The Ballad of Midsomer County

The Lower Crosby Folk Festival is the kind of event that keeps a village going all year, so the death of its organiser, Toby Winning, on the morning it opens is about as bad as the weekend gets. Worse, he had just announced plans to move the whole thing nearer to London, which is the sort of news that makes enemies out of friends. Paul Logue wrote the script with Caroline Graham, and Renny Rye directed.

The festival backdrop gives the episode its texture: tents and sound checks, a crowd of people who all knew the victim, most of whom had an opinion about his plans. Rakie Ayola's Alice Winning carries the family side of the grief. Dean Andrews' Tom Asher and Claudie Blakley's Claire Asher run the local end, with Clarke Peters' Frank Wainwright as the kind of elder who knows everyone's business. Sean Gilder's Danny Carver and Lucie Jones' Melody Carver round out a cast that feels properly lived in.

Barnaby and Nelson work the case around the festival's schedule, which is a neat way of keeping the clock ticking. The music is everywhere, and the episode knows that a folk festival full of people pretending to get along is a perfect setting for a murder. Nobody wants the weekend cancelled, whatever they thought of Toby, and that tension runs through every interview. The festival must go on, even when its organiser cannot.

The move to London is the engine of the whole thing. It gave someone a reason, and the show is patient about letting that reason surface. The announcement was made, the resentments were noted, and then the morning came early.

But it is the melancholy of a fairground closing for the night that stays with you, and that is no bad thing for an episode about a community losing its own event.