With Baited Breath

Solomon Gorge has a legend and the legend is wet: a giant fish said to lurk in the lake, and fishermen arriving from all over for the chance to land it. It is the sort of quiet, single-minded pursuit that Midsomer specialises in wrecking. Hundreds of extra bodies turn up for the Pyscho Mud Run, and suddenly the gorge is full of people whose idea of a good time is running through mud. The two crowds do not get along, and the sabotage starts almost immediately.

When the two sides start sabotaging one another's events, the show lets the chaos run for a while before the real trouble starts. Someone's life ends up on the line, and the investigation lands on Barnaby and DS Jamie Winter like a wet towel. They wade into a mess of misplaced ambition and genuine threat, where the mud run and the fishing competition have given half the county a reason to be cross with the other half. The list of people who were at the gorge that day is long, and most of them had a reason to be annoyed.

Jeff Povey wrote the episode with Caroline Graham, and Jennie Darnell directed. Neil Dudgeon and Nick Hendrix anchor the investigation, with Fiona Dolman as Sarah, Annette Badland as Fleur Perkins, Vincent Franklin as Artie Blythe, Eleanor Fanyinka as Jade-Marie Pierce, Nicola Stephenson as Izzy Silvermane, Nitin Ganatra as Ned Skye, Bronagh Waugh as Blaise McQuinn and Miles Jupp as Cornelius Tetbury. Miles Jupp, you suspect, is having a thoroughly good time, and the feeling is contagious.

It is hard not to enjoy an episode that pits two perfectly reasonable rural pastimes against each other and waits to see which one produces a killer. And the mud run gives the show something it rarely gets: an excuse for half the cast to be covered in filth while delivering their alibis. There is a satisfying bluntness to the whole affair. The gorge will not be this crowded again until the next legend turns up.