Mystery Maniacs

🎙️ Episode: https://share.transistor.fm/s/5549e6df
📓 Show Notes: https://midsomermaniacs.transistor.fm/episodes/mystery-maniacs-cold-cases-midsomer-season-02-binge

Show Notes
This cold case covers our podcast for Season 2 of Midsomer Murders. 

Cold Cases
  • 00:00 Intro
  • 2:59 Episode 06 - "Death's Shadow" - Worst Doctor Coward Ever, Missing Scimitars, and Orange Shirts!
  • 1:11:11 Episode 07 - "Strangler's Wood" - Toby's Nuggied Mullet, Nicotine Glow Sticks, and Rumpy Pumpy
  • 2:26:19 Episode 08 - "Dead Man's Eleven" - Flopsy,  Magical Bickies,  and Raining Old Ladies 
  • 3:48:42 Episode 09 - "Blood Will Out" - Hangry Tom, Juggalo Smith,  and Cabbage Soup Sweats 

Kickstarter info
S.P.I.R.I.T. Issue 4 Kickstarter is almost done!. If you've been following Mary, Ada, Jane, and Ash, this is where it all comes together. Preorder the issue, grab the trade paperback, or just peek at what we're working on. Head to kickstarter.com/projects/1214207061/spirit-1-4-mothman-needs-us to check it out. 

Read Along With Us


If you've been listening to the show and want to dive into some actual fiction, this is your week.


Free preview chapters for both of Mark's serial novels are available right now. No credit card, no commitment. Just chapters. Go read them and tell us what you think.


Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1214207061/spirit-1-4-mothman-needs-us


And if you want to keep reading past the previews, the Patreon is open. Five dollars a month gets you one series. Eight gets you both. New chapters every week.


Free chapters - https://markbellauthor.substack.com/


Patreon link  - https://patreon.com/markbellauthor

Thanks again for listening!
 
Mark & Sarah

-----------------------------------
Upcoming Tentative  Schedule

  • August 3:     Mystery Maniacs - Clues and Reviews 8/3/26
  • August 5: Mystery Maniacs - Cold Cases - Midsomer Season 02 BINGE
  • August 10: Mystery Maniacs - Clues and Reviews 8/10/26
  • August 12: Mystery Maniacs - Cold Cases - Midsomer Season 03 BINGE


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Creators and Guests

Host
Mark Bell
Co-host of Mystery Maniacs
Host
Sarah Smith-Robbins
Co-host of Mystery Maniacs

What is Mystery Maniacs?

Mystery Maniacs Podcast is a comedy recap podcast dedicated to British Mystery Television. Formerly, Midsomer Maniacs podcast.

Mark:

Hey, Maniacs. Hey, Mystery Maniacs. Oh my gosh. I can't believe 5,000,000 people listened to the last cold cases. You're fantasizing now.

Mark:

I am.

Sarah:

Welcome to the cold case binge for Midsomer Murders season two episodes of the Mystery Maniacs podcast. This You like how I'm doing that? Trying to make it clear. This is this is not the the TV show. No.

Sarah:

This is the podcast.

Mark:

This is the podcast.

Sarah:

So all those people who are gonna post a nasty cop. I came here wanting to watch Midsomer Murders, and this isn't Midsomer. You're in the wrong place. Go away.

Mark:

Or stay and listen. You'll enjoy your

Sarah:

That's that's true. You could I'm sorry. I apologize. I take it back. Say, listen.

Sarah:

Absolutely. It's just as fun. What you what you are about to receive is all the episodes of our podcast that covered Midsomer Murder season two, including Death's Shadow, Strangler's Wood, Dead Man's 11, and Blood Will Out.

Mark:

Banger, banger, banger, banger.

Sarah:

What's your most face hurt moment of this season?

Mark:

For me. Well, there's there's so many.

Sarah:

You have to pick one.

Mark:

There is so many. But I have to for me, the face hurting moment of of this season is worst doctor coward ever because we built on that, that idea that the doctor in death's shadow is the cause of all

Sarah:

the just told him that he didn't have a terminal tumor a little bit earlier.

Mark:

None of this would happen.

Sarah:

Richard Breyer would not have gone on a murderous rage.

Mark:

It is probably my first rant on inciting incidents.

Sarah:

It is the only Midsomer episode that you hear the sound of a bouncing head. Yes. Absolutely. My face hurt moment from this season is in Dead Man's 11 when it's raining old ladies. Yeah.

Sarah:

Doreen Beavis, the flying housekeeper, goes off the edge of the quarry.

Mark:

And almost lands on- The bonking weirdos. The bonking Christians down at the bottom.

Sarah:

They show her in slow motion. We talked about her trajectory, how many other old ladies they could push off of the cliff. It was raining old ladies.

Mark:

And I just wanna say that there are people who don't like episode nine in this season of the show because it's the Travelers episode. But I think our show makes that show watchable.

Sarah:

We salvaged a bad episode of Midsomer.

Mark:

Juggalo Smith and cabbage soup sweats. And where's my Mars bar?

Sarah:

I go through Tom is hangry.

Mark:

Tire contents of the glove compartment.

Sarah:

Have fun, Maniacs. Enjoy. Enjoy. Hey, Maniacs.

Mark:

Hey, Maniacs.

Sarah:

Welcome to Midsomer Maniacs.

Mark:

Welcome to episode six.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

Death's shadow.

Sarah:

The first episode in season two of Midsomer Murders.

Mark:

Before we start off, just a reminder, if you let your kids watch the show, they're more than welcome to listen to the podcast. But if they're too young for the podcast for the show, then they're too young for the podcast.

Sarah:

Before we dive into this week's episode, I need to time travel a little bit. Okay. Because we missed something really important two episodes ago.

Mark:

Okay. So we're gonna go two episodes back.

Sarah:

Yes. To faithful unto death. Okay. Because we missed something epic.

Mark:

Okay. We missed something epic in episode that would be episode three of season one.

Sarah:

Yes. Bunny. Of the bunny case. Yes. Played by Peter Jones.

Sarah:

And Peter Jones is epic because of something that we missed.

Mark:

Okay. So lay it on me.

Sarah:

He was the voice of the book in the BBC production of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Mark:

That's where I know his name from. Yes. So the radio show

Sarah:

And the BBC TV show, the miniseries. TV show. He is the voice of the Hitchhiker's Guide.

Mark:

That's pretty epic.

Sarah:

It is epic.

