The Dagger Club

An artist named Suzie Colebrook comes home to find her house has been broken into, and shortly afterwards she is electrocuted by a roulette wheel. That is the kind of sentence that only makes sense in Midsomer, and the investigation has to untangle how the two events connect. Luxton Deeping is the setting, and Chris Murray's script, written with Caroline Graham, spreads the suspicion around nicely.

The Summersbee family is everywhere in this one. Bella, played by Georgia Taylor, Jeannie, played by Charlotte Cornwell, and Nick, played by Adam Kotz. Their name keeps coming up, which in a murder case is never a good sign. Una Stubbs turns up as Audrey Braylesford, looking as though butter would not melt, and Lia Williams' Maggie Markham adds some proper steel. Howard Ward's Niall Colebrooke completes the picture, and Alex Pillai directs with the steady hand he brings to these things.

But the roulette wheel is the sort of murder weapon the show does better than anyone. It is theatrical and improbable, and it gives Barnaby something to chew on. Nelson, played as ever by Gwilym Lee, gets the quiet moments, the ones where the answers come from watching people rather than chasing them. He is the one who notices the small inconsistencies, and there are plenty of those. Barnaby and Nelson divide the interviews between them, and the two styles bounce off each other nicely.

The break-in is the real puzzle. Everything about the case points back to it, and the episode is patient about letting the connection surface. The neighbours are the usual mix of helpful and obstructive, and Barnaby listens to all of them, because one of them is lying.

It is a solid opener for the season, and the villain isn't who you would bet on. The wheel always lands somewhere, after all.