A Grain of Truth

Larkton's Mill has been restored, and the trendy organic bakery at its heart is causing real resentment among the villagers. The mill was supposed to be a point of pride, and instead it has become the fault line. Complaints drift into Causton CID and are met with professional scepticism. A dispute about artisan bread hardly ranks as police business. Then several people are dosed with a dangerous hallucinogenic substance, and after that comes the first death. The complaints that once seemed petty suddenly look like warnings.

Barnaby and Winter arrive to find a village where the bakery has become the symbol of everything the old community resents. The case moves through the mill's regulars, from Tom Larkton and Chrissie Larkton, whose family name sits on the building, to the villagers who would happily see the whole enterprise fail. Barnaby lets them talk, and the version of events they give him never quite matches the one the evidence tells. Nobody at the mill is entirely clean, and the suspects line up like ingredients in a recipe nobody wrote down. Underneath the flour dust sit older grudges, and the poisoning looks like the lid coming off something that had been simmering for years, with the bakery dispute as the excuse.

Julia Gilbert and Caroline Graham wrote it, Paul Gibson directed. Neil Dudgeon and Nick Hendrix lead as Barnaby and Winter, with Fiona Dolman's Sarah Barnaby and Annette Badland's Fleur Perkins. Robert Gilbert plays Tom Larkton, Rebecca Night is Chrissie Larkton, and the supporting village includes Paul Chahidi's Gabriel Arnson, Jola Jassy's Clare Simkins, Chris Coniston's Ricky Naybury and Jo Martin's Denise Bantrig.

And the show gets real mileage out of the premise. A quarrel over organic baking sounds like the gentlest possible Midsomer opener, and it turns properly nasty. The bakery is a veneer over money and grudges nobody has let go. Underneath the sourdough starter there is always something older and meaner, and this time it finally came to the surface.