Mark:

So he got some bunny cakes and recorded some amazing audio. Because when I was a kid, I heard that radio show and that was my introduction to the books. Yeah. And that voice, like when I read the books, the parts that were the book were in his voice.

Sarah:

Yeah. I was the same way, but not with the radio show, it was with the TV show and it was on PBS very late at night and my dad knew I wanted to see it and he was excited. So he would wake me up and we would watch an episode and then we would both go back to sleep.

Mark:

Now, is he in the movie also? Does he, because Steven Fried is the voice of the book in the movie.

Sarah:

Yeah. In the in the later movie. The newest Yeah. I found that out, I couldn't believe it. Like, how did we miss that?

Mark:

That is epic that we missed that.

Sarah:

Thank you for indulging my time travel before we get started.

Mark:

Absolutely. And now back to episode six of the podcast and episode one of season two, Death's Shadow.

Sarah:

We're back in Badger's Drift.

Mark:

Yes. This episode was filmed in May and June '98 and broadcast on the 01/20/1999. This is kind of halfway through the new season of, remember it was spring that the first season was on.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

And this is the following January. I don't know the numbers, but to begin with, the first season must have been hugely successful. Yeah. Because they were eager to get more of these episodes made.

Sarah:

I found quite a few reviews for the murders of Badger's Drift from the time that were really positive and very excited, but you know, it was the pilot and it's kind of the exceptional episode of these early seasons. So there's no surprise people are excited about it.

Mark:

Now this episode, when originally broadcast on the 01/20/1999, had 10,410,000 viewers. Wow. Which is astronomical.

Sarah:

And they would have been watching it live. Yes. Unless they were recording it on VHS. They

Mark:

had their VHS players to

Sarah:

Yeah. Record it.

Mark:

I want I wonder so we have our Midsommers on DVD because there was a while where it wasn't on every streaming service. From today I heard that there is a streaming service, I forget which one, which has a 24 a day Midsomer channel that shows nothing but Midsomer's over. We need to

Sarah:

know what service that is.

Mark:

So it's on every streaming service now, but there was a time where we had to get the DVD.

Sarah:

Yeah, if we wanted to see it, yeah.

Mark:

If we wanted to see it

Sarah:

in any sort of order or regular. Before Netflix, before BritBox.

Mark:

Yes. And so there, I wonder if they're massive VHS tape sets and if people will send us pictures of

Sarah:

It would take up like three shelves, wouldn't it?

Mark:

It would be like X Files tapes.

Sarah:

Yeah. Kinda like Troy's X Files collection.

Mark:

In terms of today, the biggest show in Britain right now is a show called Line of Duty, which You said Duty. Gets 12,100,000 viewers on a regular basis. And another show on ITV, which is Britain's Got Talent gets 10,200,000 viewers. So if this episode was on British TV today, it would receive the second place.

Sarah:

It would be the second highest viewership?

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

That's impressive. So It must have been really big back then.

Mark:

There are two things I noticed about this year's most watched shows of 2019. That figured out where it was. Number two was death in paradise is the ninth most watched show in Britain right now.

Sarah:

Wow. It's a good show if

Mark:

you haven't seen it. It is a good show, but I had no idea it was that popular. Yeah. I thought it was just this kind of little cozy Caribbean show that we liked, but it's hugely popular. Any guesses to what the number 10 show is?

Mark:

The perennial number 10 show in Britain right now? Squawk Box. Coronation Street.

Sarah:

Do you know what Squawk Box is?

Mark:

I have no idea what Squawk

Sarah:

Box is. It's this TV show where you watch other people watch TV.

Mark:

Oh, that's right.

Sarah:

It's awesome.

Mark:

What we need Okay, so this is our ultimate crossover. What we need is a show in which you go to other people's houses to eat dinner and watch Midsomer Birds.

Sarah:

Oh, it's like come watch TV with me? Yes.

Mark:

Come watch TV

Sarah:

with me. Instead of come dine with me. And then we could give them a makeover the in beginning of their house a makeover while they're at our house watching TV and TV.

Mark:

While while we go through their stuff.

Sarah:

And you could have trading spaces at the same time.

Mark:

Trading? Come watch Midsomer with me. Yes.

Sarah:

And then other people could watch us, watch that show.

Mark:

And then it would be Squawk Box. Squawk Box Trading come Midsomer Watch With Me. I

Sarah:

would totally watch that show.

Mark:

And in the last moment, Troy walks in with a bottle of wine.

Sarah:

And says, I think there's been a murder.

Mark:

So this is the very first episode that is not based on a book.

Sarah:

Still written by Anthony Horowitz though.

Mark:

Still written by Anthony Horowitz. So there's two books that have not been made into show. Oh, I need to read

Sarah:

those and find out why.

Mark:

And one of them sounds super interesting. It's about a guy and a ghost and it sort of relates to one of the stories that comes up later, it's not that story. There's a whole ghost aspect to it. I was like, why don't you make that one?

Sarah:

Maybe the FX budget isn't big enough for ghosties. Ghosties. Ghosties dying with me. There's a there's a mashup for you. Restoration Man plus a ghost show.

Sarah:

Oh, we're slap happy now.

Mark:

Yes. We are indeed quite slap happy.

Sarah:

Death and restoration, man.

Mark:

So we have returned to Badger's Drift. You are correct.

Sarah:

And they kind of acknowledged it. It's kind of a tongue in cheek thing like, Oh, let's go to Badger's Drift. Yeah, I'm familiar with that place.

Mark:

There's no pub in this episode.

Sarah:

I don't know. David Whiteley has a beer at a pub, but they don't really show us what it is. There's a sign and silhouette behind him, but it's got a horse, I think. Something. Yeah.

Mark:

And the major location, the sort of most interesting location of the episode is the church.

Sarah:

Quite a few Saint Michael's.

Mark:

Interesting things happen in that church. And according to my Really? Location guide.

Sarah:

You're underselling that.

Mark:

According to my location guide, it is the Holy Trinity Church in Bledlow. Ah. The church appears most notably in Death's Shadow, which starred Richard Briars as the resident revenge seeking Victor.

Sarah:

Well, way to spoil it. Exactly. Before we go there though, we gotta talk credits now. You guys have to know, So Mark watches the episode on his own, and then we've both seen them many times. But to prepare for the show, Mark will watch it on his own.

Sarah:

And then I watch it and we and, together with him and take my notes. And it's everything I can do just to make him shut up because he wants to show me all the things that he noticed. And he was like a little boy when the title sequence came on, and he's like, wait for it. Because I knew The watercolors are back.

