YMMV / Midsomer Murders

• Adaptation Displacement: Only serious crime-novel readers know that the series began as an adaptation of a series of detective novels by Caroline Graham.
• Base-Breaking Character: Scott could be considered one, being either awesome for not being Troy or awful for not being Troy.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Sykes, John Barnaby's pet dog.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Midsomer Murders is very popular in Denmark under the title Barnaby. The joke goes that since Barnaby started, Danes who visit idyllic English villages tend to get uneasy and paranoid — and if they see a fair or a wedding in progress, they get out of town as quickly as possible.
  • This also resulted in the 100th episode being centered around a killing in Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Heartwarming Moments: Last Man Out reveals that Jones is godfather to John and Sarah's daughter.
  • A downplayed example, but John looks genuinely scared and worried when he thinks Nelson has been shot in The Ballad of Midsomer County.
  • When confronted by a massive snake in The Village That Rose From The Dead, John's first reaction is to tell Winter to get out first. Of course, he doesn't stay out and drops a bag over the snake to help John.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In "Written In Blood" writer Max Jennings is said to be "big in Denmark". The series went on to become a huge hit in Denmark.
  • In "Judgement Day", The Lord of the Rings is brought up in conversation (and there's a visit to a property by the name of Lothlorien). The victim in that episode (from early 2000) was played by Orlando Bloom.
  • Hugh Bonneville appears in "Ring Out Your Dead" as an upper-class man with money trouble.
• Jerkass Woobie: As per usual with the genre, a lot of the murderers have sympathetic motives or a Freudian Excuse. Some of the less excessive Asshole Victims can also pass, especially if they get a particularly cruel death. Some cases like "A Vintage Murder" are even fuelled by tragic accidents or misunderstandings.
• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Memetic Mutation: Not internet, but a running gag in general British popular culture; while Inspector Morse was already joked about for the sheer numbers of murders in a medium-sized city like Oxford, this show takes it to even more ludicrous levels in the rural setting.
  • Given a hilarious Lampshade Hanging in episode 3 of season 9, where Barnaby asks about a death and is told that it was natural causes, "surprising as it may be in Midsomer".
  • Queen Elizabeth II of the UK herself has actually asked (of the producer, Brian True-May, at the opening of a studio): "Why does anybody move to Midsomer anymore? They're just going to get murdered."
  • Note that Midsomer is actually a county, not a village as it is often misreported (perhaps understandably, since the same two policemen seem to be responsible for every single town and village within it), though many of the villages (especially in the earlier episodes) still have ludicrous enough murder rates in their own rights to qualify. Never mind wondering why anyone lives there; wonder why there is anyone left alive.
  • According to a Radio Times feature on the show, there were no less than 239 murders (plus 11 suicides, 11 accidental deaths and only 7 deaths by natural causes) over its first 14 series—making it about 17.1 homicides per series and 2.7 per episode. If each season corresponds to a year, then Midsomer's murder level is roughly 1/6 of that of London (pop. 8 million). The Third Estate blog assumed that Midsomer has roughly the population of the rural county of Somerset and each episode covers a typical week (meaning about 140 people die a year); that would give Midsomer a murder rate of 17-per-100,000, 12 times higher than the UK average, with only 5 countries in the world having a higher murder rate per capita.
• Narm:
  • "Screw you, grandma!" ("Days of Misrule", series 11)
  • What should've been a horrifying death scene in the opening of "The Straw Woman" (the victim being burned alive in a wicker man) is ruined by the hilariously out-of-place stock screaming effects.
  • The scene is the first episode with John Barnaby as the lead — a guy is killed in the car park of a girls' school by being impaled by the crank-shaft of a vintage car. That may sound horrifying, but the next scene shows the paramedics wheeling the guy's mangled corpse past all the schoolgirls without so much as a sheet over him. To top it off, they keep walking past the ambulance he should have been loaded into just to push him past more schoolgirls! Comparisons to Treehouse of Horror^note  (No! Not into the Kindergarten!) are not unwarranted.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize
  • Actually averted with the episode featuring Orlando Bloom, since it was before he was famous. He's actually a murder victim, and dies before the first ad break.
