The Witches of Angel's Rise

The eve of a Psychic Fayre is the sort of moment Midsomer has been saving up for. A body is found at Angel's Rise surrounded by ritual symbols, and Barnaby, who likes his clues a little more solid, has to step into the spiritual world of mediums and occult followers to find the killer. The ritual symbols are the first thing the scene gives him, and the last thing he believes. It is not his natural habitat. He handles it the way he handles everything: with patience, and a stubborn refusal to be spooked.

The case forces him to sift belief from performance, which is harder than it sounds when everyone involved is an expert at seeming otherworldly. The Fayre is a marketplace of the uncanny, and the people around it operate by their own rules. Peter Saint-Stephens and Jeanie Saint-Stephens, Sally Ann Barker, Rachel Finn, Frank Mulroney and Gerard King each give the inquiry a different story, and none of them hurry to make it simple. Barnaby has to keep his feet on the ground while everyone else is reaching for the ceiling. For a man who trusts paperwork, it is a trying week.

Caroline Graham and Maria Ward wrote the episode, and Gill Wilkinson directed. Neil Dudgeon and Nick Hendrix anchor the investigation, with Fiona Dolman as Sarah, Annette Badland as Fleur Perkins, Clive Mantle as Peter Saint-Stephens, Caroline Lee-Johnson as Jeanie Saint-Stephens, Tracy-Ann Oberman as Sally Ann Barker, Sarah Paul as Rachel Finn, Ian Bartholomew as Frank Mulroney and Colin Salmon as Gerard King. The cast keeps the affair watchable, which is saying something when the subject is the afterlife.

The show has always enjoyed a good ghost story, and this one keeps the scepticism and the wonder in roughly equal measure. Barnaby, for all his scepticism, ends the case with his belief in one thing intact: the value of a good alibi. And the Psychic Fayre, one imagines, will be offering a special deal on warnings next year.