Death in a Chocolate Box

Midsomer Holm is the sort of village the show dreams up after a long lunch: a chocolate-box English settlement whose entire population consists of reformed ex-convicts. Everyone in it has done time, which means everyone knows how a crime scene works. The irony is not lost on Barnaby: the safest village in the county on paper, staffed entirely by former criminals. When a former friend and colleague of his is found murdered there, the detectives find themselves interviewing a village full of people with professional experience of the subject.

The victim was a friend and colleague of the investigating team, which puts a personal edge on the whole inquiry. The case takes them deep into the community, and the residents in the frame include Jack Colby and Gina Colby, played by Pip Donaghy and Clare Higgins, along with Lord Holm, played by Edward Petherbridge, and Ronnie Tyler, played by Christopher Fairbank. Simon Dixon, played by Sam Hazeldine, also crosses their path. Joyce and Cully Barnaby appear in the family scenes, and Dr George Bullard is on call as ever.

Tony Etchells and Caroline Graham wrote the episode, with Richard Holthouse directing. The premise gives the show a chance to play with its own rules: suspects who know their rights, who know how evidence works, and who are not remotely intimidated by the man from Causton. They treat the interview room like a familiar room, which is exactly what it is for them.

There is a warm, familiar pleasure in watching Barnaby work a village where nobody is innocent and nobody is exactly guilty either. But the real question, for Barnaby, is whether reform sticks, and he keeps testing it. The reformed-ex-convict setup could have been a gimmick, but the script treats it with a straight face and lets the characters earn their keep. It is a comforting hour in the best sense, menace included.