The Point of Balance

Midsomer is at its most polished for the Paramount Dance Extravaganza, and the shine is doing a lot of hiding. Behind the sequins and the smiles sit feuds that have been running for years, and the desire to win appears to outweigh just about anything else in the room. The competition has drawn dancers and sponsors alike, all of them watching one another with the kind of attention that has nothing to do with friendship. When a former ballroom-dance champion turns up dead, it barely counts as a surprise.

Barnaby and DS Jamie Winter step into a world where everyone is on their toes in both senses of the phrase. The suspects come thick and fast, from jealous partners and rival dancers nursing old grudges to corporate sponsors whose interest in the contest may not stop at sponsorship. The Wilders keep appearing at the centre of it all, along with Rachel Stevenson and Tanya Brzezinski, and each conversation seems to stir up another grievance. Underneath the glitter and the forced smiles, the episode is really about how far people will go when winning stops being a hobby.

Nicholas Hicks-Beach wrote the episode with Caroline Graham, and Audrey Cooke directed. Neil Dudgeon and Nick Hendrix lead the investigation, with Fiona Dolman as Sarah, Annette Badland as Fleur Perkins, Nigel Havers as Andrew Wilder, Jaye Griffiths as Lilly Wilder, Carolina Main as Heather Wilder, Tom Chambers as Ray Wilder, Natalie Gumede as Rachel Stevenson and Kazia Pelka as Tanya Brzezinski. The cast does the material a favour, which matters when the material is this frothy.

The dance-competition setting gives the show a neat way to talk about what it always talks about: the gulf between how things look and what they cost. Everyone is performing, on the floor and off it. And the motive, when it comes, grows from the same soil as the feuds: the need to win at any cost. The sequins, you will be glad to hear, survive. The reputations mostly do not.