Barnaby goes out to paint watercolours and comes home with a body. That is the whole setup of "Painted in Blood" in one line, and it is a good one: the village green at Midsomer Florey, easels planted in the grass, and a corpse right in the middle of the composition. Barnaby is called away from domestic pleasantries and into the messiest kind of case, the kind that starts in full view of half the village.

The suspects arrive in a steady procession. Barrett Filby, Linda Tyrell, Tony Carter, Colin and Tessa Hawksley: everyone had a view of the green, and everyone saw something slightly different. That is the fun of the episode, watching Barnaby sift conflicting accounts while Dr Bullard and the quietly eccentric Godfrey Teal add their own layers to the story. Leslie Phillips plays Teal, and there is a treat in watching a Carry On legend settle into Midsomer's collection of oddballs as if he had lived there all his life. The village closes ranks, as it always does, and every answer brings two more questions.

John Sessions gives Barrett Filby exactly the right amount of slippery charm, and the rest of the cast follow his lead. Andrew Payne and Caroline Graham wrote it, Sarah Hellings directed, and the episode makes good use of its pastoral setting. And the art-class framing gives the whole thing a painterly quality, blood on the green and all.

The mystery itself is serviceable. The performances carry it. Phillips and Sessions alone are worth the price of admission, and Joyce's moment of discovery, a watercolour outing going horribly wrong, is a small classic of its kind. Beauty and violence sharing the same patch of grass: Midsomer's favourite trick, done well. The series is long past the point of surprises, and still finds ways to be enjoyable.