They Seek Him Here

A film crew comes to Midsomer to shoot a new adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel, recreating the French Revolution against a background of hedgerows and church spires. It is the sort of production the village could probably do without, and events prove it. The director, Nick Cheyney, is beheaded by a guillotine on set, and this time it is not a special effect. The guillotine has been the centrepiece of the production all week, so the real question is not how it happened but who was standing behind it. Barnaby and DS Ben Jones arrive to find that the suspect list is roughly the size of the crew list.

The investigation unfolds around the production, and the faces in the frame include Gwen Morrison, played by Marian McLoughlin, Neville Hayward, played by Richard Hope, Jed Norris, played by Jonathan Moore, Danny Twyman, played by Kieran Bew, and Leonie Charteris, played by Emily Hamilton. Nick Cheyney himself is played by Jay Villiers. The actors and crew all have their reasons to resent the director, who appears to have made enemies in every department. Joyce Barnaby and Dr George Bullard appear in their usual supporting roles.

Barry Purchese and Caroline Graham wrote the episode, with Sarah Hellings directing. The period-piece setting lets the show have its fun: a murder method lifted straight out of history, a set full of people who all know how the guillotine works, and the quiet absurdity of aristocratic costumes on Midsomer streets.

It is one of those episodes where the setting does half the work. The mystery is a solid police procedural underneath the wigs and the tricolour, and the joke about the case becoming as bloody as the revolution it was filming is allowed to carry through to the end. And the title's rhyme about seeking him here and there suits a mystery where nobody is quite who they seem. Every department had a grudge, which is standard for film sets and fatal in Midsomer. The show has a soft spot for the theatre, and the feeling is mutual.