Blood on the Saddle

The Wild West arrives in Ford Florey, and being Midsomer, the village is not long in turning it to murderous account. A travelling Western show sets up shop, and a killer starts picking off the locals in appropriately Western style. The killings borrow the show's vocabulary, which is how the whole village knows the two things are connected before Barnaby does. The common thread turns out to be a parcel of swampland that everyone wants and no one can agree about.

Barnaby and Jones have to work around lasso tricks and stagecoach pageantry to find a motive that makes sense, and in this case it keeps coming back to the disputed ground at the heart of the row. The high street has become a saloon set, complete with stunts and souvenir stands, and the investigation has to be conducted through a crowd that is enjoying itself far too much. DC Gail Stephens is on hand, Dr Bullard examines the remains, and the Finchers are all over this one: Jack, Susan and Leo, with Fergal Jenner never far from the trouble and Faye Lennox completing a suspect list that changes shape with every death.

David Harsent wrote the script with Caroline Graham, and Richard Holthouse directed. John Nettles and Jason Hughes head the cast, with David Rintoul, Caroline Langrishe, Richard Harrington, Pip Torrens and Emma Cooke doing their bit to keep the cowboy hats and the body count in balance.

But a Western theme park in a Cotswold village sounds like comedy, and the episode has a sense of fun about it. The deaths are played straight, though, and the swampland dispute is the sort of small, stubborn grievance this series has always understood. Gunslinging in the countryside turns out to be a surprisingly comfortable fit. The episode never quite decides whether the Wild West is the joke or the villagers are, which is exactly why it works.