Blood Wedding

The Fitzroy family, local aristocrats, are holding a wedding reception when a guest turns up dead, which is a strong argument for staying home. DCI Tom Barnaby walks into a marquee full of people in their best clothes who would all rather talk about anything else. The timing makes it worse. Cully's own wedding is not far off, and every toast at someone else's celebration is a small reminder of the one he will have to give. He is chasing a killer while his daughter plans the happiest day of her life, and the two events keep tangling in his head. Barnaby has attended plenty of weddings in the line of duty, but this is the first one that keeps circling back to the invitation on his own mantelpiece.

The guest list gives the inquiry plenty of scope. Charles Edwards is Ned Fitzroy and Mark Umbers is Harry, with Elisabeth Dermot Walsh's Beth Porteous close by. Daniel Casey appears as Gavin Troy, a face regular viewers will remember from earlier series, and Sam Hazeldine plays Simon Dixon. Barry Jackson's Dr Bullard has the medical side in hand, while Jane Wymark's Joyce and Laura Howard's Cully keep Barnaby anchored at home. Jason Hughes's Ben Jones works the guests with his usual patience, collecting the small lies that weddings always seem to generate.

David Harsent and Caroline Graham wrote it, Peter Smith directed. The script uses the reception as a pressure cooker, packing in too many people with too much to hide, all obliged to keep smiling through the canapés. The murder itself is solved without leaving the grounds, which is a neat piece of housekeeping.

High society in Midsomer is a thin layer over something darker, and this episode enjoys scraping it back. But the lasting image is Barnaby himself, standing at a party he does not want to attend, professionally polite, privately counting the days until he has to give a toast of his own.