Mark:

The watercolors were back. I knew they existed.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. I knew we'd seen them in more than one episode.

Mark:

So I wonder if it's a whole season two thing. And then they went, no. No. But You did notice something about the watercolors.

Sarah:

So there's a cat in every one of them, a black cat, which is not hard to notice. But there's one thing I did notice this time that I haven't noticed before. There's a creepy shop. I don't know how else to describe it.

Mark:

It has produce outside

Sarah:

of And it has like a bow front window and the boxes of produce outside, like it's probably a grocery store, but the windows are all black and white and have like ghosty faces pressed up against them.

Mark:

It's very strange.

Sarah:

It's weird. Yeah. But then the rest of them are all quaint and happy and have lots of flowers. And kitties. And kitties.

Mark:

So the cold open begins with a weird sequence.

Sarah:

Yeah. Simon Fletcher driving and having little weird flashbacks. Yeah?

Mark:

Yep. He drives past Badger's Drift Primary, which we then know it's in Badger's Drift and we know it's bad news. Yep. Though we don't know it's Simon yet. We hear a glass breaking.

Mark:

We hear bells. Guy drives up to a manor, kinda is creepy looking Simon's creepy. There's a little boy with a blindfold and he, Simon follows him into the forest. There's teasing amongst these other boys.

Sarah:

Yeah. The way they the way they cut it, you don't really know what's a flashback and what's current.

Mark:

But it's kind of-

Sarah:

British High school uniforms have not changed, right? So there's no, you can't date it based on their uniforms or anything.

Mark:

You don't know what's present and what's past and what's remembered and what's reality. Because it's a dream. It's a dream. They all run away, but a little boy calling out for Simon, who the man who we know is Simon comes up, puts a noose around the blindfolded child's neck and then wakes up.

Sarah:

Simon Fletcher played by Julian Wadham, who's also in another episode called The Creeper, which is in 2009. Duck weebo. He's also in A Death in Paradise, by the way.

Mark:

Oh, he

Sarah:

is? Yeah. Anna Lewis.

Mark:

I don't remember him either for those shows, but he has one of those faces. Yep. So he wakes up in his apartment, which is the most on Midsomer like place they could ever make.

Sarah:

Yeah, it overlooks Tower Bridge.

Mark:

Yes. And he looks down to see a headshot. Cully's headshot. But Cully looks different. Why does Cully look different?

Sarah:

Oh, are you quizzing me? Her hair is gone.

Mark:

She has no hair.

Sarah:

Her hair is so cute. I But like five women in the entire universe can pull off that hair and she's one of them.

Mark:

That This is my favorite Cully.

Sarah:

Yeah?

Mark:

Yeah, I got to say.

Sarah:

Her eyelashes are longer than her hair.

Mark:

Yes, I would agree with that. I think what they're trying to say in the beginning is, is this guy a killer? And is he going to kill Cully?

Sarah:

Yeah. They're kinda making him creepy. But I think the reason he picks her picks her picture up is I think below her name, it says where she's from.

Mark:

Mhmm.

Sarah:

And it would say Costin. Right?

Mark:

And he would know that that's near Badger's trip because we learned that he grew up there. Yeah. The Barnabas are planning a trip.

Sarah:

They're trying to plan a trip. Okay. So Joyce has the worst hair.

Mark:

It is a perfect example of a good short hair haircut and a bad short hair haircut.

Sarah:

So if Cully's hair gets better, Joyce's has has to get worse?

Mark:

In this instance, yes.

Sarah:

Cully's siphoning off the good hair energy from her mother because it's a helmet and it's a bad helmet. And she's kind of me, me, me, me, me.

Mark:

I don't mind that so much given the explanation that She

Sarah:

wants to renew their vows.

Mark:

Yeah. When they were originally married, Tom was supposed to say, I do. And he said, I've got it.

Sarah:

And it was in a registry office. But here's what bugs me, okay? She doesn't say, I know, I want to renew our vows. Yeah. She says, I want to renew my vows.

Sarah:

I want to be the center of attention.

Mark:

But I think Barnaby's like, okay.

Sarah:

Well, of course, he's like, okay. Because he doesn't have any role in it at all except showing up and picking a bad hymn, a dirge. More on bad hymn later. Give away your bad hymn.

Mark:

The case they reference there is the Pimlico Pimlico Poisoner. Mhmm. Which is an actual mystery.

Sarah:

And we're supposed to believe that Barnaby was solving that one?

Mark:

No. There's no way that's possible because Mystery or the Pimlico Poisoning Mystery, this is clearly a reference

Sarah:

to this. It's like a Victorian thing.

Mark:

Meaning, given to the circumstances surrounding an 1886 death of Thomas Edwin Bartlett, possibly by the hands of his wife Adelaide Blanche Bartlett in the Pimlico District of London.

Sarah:

So it's like kind of a true crime in joke.

Mark:

I think so because they make a very quick reference to it later on that that woman was poisoning her husband.

Sarah:

Yeah. They're So gonna renew their vows. And of course they choose St. Michael's in Badger's dress.

Mark:

But before that, Cully tells him that she has a place in a summer theater gig.

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

With Simon Fletcher. Yeah. And Barnaby has no idea who

Sarah:

that At the Costin Playhouse.

Mark:

So off to the church.

Sarah:

Yeah. And we meet Steven Wentworth, played by Richard Briar and his wife, Angela.

Mark:

Yes. And the the church is under repair.

Sarah:

Of course, because the tower is always under repair.

Mark:

Steven's wife, Angela, may be the least likable person in the entirety of the show so far.

Sarah:

Well, have you ever seen Dolores Claiborne?

Mark:

She's very much like that, I think.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. She plays Kathy Bates' employer, her boss. Oh, she's a bitch on wheels in that too.

Mark:

Oh, I didn't know it was the same actress. Yeah. Oh. Yeah.

Sarah:

She's also in a Jonathan Creek.

Mark:

She doesn't think much of her husband. She doesn't think of like

Sarah:

That's an understatement.

Mark:

I I feel like she is a character trait that I have exploded to beyond belief, right? She doesn't wanna live in a small town. She has big aspirations. She doesn't wanna have small insignificant life. It's a little late.

Mark:

Yes. If that was brought up in a way that was aspirational or, let's get out of this place together, it would be interesting. But of course it's taken to heights of- Shrewness. True.

Sarah:

Yeah, instead it's why do they want to get married here? Oh, maybe they wanted something small and insignificant.

