Things That Go Bump in the Night

"Things That Go Bump in the Night" starts with an undertaker found dead, his wrists slashed, and the suspicion falling on a spiritualist church. Even by Midsomer's standards the irony is choice: the man who arranged other people's funerals has left a scene that looks like a staged tragedy, and the local believers in the afterlife have a good deal of explaining to do. Barnaby and Sergeant Scott take the case, and the inquiry leads them into the séance rooms and front parlours of the village's more otherworldly residents.

Patrick Pennyman's death draws a wide circle into the inquiry. His widow Janet, played by Mary Jo Randle, Elizabeth Key and the Marrs, Thomas and Anne, all have connections to the dead man and to the church. Dearbhla Molloy's Elizabeth Key keeps her counsel in a way that suggests she knows more than the dead man's file contains. Liza Sadovy's Rosetta Price adds a touch of medium-grade menace to the proceedings, and Dr Bullard supplies the medical facts and the occasional sceptical eyebrow. The show's great trick is that it treats the spiritualists with just enough seriousness to make the mystery work, and Jonathan Slinger and Cathryn Bradshaw as the Marrs give the séance scenes a proper chill.

Peter Hammond and Caroline Graham wrote it, Peter Smith directed, and the episode opens the eighth season with a shrug and a séance. The ritualistic air of the death sits comfortably alongside the methodical police work; Barnaby is not the man to be spooked by a Ouija board. The script knows the difference between belief and gullibility, and it treats both with respect.

It is a solid opener, well cast and nicely paced, and the truth at the end of it is more mundane than the trailer promises, which is usually the way. Midsomer's ghosts, it turns out, are nearly always people. But the séance candles go out, the church carries on, and the county files the case away with the rest of them. Another night survived.