  • Happens again with an episode featuring a before-he-was-famous Henry Cavill. His character ends up being the first murder victim.
  • Mark Gatiss appears in one episode as a slightly awkward, antisocial village priest. He didn't do it.
  • David Warner appears as a kindly old former racing car driver. He did do it.
• Nightmare Fuel: Generally not the aim of the show, but it has its moments.
  • "The Sword of Guillaume": A burglar discovers a creepily-smiling decapitated head while rooting around in the victim's dark bedroom.
  • "Death's Shadow": One of the three victims of the episode is killed when the murderer sets his caravan on fire. The killer watches as their victim burns to death, at first screaming for help, before merely pleading as to why he had to die this way.
  • “Echoes of the Dead”: After a third murder takes place, the show cuts back to Jo in her room where she’s sleeping. All of a sudden, she hears someone whistling “Here Comes the Bride”, implying the murderer is coming for her next.
• Retroactive Recognition: Considering the series is a Long Runner, many, many British actors played bit parts in it before they became famous.
  • "The Green Man" features Superman acting like an asshole to Argus Filch.
  • The Doctor plays a choir leader. He Did It.
  • Lucifer also turns up in one episode.
  • Legolas / Will Turner plays an Asshole Victim in one episode.
  • Black Jack Randall appeared in an early episode, and Jamie Fraser was killed off in another.
  • Brian May is one of John Barnaby's Sergeants.
  • Elendil of Numenor was a hotel owner who got murdered.
• Special Effects Failure: The movies that appear in "Death and the Divas" have several. Including one with poorly made rubber suit monster and a one with an obvious rear-projected background. This was deliberate, seeing as in-universe they were low-budget horror movies made in the 70s.
  • In a different sense, those movies (which were supposed to be made in the 70s) were obviously filmed using modern cameras, averting the expected Video Inside, Film Outside look.
  • "A Tale of Two Hamlets" takes the cake for this, to the point it almost seems like a deliberate parody. Firstly there's the "House of Satan" film, supposedly a smash-hit horror film in the UK, but its poster and what little we see of the effects are on the level of a carnival ghost train, if not worse. Then there's the "poor" village, which is quite clearly a quaint English village with thatched cottages and drystone walls, but made to look rough by scattering a few pallets and old washing machines about and daubing a few walls with graffiti.
  • The titular murder weapon in "The Sword of Guillaume" is very obviously a blunt prop with all its sharp edges sanded down, making it very hard to believe as something that could decapitate a person in one stroke. To make it even more ludicrous, two other antique swords brought in as a Red Herring are specifically described as being deliberately blunted for safety purposes — but both of them still look sharper than the Sword of Guillaume!
• Tear Jerker:
  • The murderer confrontation in “The Sicilian Defence”. The murderer is revealed to be Laura who is the sister of a talented chess player who killed himself. All her murders and her kidnapping of Finn were her attempting to avenge her brother. She was prepared to get back at Wendy who Laura blamed for her brother’s death when John showed up to arrest her. The way he’s able to get her to drop a needle was to act as though he were her brother and getting her to act out what she would say to him if he were there. She initially scoffs at John’s act... until he says that her brother never told her his problems because it was none of her business. This causes her to angrily, yet tearfully say that she could have helped him if he had told her. What causes her to break is John telling her that there was nothing she could have done to help him, leading to her dropping the needle and embracing John. For those who have lost a loved one in a similar manner, it may hurt to hear those words.
• Values Dissonance: In one of the earliest episodes, Troy refers to a lesbian couple as "a couple of old dykes". He's not called out for it and it's mostly just Played for Laughs. Nowadays this kind of blatant homophobia would be considered a lot less acceptable. In later episodes, homophobia remained part of Troy's character but Barnaby and others would call him out on it.

---