Midsomer Murders The Early Cases
April 2008 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

This elegant boxed set of Midsomer Murders contains 18 discs, each with a 100-minute episode, and a 19th bonus disc -- approximately 30 hours running time. These are the first 18 episodes of a series that has been running in the UK since 1997. The crime novels of Caroline Graham and the adaptations by Anthony Horowitz provide the complicated, twisting plots. Don’t think you can sort the mail or wander off for a snack when you’re watching one of these. It’s a clue a minute.

John Nettles (Bergerac) plays Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby. He and his young sidekick D.S. Gavin Troy (Daniel Casey) solve the brutal, bizarre murders committed in the quaint little villages and lovely countryside of Midsomer County. Barnaby’s distinction among British detectives, ironically enough, is his normalcy. He’s just an ordinary nice guy, middle-aged, happily married, devoted to his 20-something daughter -- a home-loving family man. But the 18 episodes he inhabits are chock-full of eccentricity, kinkiness, and cold-blooded murder. In the first episode, you can count four murders, three suicides, and one incestuous relationship. Barnaby gets called away from the dinner table time and again, for a suspicious death in the old folks’ home, a naked body strangled with a tie and found in the woods, or a Brazilian cigarette model in a luxury hotel room dead from unknown causes. The murder weapon might be a cricket bat, a poisonous mushroom, a Nazi dagger, or an injection of liquid nicotine. We often see the actual murder committed, usually with the victim’s face expressing ultimate horror, but we never see the murderer. To find out who that might be will take an hour as Barnaby sorts through six or eight likely suspects and numerous false leads. He often solves the case through a flash of intuition. Something banal he notices -- an idle comment or an ordinary object -- will trigger the insight.

It’s interesting to surf the Internet to see how devoted the series’ fans are and what in particular they love about it. The locales, for one thing. Most of the episodes were shot, always in full, rich color, in Buckinghamshire or Oxfordshire in actual towns and buildings and countrysides. Fans often mention the score too, composed by Jim Parker, a staple among British television composers. For his eerie theme, Parker introduced the strange Theremin, a predecessor to the synthesizer. (Jonny Greenwood used it in the score for There Will Be Blood.) The audio for this DVD is in general clear and crisp enough, although the occasional change in levels combined with the various accents requires close attention. Each episode is crammed with characters: great big casts and great acting. Fans appreciate seeing so many familiar faces from British television.

There’s a 47-minute bonus disc with commentary from several members of cast or crew. Author Caroline Graham says of her novels, "Here we are in an idyllic part of the world: well-tended cottages, beautiful gardens, charming people, roses round the door. You bend down to smell a rose and something comes out and stings you." "Gothic -- wonderfully dark and witty," screenwriter Anthony Horowitz calls it. "Comic and camp." John Nettles calls it "very savage" with "gentility on the outside." He notes the sexual perversion -- it’s "raunchy and dirty." Most of all, it’s murderous. The series body count is at 140.

And in the middle of it all is just an ordinary nice guy, middle-aged, happily married, devoted to his 20-something daughter -- a home-loving family man.

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