Midsomer Murders -
Series 15,
Episode 2.
Convicted killer Grady Felton comes back to his childhood home after 18 years, much to the anger of the family of his victim, Daniel Denning. A barrister involved in his trial is murdered that same night but Grady has a solid alibi.
Since 1997 the residents of
Midsomer County obligingly experiment in rotation the most various ways to be murdered without any complaint of the international community. The formula of
Midsomer Murders survived the departure of its original star (
John Nettles as
DCI Tom Barnaby) in 2011. It even survived a so-called controversy after some uninspired words of its longtime producer
Brian True-May (1), now replaced by
Jo Wright (
Lovejoy,
55 Degrees North) for this fifteenth series which started last month on
ITV1.
Introduced a couple of series ago alongside his cousin Tom, and fully in charge of Midsomer's bodycount registry since last year,
DCI John Barnaby (played by
Neil Dudgeon) is back with
DS Ben Jones (
Jason Hughes).
Grady Felton (
Jack Pierce), a convicted murderer, returns home to Midsomer after serving time for the murder of village youngster
Daniel Denning. Felton hopes to sell his old cottage but a welcoming commitee of the angry kind shows him how much he shouldn't have been allowed to come back.
When his former defence barrister is murderered Grady becomes the chief suspect. However, he has the strongest of the alibis thanks to the people who hates him and waited him. Meanwhile, John reluctantly considers the perspective of the Chief Constable's fitness test as his wife
Sarah (
Fiona Dolman) wants him to attend military-style workouts run by
Gareth Dunbar, a Scottish trainer (
Jamie Michie). And Jones's life could be in jeopardy.
Written by
Elizabeth-Anne Wheal (
Dalziel and Pascoe,
The Bill), this endless
Murder of Innocence - ad breaks don't help - morphs
Midsomer Murders into a more traditional ITV crime drama with rather mixed results. Ben Jones gets a girlfriend, the best line of the episode (
« Is anyone here stupid enough to commit arson with their own fuel, sir? »), but also the worst (
« You need to watch less television. ») His boss is oddly not up to Neil Dudgeon's talent and the fitness situation sounds a bit written for John's cousin. But it's a trick to help a solution really far-fetched, even by
Midsomer's standards.
Too much of everything, even a court scene where we learn that Midsomer County is actually so small that it costs poor Jones a case. This second episode, overall weaker than the series opener, is directed by
Renny Rye.
Midsomer Murders is produced by
Bentley Productions, part of the
All3Media Group, for ITV1. On a side note, series 14 recently ended a successful run in France on pubcaster
France 3 (2).
(1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/mar/15/midsomer-murders-producer-race-row
(2) http://www.toutelatele.com/article.php3?id_article=38970 (In French)
http://www.itv.com/presscentre/presspacks/midsomermurders2012/default.html
http://midsomermurders.org/murderinnocence.htm
We have received the French R2 DVD of Julian Fellowes's Titanic two days ago, thanks to the wonderful people at Koba Films. If you follow us on Twitter you have already read our praises while we were discovering yesterday afternoon the first part of the 2 X 90-minute version (Titanic is aired in four parts on ITV1).
