The House in the Woods

Everyone in Midsomer Newton knows the old house in the woods is haunted. It stands dark and shut up at the end of a lane, the sort of place local children dare each other to touch. When a house-hunting couple go in to look around and are found garroted inside, the village's first reaction is not surprise. It is confirmation, delivered with the smugness of people who told you so.

Barnaby has a new partner in DC Ben Jones, and the pair of them have to pick their way between ghost stories and forensic fact. The dead couple were outsiders, which makes the locals even less helpful than usual. Charlie and Jack Magwood, played by George Baker in a pair of roles, sit at the heart of the village's story about the house, with Anne Merrick, Barbara and Lesley Flux, Harriet Davis and Gerry Moore all circling with their own versions of what the place is worth and who has the right to it. Dr George Bullard does the post-mortems and finds nothing supernatural about the cause of death, whatever the village would prefer.

Barry Simner and Caroline Graham wrote the script, Peter Smith directed. John Nettles leads as Barnaby with Jason Hughes as Ben Jones, Jane Wymark as Joyce, Barry Jackson as Bullard, and a guest cast that includes Ruth Gemmell as Anne Merrick, Anita Carey as Barbara Flux, Gawn Grainger as Lesley Flux, Rebecca Egan as Harriet Davis and David Westhead as Gerry Moore. Hughes is settling into the series here, and he fits.

The haunted house angle is mostly a way to have fun with the village's superstitions, and the episode enjoys it. But the truth of the case turns out to be earthbound and human, considerably less romantic than a ghost. Midsomer can make a dark house in the woods feel like the scariest place in England, and then remind you that the living are worse.