Mark:

I thought of something here that like over half of our listeners are from America. And I'm not sure how familiar they are with the Anglican church. Because you could say it's St. Michael's, he wears a dog collar.

Sarah:

Yeah, seems really Catholic.

Mark:

It of course it's seems really Catholic, but of course it's not because he's married, so he's Anglican. So that church of England is really so much of what the Catholic churches and we see it because that character confesses to him. Now, with an actual confessional or anything.

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

But that notion of Anglican confession is still there. So the Anglican church is really a lot of Catholic stuff, except for the parts that Henry VIII didn't like. Divorce. Divorce,

Sarah:

so And there's I think there's a little insight into the politics of the clergy in the Anglican church too. I mean, the the first time I was sort of exposed to how that worked was maybe father Brown. Yeah. And in Grantchester, get a little bit of that too. But there's this feeling that if you if you want to be promoted in the clergy in the Anglican church, it's a very political game.

Mark:

But father Brown is Catholic.

Sarah:

Yeah. That's true. You got me on there. So Grantchester, I guess. Grantchester.

Sarah:

Yeah. But that whole idea of you have to impress the clergy who are above you and it's not enough to just do your part in your own little village. You have to

Mark:

The vicar's wife becomes in a like almost a political position.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. And clearly, Angela is unhappy with where they've got to, and it's still in this little village.

Mark:

So Steven goes to meet the Barnabas, and Tom lets it drop that he was there two years ago. Yeah.

Sarah:

Oh, the rainbirds, horrible.

Mark:

Shocking affair.

Sarah:

Yeah. And of course the vicar knows Dennis Rainbird because he was the undertaker.

Mark:

Which he would have.

Sarah:

And in the background, poor Charlie is cutting the grass with a pair of loppers.

Mark:

I guess?

Sarah:

It's the most inefficient grass cutting I've ever seen.

Mark:

And he doesn't.

Sarah:

He may as well have scissors.

Mark:

In such a menacing way. It's like, Oh, this kid's menacing.

Sarah:

He's teen angsty more than menacing, but yeah.

Mark:

Well, gets some attention later on as we'll find out.

Sarah:

And then we get to go to the doctor's office. The worst doctor

Mark:

Well, before we get to worst doctor ever, and that is in my notes, Barnaby knows his Bible. Knows marriage of Canaan. And another thing I love that Steven says is we have a very committed committee. Yeah. Now, at this point in time in Steven's world, because okay.

Mark:

As we said many times before, spoilers. Steven is the killer. At this point, Steven is okay. Oh, yeah. He hasn't snapped yet.

Mark:

No. And he kind of makes that joke about the very committed committee. And I'm like, maybe he was a little closer to the edge than we realized.

Sarah:

There's somebody who needs to be committed. Yes. And it's not the committee.

Mark:

So off to Doctor. Barbara Hansen's office. Worst doctor ever. Yeah. We have to make this clear right up front.

Mark:

If Barbara Hansen's doesn't screw up the lab results, this entire episode doesn't happen.

Sarah:

She doesn't screw them up, to be fair. The lab screws them up. But she's a GP delivering the interpretation of a brain scan. Like why isn't he at a hospital

Mark:

Not receiving those qualified for. My comment is maybe her old giant monitor and computer made the mistake.

Sarah:

Or maybe it caused the tumor. Because Richard Bailey is told that he has a tumor, it's malignant. You have a tumor. Arnold Schwarzenegger has come up a lot of times.

Mark:

You need him as a guest.

Sarah:

We'll talk about guests later. So she says he's malignant and he's going to need surgery and it's dangerous surgery, followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy. And he's pretty devastated.

Mark:

He is devastated. He's got no wife, no kids.

Sarah:

No. It's all

Mark:

on his

Sarah:

own. Yep.

Mark:

Dead man walking back to his house. He's kinda spacing in a bed and Ian drives up and he's like, I know.

Sarah:

Ian Eastman, who's the the local realtor. He sort of looks like a creepy Bill Clinton.

Mark:

Yeah. He kinda

Sarah:

His eyes are kind of beady.

Mark:

Yeah. He's Yeah. He's creep meister creep.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

And he wants to know what's going on with the tie house development

Sarah:

and Richard Bailey is in charge of it. He's the developer.

Mark:

Richard says, we're gonna go with Ericsson's and Costin.

Sarah:

They have offices in London. They have offices in London. That makes them very fancy.

Mark:

And he gets home and I don't know what the writer was thinking, but he draws a straight line between the pear tree and the pear Richard's hand, and sacrifice and pears. And he's he's like got that pear in his hand from that moment on the rest of the time we see him.

Sarah:

Well, I saw that he picked it after he got back from the meeting.

Mark:

No. He picks one then too. Oh, just twice. He's obsessed with that pear tree.

Sarah:

Yep. Well, and his front garden is so beautiful. Anyway, I wish half of my plants grew as well as his do. And all he's he's just obsessed with this bruised pear.

Mark:

And Ian goes home to his wife, Brenda, and they say some stuff and it doesn't matter at all.

Sarah:

No, she doesn't. She and her Troy like hairdo don't matter at all.

Mark:

Everyone knows he has cancer and she drops a tiny bit of information here that blew me away

Sarah:

from the rewatch. How she knows about the tumor?

Mark:

She knows because the doctor's maid So told the doctor, remember worst doctor ever, told the maid that Richard has a brain tumor. Not usually something you talk about with the domestic.

Sarah:

Her maid who happens to be, dun dun dun, Mrs. Bundy.

Mark:

Mrs. Bundy. And it's just dropped in there. I'm like, Oh, wow, Mrs. Bundy, whatever.

Mark:

We know who Mrs. Bundy is.

Sarah:

She finds dead people.

Mark:

Agnes rides her motorbike through town.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well, and we see David Whiteley hanging out at the pub.

Mark:

Who is a character from the pilot.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. And the the first time when Ian asks Richard about Tie House, it's like a little flashback. Like, oh, that's right. We're still in Badger's Drift.

Sarah:

Tie House. The infamous Tie House.

Mark:

It's Tie House. Now I'm not told about any of the characters or anything like that yet.

Sarah:

Yeah. So Agnes rides her motorcycle, Agnes Sampson, who's played by Vivian Pickles, best name ever. Best name ever. And she comes home to her sister and brother-in-law who she lives Claire

Mark:

and Reggie.

Sarah:

Claire and Reg. Here's an interesting thing. So Agnes Sampson is supposed to be Claire Williams' sister. Right? That's why she lives with them.

