The Ghost of Causton Abbey

Causton Abbey has been a ruin, a legend and now a brewery, and it is doing its best to live up to its famously cursed history. The launch party is everything such events should be: full, cheerful, and slightly smug about the abbey's new purpose. Shortly after the party to launch a new ale, a man is found dead in one of the brewing vats, boiled in the process. Barnaby and Winter arrive to find a crowd of people who would very much like this to be about beer, and nothing else.

The case spreads through everyone connected to the abbey and its new commercial life. Fleur Perkins, Emani Taylor, Keith Grundy, Brother Jozef, Jenny Moss and the young Toby Grundy all have ties to the place, and Sarah Barnaby is somewhere in the picture as well. Everyone has a view on the curse, and nobody wants the police poking around in the abbey's older stories.

The episode gets a lot of mileage out of the contrast between the homely trappings of the brewery and the horror of the death. A vat is an ordinary piece of machinery until someone ends up in it. Winter is openly puzzled about whether this can really be about beer; Barnaby is old enough to know that the question is never as simple as it looks. The episode treats the curse as both a joke and a threat, which is the right way to treat any Midsomer legend.

Helen Jenkins and Caroline Graham wrote it, Matt Carter directed. Neil Dudgeon and Nick Hendrix lead the cast, with Fiona Dolman and Annette Badland as Fleur Perkins among the support; Amber Aga plays Emani Taylor, Michael Byrne is Keith Grundy, Beth Cooke appears as Young Sylvia, John Cummins plays Brother Jozef, Zebb Dempster is Toby Grundy, and Angela Griffin plays Jenny Moss.

It is a strong start to the series, built on an old standby: a cursed place with a new business and a body that refuses to stay folklore. And it never quite lets you forget that the abbey was dangerous long before it learned to brew.