Sins of Commission

"Sins of Commission" opens with a literary festival full of ambitious writers, and somebody starts killing them off. There is a joke in there somewhere, and Midsomer is not too proud to make it. The twelfth annual festival is in full swing when an author is found with his neck broken, and the bad news keeps coming: more writers will die before the winner of the competition is announced. The victim count climbs in a way that suggests the killer has a reading list.

Barnaby and Sergeant Scott are plunged into a world of egos and grudges, with silences timed to perfection. Everyone at the festival has a motive, and everyone has a book they would kill to have published. Camilla Crofton, Tim and Kay Settingfield, Grace Maplin and Harry Poulson make up a suspect pool that is viciously well-read, and Donald Sumpter, who would go on to annoy audiences as Game of Thrones' Maester Luwin, plays Tim Settingfield with a suitably donnish air. Susan Engel's Camilla Crofton is the grand old lady of letters, which in Midsomer means she has outlived more rivals than most publishers. Michael Harbour's Harry Poulson and Stella Gonet's Grace Maplin fill out the festival's middle ranks, where the resentment runs deepest.

Elizabeth-Anne Wheal and Caroline Graham wrote it, Peter Smith directed, and the episode treats the festival like the pressure cooker it is. The polite literary facade comes apart quickly, and behind it sits a very Midsomer combination of ambition and bad blood. The neck-breaking is just the opening chapter; the script saves its worst for the literary sessions.

For a crime-drama site, an episode about writers getting murdered is hard to resist, and the show knows it. The mystery is playful and spiteful in equal measure, and the writing competition gives every suspect a reason to lie. The winner of the festival gets a prize. The losers get a funeral. And Barnaby sorts out which is which with his usual calm.