Sarah:

But in reality, Vivian Pickles, who plays Agnes, is married to Gordon Gostelow, who plays Reg.

Mark:

I didn't know that.

Sarah:

They were married.

Mark:

So they were married.

Sarah:

He's passed on now, but yes. I like Regs. They were

Mark:

married for

Sarah:

a long time. He and Bunny could hang out.

Mark:

They probably do. You don't know how far Bunny delivers.

Sarah:

That's true. It's a little basket. Oh, but there's other people who ride bikes much better than Bunny, aren't there? We'll get to that too.

Mark:

She tells Claire about the development and the loss of three Oaks and a Uval.

Sarah:

Yeah, because they're gonna convert Ty House into a retirement home and a golf course. This is the big project that Richard Bailey is working on and everybody's upset about it, especially Agnes. She reminds me so much of that woman in the later episode who's all up in arms about the right of way. The People should be able to walk.

Mark:

Episode. That may be the Bell Ringer episode, possibly.

Sarah:

Then we get to the the tower committee who's so committed. Even though Richard Bailey's on the committee and doesn't go to church. Yeah. He's not a church goer.

Mark:

And it's the Grand Village Fete. Ian has on that evil orange shirt. Oh, he's just torn. They talk about palm reading, the lucky dip. Mhmm.

Mark:

Coconut shine. And Charles is gonna set everything up, but Ian wants his help with his coconuts and his young hands. Because it

Sarah:

takes- Coconuts. Because it takes so many hands to set up coconuts.

Mark:

And Angela, is making a paper airplane like a five year old boy.

Sarah:

She doesn't even hide her apathy.

Mark:

She basically says, you all have tea, I'm off to bed.

Sarah:

Yeah, don't wake me up. I'm gonna take a pill.

Mark:

They need a celebrity to open the FET. Now this trope of needing a celebrity to open a FET is used again with the Wilmington ride people. Yeah. Because Barnaby opens that FET.

Sarah:

Yeah, that's true. So we have the whole fundraising meeting, which if you've ever seen A Midsomer, you know, well, that's not gonna go well. No. Because you can't go to a fete or have a hobby in midsummer unless you wanna die.

Mark:

Somebody's gonna die. And speaking of somebody who's gonna die, Simon Fletcher drives into town. David Whitely recognizes him having not seen him from thirty years.

Sarah:

Yeah, would you recognize somebody you knew as a little boy?

Mark:

Don't And Simon Fletcher takes off like,

Sarah:

Oh, it's David Whitely. He is kind of scary. He's kind of confrontational. But Richard asks Steven if he can stay behind and talk to him even though it's late, though the sun's still out because he he needs to get some things off his chest.

Mark:

Maybe that's why Ian is so pissed. He's still pissed. He's like pissy, pissy, piss.

Sarah:

Yeah. My orange shirt makes me angry.

Mark:

So Richard talks to Steven, and we're then changed back to the Barnaby house.

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

And we're talking about him for the matrimonial precision.

Sarah:

This is over the candlelit dinner Yes. For three.

Mark:

And Barnaby suggests Peril on the Sea, which is not the name of the hymn.

Sarah:

And he even sings it.

Mark:

He does. He sings it very well. The same hymn that he sings when he's high on the bunny cake.

Sarah:

No. So what's it actually called?

Mark:

It's actually called Eternal Father, the navel hymn. Big surprise. It's all about boats.

Sarah:

Yeah. And Joyce is like, you're a policeman. You're you're not a sailor. We can't have that song. It's a dirge.

Sarah:

It's not really a happy let's get remarried song. It's not a happy song. But he likes it.

Mark:

It's basically all these people we've lost on the sea. Yeah. But he likes the tune. Yeah. Cully says that they're gonna do the Duchess of Melfi.

Sarah:

It's got more murder than an average week in Barnaby's life.

Mark:

It's been a long, long time since the last murder.

Sarah:

It was, edit. Like, he's he's getting ready to say when his last murder was. But, you know, Midsomer is notorious for not having good timelines or, like, something that lets you recognize days passing. So he couldn't possibly actually acknowledge how long it has been. Nope.

Sarah:

Because then we would know.

Mark:

So the meeting is over. It's later that night. Clara is making some warm milk and notices that Agnes is not in the house.

Sarah:

Right. She's not in bed. And Reggie's like,

Mark:

Well, let's go to bed then.

Sarah:

Go go in bed. Even though it's actually his wife who's out there in Worst

Mark:

doctor ever gets a call at like 10:30 at night?

Sarah:

Oh no, later than that, like 11:30 at night. And then goes driving around. Because you know, that's when the lab calls to let you know the results, But her impulse is good. Okay? If I thought that I had a tumor in my brain that was gonna kill me and our doctor found out at midnight that that wasn't true, I want him to come over and wake me up and That's tell true.

Mark:

I I understand that.

Sarah:

Tell me. But then she doesn't.

Mark:

Meanwhile, Steven's in the church freaking out.

Sarah:

So Richard has stayed back and told Steven something that makes Steven murderous. Right? And then Steven has left. Then before he comes back and kills Richard, Doctor. Henson is there.

Sarah:

Hansen. And she could have come in and told him the news.

Mark:

So a second time that she could stop the entire plot of this show.

Sarah:

Meaning that she would be there when the killer Vicar shows up, and maybe he would other killings. Maybe he wouldn't have gotten killed, which would have saved a couple of other lives too, but she goes home and goes to bed because it's late. It's all her fault. Meanwhile, Simon's driving around. Simon's driving around and Ian is creeping in the shadows and Agnes is creeping in the shadows.

Sarah:

It's another episode of why aren't these people in bed? Everybody's creeping. At least Agnes puts on like skulky clothes. She's got like dark sweater, sock hat. Ian's out there in his evil orange shirt.

Sarah:

The gate opens, the killer cam The gate that Richard would never oil because he always wanted to know when someone was coming.

Mark:

Picks out the axe.

Sarah:

Yeah. And then And you think that's gonna be the murder weapon? Yep. Nope. Not unless the victim is a pear tree.

Mark:

And then Steven wakes up in

Sarah:

bed. Somebody's in the house.

Mark:

Somebody's in the house. What time is it? Evil wife?

Sarah:

Angela's level of assholishness is so exceptional that even half awake, she's a jerk.

Mark:

So that clock radio with the flippy, flippy numbers was from like 1981. Yes.

Sarah:

And let's put a box of sleeping pills on top of it. So there's no doubt that she has taken a sleeping pill.

Mark:

She's taken a sleeping pill.

