Death of the Small Coppers

Mahesh Sidana collected butterflies and belonged to an elite IQ society, two hobbies that should have kept him safely out of trouble. Instead they got him killed in the most deliberate way imaginable: found pinned to a wall like one of his own specimens. The crime scene is so specific that it almost tells you who did it, and then it stops telling. The butterfly collection, so harmless in life, becomes the organising principle of a murder investigation.

Barnaby and Jamie Winter quickly find that Sidana's death is not a local matter. The case carries international implications, and the investigation stretches beyond the usual village boundaries into a world where the victim's memberships matter as much as his enemies. Eddie Rowbotham, Grady Palmerston, Carlton Scott, Ginny Welton, Anika Sidana and Birgitte Poulsen all have connections to him, and each one points the inquiry in a different direction.

The episode is a reminder of how well the show can scale up when it wants to. The village setting does not vanish; it just becomes one end of a much longer line. Barnaby works the local threads while Winter keeps up with the wider ones, and the two of them hold the case together between them. It is not a case that can be solved from the village pub, and the episode does not pretend otherwise.

Chris Murray and Caroline Graham wrote it, Paul Harrison directed. Neil Dudgeon and Nick Hendrix are the investigating pair, with Fiona Dolman and Annette Badland in support. Mark Benton plays Eddie Rowbotham, Peter Egan is Grady Palmerston, Ray Fearon plays Carlton Scott, Ellie Haddington is Ginny Welton, Thusitha Jayasundera appears as Anika Sidana, and Ann Eleonora Jørgensen plays Birgitte Poulsen. It is a cast that knows how to look guilty in interesting ways.

It is a satisfyingly strange case, built around a passion most of us never think about. And there is something quietly horrible about a killer who arranges their victim like a collection piece, which is exactly the sort of attention to detail Midsomer villains specialise in.