The Black Book

The episode opens at an auction, where a previously unknown painting by an eighteenth-century artist surfaces and immediately makes trouble. The sale draws Barnaby into an investigation that runs from murder into art forgery, and the painting turns out to be the hinge of the whole affair. The auction house crowd is the usual mixture of connoisseurs and chancers, and the dead man knew exactly which was which. The painting's provenance is a tangle of certificates and stories, and someone has gone to considerable trouble to make the tangle look respectable. The discovery acts as the spark, and the forgery is the crime underneath the killings.

But the art world supplies a small, well-dressed cast. Ann Firbank's Felicity Law, David Bamber's Anthony Prideaux and Susannah Harker's Matilda Simms are the likely players, with Paul Anderson's Graham Spate and Christopher Fulford's Alan Best around the edges. There is a particular pleasure in watching Barnaby among people who think money is a form of truth. Barry Jackson's Dr Bullard examines the victims, Kirsty Dillon's WPC Gail Stephens does the legwork, and Jason Hughes's Ben Jones matches Barnaby's suspicion of everyone with a price tag. Jane Wymark's Joyce is, as ever, the sane one.

Nicholas Martin and Caroline Graham wrote it, Peter Smith directed. The mystery is a tidy one, and the show enjoys the chance to spend an hour among people who believe a painting is worth killing for. The forgery details are handled with just enough expertise to feel real without slowing the story. The episode moves at a civilised pace, like a gallery opening that happens to include autopsies.

One fake canvas, properly placed, can undo half a village. That is the sort of arithmetic Midsomer has always done well, and the bodies pile up around the artwork while the truth about who painted what stays buried. It is the quietest sort of greed, the kind that dresses well and never raises its voice.