The Maid in Splendour

The Maid in Splendour is the sort of pub every English village claims to have and almost none actually does: beams, a landlord who knows everyone, and a bar where the village's secrets are served alongside the bitter. It is the kind of place where unrequited love and secret business deals do their slow work, with the occasional affair for seasoning. But in this episode they finally boil over into murder, and the pub is both setting and suspect.

Barnaby and Sergeant Scott split their time between the bar and the village, unpicking a tangle of relationships that all run through the pub. Michael Bannerman and his son Stephen, Audrey Monday, Benbow the regular, Lawrence Haggard with his schemes: everyone has a reason to be there, and everyone has a reason to wish someone else wasn't. William Gaunt brings a weathered dignity to Michael Bannerman, and Freddie Jones, one of the great faces of British television, makes Benbow the kind of character you want to buy a drink for. Alan Cox's Stephen Bannerman and Raymond Coulthard's Lawrence Haggard give the business thread its teeth. Frances Tomelty's Audrey Monday carries the romantic thread, and it is a sadder one than the episode's trailer suggests.

Andrew Payne and Caroline Graham wrote it, Richard Holthouse directed, and the episode is at its best when it lets the pub do the talking. The clink of glasses, the whispered conversations, the back room after closing: Midsomer knows that nothing stays secret in a village for long, least of all in its pub.

It is a quieter, more intimate entry, more domestic drama than grand conspiracy. The mystery is really about what people will do for love and money, and the answer is the same as it always is in this county: anything. It is a comfortable hour with an uncomfortable centre, and that combination has always been this series' home turf. The pub stays open, the regulars come back, and the village pretends the whole thing never happened, which is the most English ending of all.