Written in the Stars

A total eclipse of the sun is a rare thing in Midsomer, and somebody picks it as the moment to murder an astronomer. Astronomers are supposed to see things coming. This one didn't. The killing is made to look like a meteor strike, which is either a wonderful joke or a warning, and the show wisely doesn't decide for you. Then an astrologer steps forward claiming to have predicted every death that follows, and Barnaby's week gets considerably worse.

The rest of the case runs on that tension, between deaths written in the stars and somebody working from the astrologer's column. And Barnaby keeps asking questions that fate is no good at answering, like who benefits and who was where. Jones does the collecting of alibis and the heavy lifting of disbelief. The case gives Barnaby the rare pleasure of being the only sceptic in the room. Fiona Dolman's Sarah Barnaby and Tamzin Malleson's Kate Wilding are around the edges, keeping the ordinary world in view while everyone else stares at the sky.

Harry Hadden-Paton's Lawrence Janson, Kenny Ireland's George Dormer, Soraya Radford's Gagan Dutta, Jay Taylor's Peter Groves, Barnaby Kay's Adrian Sharp and Maureen Lipman's Mags Dormer fill the suspect pool, with Neil Dudgeon's Barnaby and Jason Hughes's Jones steering. It's a small, well-chosen cast, and everybody gets a turn under suspicion. Steve Trafford and Caroline Graham wrote it, Renny Rye directed.

The premise sounds like it belongs in a lesser show, but the episode plays it straight and is the better for it. The eclipse is a plot engine rather than decoration, the astrologer's predictions keep everyone off balance, and the murder turns out to be entirely human. It helps that the cast treats the material with exactly the right amount of seriousness. Maureen Lipman turns up as Mags Dormer, which is never a bad thing. Fate, it turns out, needs a hand.