Bad Tidings

In "Bad Tidings," Sergeant Dan Scott reports for duty the day after a local shrew is found murdered. It is no way to settle into a new job. Barnaby barely has time to introduce him to the paperwork before they are out the door, and Scott is thrown straight into the deep end of a Midsomer investigation. The village, as ever, is full of people with opinions and alibis, and most of them are happy to share both with the new man. A new sergeant arriving the morning after a killing is the kind of timing the county specialises in.

John Hopkins plays Scott, and the casting works: he is younger than the officers we are used to seeing at Barnaby's side, a touch more eager, and clearly wondering what he has walked into. The pair work their way through a cast of suspects that includes Charles Rust, Donald Tew, Mary Pearce, Gary Thompson and Mathew Spearman, with Dr Bullard on hand for the medical facts and Joyce and Cully keeping the home front recognisable. The suspect list is a roll call of the usual Midsomer archetypes, from the offended gent to the gossip with the tea tray. John Standing brings his patrician calm to Rust, and Helen Lindsay's Mary Pearce is exactly the kind of village fixture who knows everyone's business.

Peter Hammond and Caroline Graham wrote it, Peter Smith directed, and the episode spends its first hour doing two jobs: solving the murder and letting us get to know the new sergeant. It manages both without tripping over itself.

The mystery is decent, and the new partnership is the real draw. Scott's first case will not be his last, and by the end you are already used to seeing him in the passenger seat. Midsomer has a new regular, and the village has a new face to hide things from. And he copes. Most of them don't. There is a warmth to the episode that makes the change of personnel go down easy, even for viewers still getting over Troy.