Death and the Divas

Any murder is worse when it looks like performance, and this one is a whole season of performances. A film historian working on a 1960s horror actress is killed in her own home, and the deaths that follow are staged like scenes from the actress's old films. The actress in question made her name scaring people in the sixties, and her films have outlived her in the way that horror always does. Barnaby and Jones find themselves investigating a body of work as much as a body of evidence.

The trick is that the copycat detail isn't decoration; it's a trail. Somebody is using the films to say something, and Barnaby has to decide whether that something is tribute or threat. The people around the actress's legacy all have opinions about her, and none of them agree about what her films meant, which is exactly how fandom works. The interviews are a treat because everyone speaks two languages at once, the language of grief and the language of cinema.

The guest list is a good one: Sinéad Cusack as Stella Harris, Harriet Walter as Diana Davenport, Henry Goodman as Cy Davenport, Pearce Quigley as Colin Yule, Alice Sykes as Rosie Harris and Joseph Beattie as Scott Davenport. Neil Dudgeon's Barnaby and Jason Hughes's Jones do the patient work, with Fiona Dolman's Sarah Barnaby and Tamzin Malleson's Kate Wilding around as usual. Rachel Cuperman, Sally Griffiths and Caroline Graham wrote it, Nicholas Laughland directed.

But the episode gets real mileage from letting the films be the clue, and it has the sense to treat the horror actress's legacy with affection rather than mockery. The closing stretch lands the reveal with the kind of logic that makes you want to rewatch the films with a notebook. A murder mystery about why we watch scary films, staged by a show that knows the answer.