The Sleeper Under the Hill

The timing does nobody any favours: the spring equinox is days away when a farmer is found dead in a stone circle, and the state of the body rules out any tidy explanation. Barnaby and Jones arrive to find a village already inclined to read the old calendar into everything.

The case keeps pulling them away from the forensics and towards the people who live in the circle's shadow. Evan Jago, Leticia Clifford, Ezra Canning, Caradoc Singer, Eleanor Preston, with Sergeant Trevor Gibson patrolling the edges. Everyone near the stones has a version of the local history, and none of the versions agree. Jones and Barnaby treat the folklore as evidence rather than decoration, which is the right instinct in a county where people remember who wronged whose family three generations back. But the interviews stay polite and learned no matter what, in that special way of people who think they're protecting something.

Neil Dudgeon's Barnaby leads the inquiry with Jason Hughes's Jones working alongside, and the pair make a good double act in a case with no obvious villain at first. Fiona Dolman's Sarah Barnaby and Tamzin Malleson's Kate Wilding are around the edges. Lee Ross plays Sergeant Trevor Gibson, Richard Leaf Evan Jago, Susan Brown Leticia Clifford, Alan Williams Ezra Canning, Robert Pugh Caradoc Singer and Claudia Harrison Eleanor Preston. David Harsent and Caroline Graham wrote the script, Nicholas Laughland directed.

This one is Midsomer doing what it does best: modern police work tripping over old bones. The trail leads through history rather than anything seasonal, and the equinox deadline keeps a steady pressure on the whole village. Nobody gets to treat the stones as scenery. The solution, when it comes, doesn't cheapen the mystery; it just makes the past feel closer than anyone wanted to admit. It's a cold, atmospheric episode, and one of the season's better moods.