Let Us Prey

Workmen clearing out the church at Midsomer St Claire have found a medieval fresco in the crypt, and the images on it are not the sort you would frame for the vicar's office. They are macabre, and they appear to be inspiring someone. The murders that follow in the village are grim enough on their own, but the pattern is what really gets under the skin: each death seems to echo one of the pictures on the wall.

That gives Barnaby and Nelson a case with two crime scenes, the village and the church itself, and the writing, from Paul Logue with Caroline Graham, leans into the gothic end of the range. Alex Pillai directs, keeping the atmosphere properly damp and candlelit without tipping the whole thing into horror film territory. It is a Midsomer mystery wearing its oldest clothes, and they suit it.

The usual faces are all in place. Fiona Dolman's Sarah and Tamzin Malleson's Kate Wilding hold the edges of the story, and Rebecca Front's Reverend Martha Hillcott has to preside over a crypt that has suddenly become the most interesting room in the parish. Paul Copley and William Beck play Frank and Michael Dewar, Andrea Lowe is Ava Gould, Ben Bailey Smith is Zach Lime, and Roy Hudd turns up as Victor Spencer. That is a cast with some weight behind it, and the episode gives them the sort of secrets a village keeps for generations.

The fresco idea is a good one because it lets the show have it both ways. The murders look like the work of somebody following old pictures, and the investigation has to decide whether the art is a blueprint or just a coincidence dressed up to look sinister. Either way, the church does a fine job of standing there looking ancient and knowing, and the faces on the wall seem to be watching the case come together.

And the result is a proper chiller, the warm sort, the kind that makes you glad you are watching from a sofa rather than standing in that crypt.