Sarah:

And she's got like Gucci silk pajamas

Mark:

on Her pajamas, looked at them a long time. I'm sorry. Mary was like, why are you even looking at this woman's pajamas? I had a little come to Mark moment there.

Sarah:

There was a time in the late eighties, early nineties where this it was like a faux Gucci polo pattern was really popular, and it's like this kind of equestrian kind of ropes and saddles and yeah, they're of that era.

Mark:

So Steven goes downstairs, notices the windows open, but does not notice his giant scimitar is missing.

Sarah:

Yes. Because you don't when you're half asleep, you know?

Mark:

I wonder where, like, is he in a fugue state that he actually believes? Not that there's somebody there because he's clearly setting up an alibi.

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

But he goes through the motions pretty convincingly of doing what he's doing.

Sarah:

Yeah, I thought the same thing. Like he goes downstairs, he turns on the light, he notices the windows open, closes it and even makes a that'll fix it face. Then he goes back to bed. Is asleep. There's nobody there to see him but Who is he performing for?

Sarah:

Us. Speaking

Mark:

of performing, the next day Yes. Our favorite charlady

Sarah:

Yeah. Mrs. Bundy rides again. Yep. She goes into Richard's house to clean.

Mark:

If you don't recall Mrs. Bundy, she went into Gerald's house. Yes. And found him naked and dead. Of course I didn't

Sarah:

go in the background.

Mark:

In episode two, with the first season one, episode one.

Sarah:

But this time it's worse because she goes in the front door. And she slips. And she goes, woo, woo, woo, and slips and goes face down in the blood.

Mark:

It comes out of the house screaming covered in blood.

Sarah:

Like a screaming me me. Speaking of covered in blood, since we're we're not trying to like maintain any any sense of suspense here. So Steven has beheaded

Mark:

With the scimitar.

Sarah:

Richard. Okay. Now, first of all, it's a very small hallway in the house. It's narrow. I'm impressed that he could get a strong enough swing with that thing to actually behead somebody.

Sarah:

Okay.

Mark:

Like four years of living with Angela. Hasn't snap. He made hears the information that he hears. So he snapped. I don't think even that could make you like cut a person's head off with a scimitar right away.

Mark:

In one stroke.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because when we see the kind of reenactment later, it's clearly one one swing and a thump. Yep. Because his head is in the living room, though it might have bounced there or been carried there. But he would have been so coated in blood

Mark:

head to toe. So we had this little Like

Sarah:

a fountain

Mark:

of blood. We had this little image that Steven turns on the light in the bedroom to say that somebody's in the house and he's covered in blood.

Sarah:

Yeah. But Angela doesn't notice because

Mark:

she because never made a piece of

Sarah:

he would be. You absolutely You cut somebody's head off, there's gonna be some arterial spray. Wonder Mrs. Bundy Mrs. Falls Bundy vomited.

Sarah:

Maybe she screams because she's like, oh my god, this is such a giant mess. I don't wanna clean it up.

Mark:

So Mrs. Bundy is in that episode. Yeah. Those two episodes. But she's also in the pilot, but not as Mrs.

Mark:

Bundy. She is one

Sarah:

of She's in the murders of Badger's Drift?

Mark:

Yes. Because she's one of the counselors at the helpline. This woman needs counseling. I think so. I'm not sure what she's gone through.

Sarah:

This is but but that was before the bad things happened to her. Poor missus Bundy. Maybe she's Ted's mom.

Mark:

Maybe. We're returned to the police canteen. Barnaby asked Troy's favorite him and they get a piece of paper that says dead body, head missing.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. The constable brings Barnaby that slip of paper. Like, what? Instead of saying, excuse me, but there's been a murder in Badger's Drift and you're needed, you know?

Mark:

It's a piece of paper.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

Head off Badger's Drift.

Sarah:

And when they get there, George, it's

Mark:

like George is upset. Oh, it's

Sarah:

just like the worst one I've ever seen. He's overwhelmed by it.

Mark:

And Troy asked, where's the body? And he's like, most of it's in the living room. And most of it is in the hallway, but the head's in the living room. It either bounced there or was carried.

Sarah:

Could have been carried there.

Mark:

And don't even talk to Mrs. Bundy. No.

Sarah:

And when and when doctor Hansen comes, he they refer to Richard in the past, and she's like, oh, has he committed suicide? And Troy says, we believe he may have been the victim of a murder.

Mark:

His head is off. Yeah.

Sarah:

And he might have done

Mark:

it to himself. The pear tree might have like whipped him around and got him or something.

Sarah:

I'm tired of you yanking pears off of me. I'm done with you.

Mark:

And they say it's a murder. And she goes, well, thank goodness for that. Yeah.

Sarah:

Because she is the worst doctor ever, as we've mentioned.

Mark:

The doctor explains to them what the situation is and they

Sarah:

Well, no.

Mark:

Well. Well, sort

Sarah:

of. Not that he's not, that he wasn't dying. She, at that point still sticks to the story that he was dying.

Mark:

Yeah. Because she's also a coward. Worst doctor coward ever.

Sarah:

We're not inviting her to our come mid summer with me.

Mark:

No, they go off to interview Steven, who was actually said he was praying for him the night before. Yeah, praying that you could cut his head off in one fell swoop. Yeah. And he says he's gonna change his will to give all his money to the church.

Sarah:

For the tower fund.

Mark:

And he's been stabbed.

Sarah:

It's an understatement, isn't it?

Mark:

Is he really stabbed at that point?

Sarah:

It's like saying Jaws was a big fish.

Mark:

Yes. He goes, well, isn't that a coinkydink? Because I have a missing scimitar.

Sarah:

Come see.

Mark:

And Angela shows up and goes, well, there's nothing worth stealing here. People traipse all over the house. Yeah.

Sarah:

Cause everything's horrible here, of course.

Mark:

And Claire's in the cemetery, which she's not dead, but she's in the cemetery.

Sarah:

Yeah. And that's where we find out about Jennifer and Felix. Felix Steven. Bryce. Yes.

Sarah:

Who we can't really count in the body count for the episode because they've been dead for And a Felix was an accident.

Mark:

Yes. Yeah. Agnes was the teacher in the dream. Find out, and then we find out that she also doesn't understand puzzles.

Sarah:

Oh, she understands them. She just wants her way in the world. Haven't you ever felt like when you were doing a jigsaw puzzle, just like cutting one of the pieces off and making it fit?

Mark:

She's gonna make it fit no matter what.

