Stream It Or Skip It?

Midsomer Murders on Acorn TV has been around for so long that it’s turned over its cast, and is on its fourth showrunner (co-creator Brian True-May left 14 years ago after a poorly-thought-out response to why the show’s cast wasn’t diverse in those days), but it still brings the two things that have made it such an enduring show: Clever murders and the quirkiness of the fictional County of Midsomer.

MIDSOMER MURDERS SEASON 25: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: A group of mudlarkers approaches a marshy area near a bridge.

The Gist:  The mudlarkers, led by Reverend William Gideon (Adrian Rawlins) and his wife Alice (Poppy Miller) look for Anglo-Saxon and other artifacts that speak to the history of the County of Midsomer. At sites like the marshy river site where they’re exploring, they often compete with a group called the “Magneteers,” led by Freddy and Gemmy Westcott (Tony Way and Jayde Adams); their group throws strong magnets in the water and pulls up anything they find, selling their finds to collectors or for scrap. Let’s just say that the two groups don’t get along.

In the meantime, an actress named Lucy Weaving (Camilla Beeput) is coming to the county with a producer of an ancestry TV series to investigate what happened to her aunt Jess, who left her village and disappeared in the 1980s. As DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) gets ready for work, his wife Sarah (Fiona Dolman), a historian, tells him that she’s going to be interviewed about Lucy’s quest for the show.

After a dispute between Jonny Hoxam (Ben Jones), one of the reverend’s group, and Cole Densmore (Killian Coyle), a magneteer and ex-con, we see Jonny get a nighttime call about a possible find back at the river. That’s when a sinkhole under the surface gives way, and Jonny drowns while stuck on the bottom of the river.

DCI Barnaby, his partner DS Jamie Winter (Nick Hendrix) and the ever-fascinating medical examiner, Dr. Fleur Perkins (Annette Badland), investigate. It becomes quickly apparent that people found out about the sinkhole that night, and used that knowledge to lure Jonny to his death. But who did it? And how does that tie into Lucy’s search for her aunt?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Midsomer Murders, which has been around since 1997, is more or less the ur-example of the modern cozy British mystery, a style that has been a successful one for so many shows since, like The Madam Blanc Mysteries, Agatha Raisin, Harry Wild, etc. Of course, the best American example of this kind of show is Murder, She Wrote.

Our Take: The murder in Season 25’s first 90-minute episode wasn’t that hard to figure out, and as Barnaby and Winter look into it, it did seem to be more about how it was done than who did it. There was nothing about the mystery where we threw up our hands and thought that the writers made jumps in logic, or the detectives had some sort of epiphany by looking at something that we couldn’t see. It was all laid out well, even the red herrings that may have sent viewers in one direction or another.

Everyone knows the gig well — Dudgeon has been playing DCI Barnaby for 15 years — and they fit well within the formula. Even the seemingly separate plots, tentatively tied together at the beginning by Lucy’s uncle, Richard Clissold (Jude Akuwudike), come together at the end in a way that makes sense. It’s that kind of care about making sure the mysteries are tightly plotted and make sense that makes Midsomer such a pleasure to watch for mystery buffs.

Performance Worth Watching: Every time Annette Badland is on screen as Dr. Fleur Perkins, she’s telling some sort of story that makes her character even more fascinating.

Sex And Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: The case solved, the Barnaby’s have some wine, and their dog Paddy unearths a Sarah’s bracelet, which he likely buried years earlier.

Sleeper Star: Adrian Rawlins, playing Rev. Gideon does a good job of showing just how human British vicars can be. He threatens the magneteers, gets jealous of Alice and Jonny’s friendship… he’s human, even if he is a man of God.

Most Pilot-y Line: We’re always amazed at how quickly police data teams on TV can break into locked smartphones, and this episode is no exception.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The venerable Midsomer Murders continues to be comfort TV for mystery buffs, giving them well-thought-out murders and a very lived-in feel. It’s the definition of a cozy mystery, and it continues to deliver on that coziness.

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How To Watch Midsomer Murders

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Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.