lisamaria

Midsomer Murders is like so much of the British television is - picturesque, charming fiction full of familiar actors, neat landscapes and excellent camera work. The characters always come from the upper middle classes, the poorer folks are local hermits living in garden sheds and even the policemen drive jaguars. As delightful as this series is to watch, it still lacks originality and spirit.

John Nettles still has some sexy charm about him, and that saves his character DCI Tom Barnaby. The main detective in this series is perfect and faultless to the fault, a man with no unsolved issues about him. He may be realistic, but a character realistic in this way just doesn't equal good fiction. Barnaby has a pretty home, homely little lady of a wife, a homely little lady of a daughter and a regularly changing sidekick of a younger detective. He is good-humoured, laid-back, not too intelligent and regularly overshadowed by the guest starring British actors, talented and charismatic as they always are.

The story lines are usually quite ornamental - murders occur during Spanish evenings, historical re-enactments, writers' fairs, summer solstices and film shootings; the violence or evil of death is ignored regularly as beautiful women make beautiful corpses laying on the green rolling hills of the home counties.

Delightful but not particularly fresh.