Sarah:

So she's sitting there putting together jigsaw puzzle with scissors at hand. It's not like she gets up and goes gets them. It's like, that's just part of putting together a jigsaw.

Mark:

Later on, most of the puzzle is put put together. I guess. I guess. Off to Ian's office.

Sarah:

And we meet Olive. Yes. Who might be my favorite character in this episode. Olive. Beauvois what is it?

Sarah:

Beauvoisin. Beauvoisin. Does that mean like pretty view Yes. In French? She's not.

Mark:

No. No. She's unique. But they

Sarah:

bring her back for another episode in the same season.

Mark:

Yes. So essentially, he explains that, David Whiteley had Richard over a barrel Yeah. Because of Ty House.

Sarah:

Yeah. But Ian asks for the sale, the quarterly sales binder and they're doing just fine.

Mark:

Yes. They sold 6 High Street in Badger's Drift for a $195,000.

Sarah:

Wow. You looked at that really close. £195,000.

Mark:

The material production in this episode is pretty good. The next scene has a pretty good piece too.

Sarah:

I did notice when they go to the Eastman, what he's called like Badger's Drift Real Estate or something. Yes. On the outside of the shop, the sign for the business kind of wraps around the top on two sides. It's very clearly a banner. Yeah.

Sarah:

That's kind of attached to the building. Yeah. But it looks good. It still looks good.

Mark:

Yeah. Ian also lies to the police because we know he went out. He was creeping

Sarah:

in his evil orange shirt. He was creeping. Going to see Charlie.

Mark:

And Barnaby says it's a big world, but a small county.

Sarah:

So he wasn't at home in bed and his wife Brenda knows it, but he tells miss Beauvoisin that he's leaving for ten minutes and rushes home and- To tell her. To scowl at Brenda and say, why are you opening big statement?

Mark:

So Brenda has their Halifax card cash statement,

Sarah:

which

Mark:

is dated July 1998. Their address, by the way, this is statement number eight. Their address is It's a pretty new account. 3 Church Road. Their mortgage payment is $4.00 $1.11.

Mark:

That's cheap. Oh, remember it's pounds.

Sarah:

But still, they got a nice house.

Mark:

She has put money in, but he has taken a lot out. And out of the original almost a thousand pounds in that account, there was now only £14.

Sarah:

Wow. So what's he spending the money on?

Mark:

His boyfriend. Because remember he says he's paying him.

Sarah:

Oh, that's right. He's paying Charlie.

Mark:

This is expensive Yeah. Dalliance there.

Sarah:

Yeah. For a village. Charlie's doing well. He's charging a lot of money.

Mark:

Richard's been killed and I'm gonna threaten you.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because when the cops come, you better be careful what you tell them.

Mark:

Cops, speaking of Barnaby and Troy, they rush off to talk to David Whiteley who can't wear a shirt.

Sarah:

Okay. I do a lot of work around our house. Can we agree that I'm the handy one? Yes. Okay.

Sarah:

I climb ladders. I saw boards. I do all kinds of stuff. And never have I ever done it with one button button. And no undershirt.

Sarah:

Very few men wear undershirts, but he's out there dressed like a Chippendale working on his gingerbread trim.

Mark:

So he's living in a caravan. He is also in need of Restoration Man.

Sarah:

Yes. Cause he's got the carriage house and he's trying to fix it up at Ty House.

Mark:

And we find out that Ian, David, and Richard all went to school together.

Sarah:

And Simon. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. He's got one button buttoned when he's on the ladder for the funeral.

Sarah:

He buttons three.

Mark:

Three? Wow. I don't even know why he's at that funeral. He hates him.

Sarah:

He hates him.

Mark:

He hates Richard.

Sarah:

Hates him so much he can't even button his old shirt.

Mark:

Well, he's there so that he can say, oh, I've got everything all worked out now. Yep. Somebody can kill him.

Sarah:

And somebody can overhear him say that.

Mark:

Yeah. They were led to believe that Cully has a rope around her neck and is being hurt. Yes. Of course, it's just the Duchess of Malfy

Sarah:

Death is a spectacle.

Mark:

Simon is teaching his class on Jacobian theater and hitting on Cully who says, Nico, Nico, who?

Sarah:

Because they're not a fame.

Mark:

She finds out that Simon used to live here and she mentioned Richard's name and he freaks out.

Sarah:

Yeah. They go for a beer and it's like, hey, this is working out. And he's talking to her and stuff. And then she goes, oh, you don't know about Richard? And he's like, I gotta go.

Mark:

I gotta go. And he's off.

Sarah:

Oh, and she said that her dad is investigating it. My dad's a copper, your friend's dead. He's the worst actor actor ever.

Mark:

Yeah. Because he's acting pretty guilty.

Sarah:

Yeah. And she thinks she's upset him.

Mark:

Well, you know who else is upset? Joyce is upset. So much so she burns the toast.

Sarah:

Yeah. And doesn't talk to him.

Mark:

She's pissed. Because somebody got killed.

Sarah:

Damn it. Why do people have to get murdered when I have plans?

Mark:

I'm sorry, Joyce. This is just the beginning of that.

Sarah:

Well, if she didn't kill people, it wouldn't happen.

Mark:

But this isn't so, and we'll get to this at the end, how this is the first episode of really Midsomer at eleven and how this new season is all that spectacular stuff. Yeah. But Joyce is not the Joyce of the first season of I saw a murder and I'm upset about it. No. Joyce is like, my plans are ruined because of your silly little job.

Sarah:

Oh, Tom, why can't you be a postman

Mark:

or a dentist? And then Cully goes, hey. What if

Sarah:

the vicar did it?

Mark:

What if the vicar did

Sarah:

it? No.

Mark:

And they talk themselves out of it. And the fact that he even has, like, an anti motive. Yeah. And Culley is like, well, I just hate sleeves, and I still think it's the victor vicar. She is in sleeveless outfits through this whole episode.

Sarah:

It is summer.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

It's it's a summer acting camp that she's in. That's It is the summer.

Mark:

And he go he takes her to acting camp, and he doesn't ask Simon questions. No. Like the way that she's worried he's gonna

Sarah:

Dad. Haven't you ever heard that before from one Dad. Of our

Mark:

The memorial service starts and his Steven's wife is horrible.

Sarah:

Judy Parfitt is so good at acting bored. The camera is high up. It's panning the entire audience in the church. And she has to be bored in a big way to make, for it to And she's be church is half empty.

Mark:

That is a full church. It looks pretty full. I was raised in an Anglican church in the middle of nowhere in Canada. And it wasn't like a stone church like this one is. It was probably about half the size of this one.

Mark:

And if that many people had shown up, we would have been overjoyed. Yeah. It is full. And they kind of go over the murder and Richard says, Oh, it's you. So he knows his killer.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because when the killer knocks at the door, he lets them in.

Mark:

Would you like a pair? Really? What's the next thing

Sarah:

he's going to do? Doesn't share his pairs except at the fall festival where he gives Steven one. One. But there's an interesting look between a trio of people at the memorial service.

Mark:

Missus Bondi? Because she's also

Sarah:

She's she's there and looking very upset, but that's not who I'm talking about. Ian looks at Charlie and Olive notices them looking at each other.

Mark:

So Olive knows what's going on between Charlie and Ian?

Sarah:

Yeah. She knows. Especially since I think they're slipping off and going into empty houses Yes. To do it all the So yeah. She would probably know.

Mark:

David Whiteley leaves and tells everybody he should die.

Sarah:

Yep. I got lots of money with my three button shirt.

Mark:

And then Reggie runs up and throws Agnes under the bus. Yep. He was his wife now that we learned.

Sarah:

Yeah, the actor's wife. Yeah, and you ought to ask Agnes because she wasn't at home that night.

Mark:

And the worst doctor in the world says, can I have a word?

Sarah:

Not only am I a coward, but I'm also a liar and a gossip, sorry.

Mark:

There's a little scene here between Angela and Steven, and Steven talks back to her for the first time we've seen in the episode. So he's become emboldened through murder.

Sarah:

Yeah, murder has given him courage to stand up to his wife, but he doesn't kill her.

Mark:

So we find out the doctor went around to the house, and was about to tell Richard and then goes home and sees Ian. Yeah. And we're left with the question, a very good question, which is why kill a man who's already dead?

Sarah:

Right. Well, maybe they didn't want him to change his will, Troy comes up with. They did it to stop him from changing Troy comes

Mark:

up with a pretty good idea.

Sarah:

So they go they go to see Jocelyn, our

Mark:

favorite lawyer. Missus and Ian. And Ian both face lies to them yet again.

Sarah:

Again.

Mark:

Yeah. I wasn't anywhere near there.

Sarah:

Nope. Nope. And then we get Jocelyn, our favorite lawyer. He's so cute.

Mark:

The bulk of the estate goes to a Mrs. Marker Green in Perth. Australia? No, Australia.

Sarah:

She's like We don't really ever find out who she is, No.

Mark:

Not at all. And £500 goes to the church.

Sarah:

Yeah. The only one He was also Gerald's lawyer.

Mark:

The only one who's really benefited is David Whitley. So, okay.

Sarah:

Because he finally got the price that he was asking for.

Mark:

So Jocelyn is Gerald's lawyer. Yeah. And Richard's lawyer. Yeah. And both of them

Sarah:

have missus Bundy as their housekeeper. Coincidence?

Mark:

Coincidence? I think not.

Sarah:

Then David Whiteley dies in his caravan.

Mark:

There's a hammer placed in the door so he can't open it up, though he could have jumped through the window.

Sarah:

The windows aren't big, but it's a caravan. You just kick one of them out. He's not a weakling. What?

Mark:

And he looks at a mysterious figure and and is, like, totally confused.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

He recognizes the mysterious figure.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because it's Steven, the killer vicar.

Mark:

The milkman from Chilton Dairies arrives at the Barnaby's house. Everything's great. Peter and Anne from New York are coming to the wedding.

Sarah:

Yeah. And we get to see the Barnaby's bedroom in the light. Yes. And they have horrible wallpaper.

Mark:

Horrible wallpaper.

Sarah:

I think that's the same wallpaper that was in the bathroom of our house when we moved in. Ugh. It's gone by the way.

Mark:

Gone. Steven is in a good mood for the He's also in terrific shape as we'll find out.

Sarah:

Yeah, so he's got an idea. Okay, so first of all, we see the vet getting set up, which is the typical putting up the bunting, everybody's excited scene. And because he later runs into Cully and Simon, we know that their acting workshop starts at 09:30 and the But FET starts at Brenda is putting the cakes out already. Yes. It's a little early.

Mark:

It's a little early.

Sarah:

These kinds of things bother me. So Steven

Mark:

has an idea for the celebrity.

Sarah:

Yeah, needs to sign somebody to open the fats. So he's on his little bike with his basket and he goes biking off and you think, Oh, he's got an idea. And he bikes all the way to Costin. From Badger's Drift.

Mark:

Yeah. Now this is not

Sarah:

tour like de Costin.

Mark:

He's not in Lycra. It's a long run bike outfit he has on. It's a hot day. It's summer. And he's not even sweating.

Sarah:

No. He's in good shape. That's why he can run so fast later. And

Mark:

kill somebody with one chop. Yeah. He's been working out.

Sarah:

Yeah. He rides his bike. He's in shape.

Mark:

I guess so. He convinces Simon to come to the vet.

Sarah:

Yeah. And then bikes off back to Badger's Drift. Then Barnaby and Troy find Yeah, out about the and Troy has to look at the body. I love the entire caravan is burnt to cinders.

Mark:

Except for?

Sarah:

One picture of the class. Yes. From Badger's primary, Badger's Drift primary.

Mark:

They go in and interview Agnes. They say, Hey Agnes, you were gonna cut down the pear tree. She says, Yeah, I was there at midnight on the dot. Whoever came to the door and killed him, he was greeted as an old friend. I freaked out and went home.

Sarah:

Eye for an eye, tree for a tree.

Mark:

The Fet begins at 02:00.

Sarah:

Why is Ian dressed up like a cowboy?

Mark:

Why is Cully on stage while Simon is opening the FET? Emotional support? I

Sarah:

guess. That doesn't explain Ian's outfit.

Mark:

And he sneaks off from the coconut shy.

Sarah:

Because he pays 2 little girls to run it, which nobody's gonna notice.

Mark:

All of this in the palm reader.

Sarah:

Yeah, getting Claire to read her poem.

Mark:

And Steven gives the doctor some wine. Maybe she wanted it on Tombola or he's like, Hey, I'm not gonna kill you, here's some wine.

Sarah:

Yeah, You get to survive.

Mark:

Cully gets some tea for Simon.

Sarah:

Yeah. And then we have a great act of murderous nominative determinism. Simon Fletcher is killed with an arrow.

Mark:

Now the arrow that he shot with, I understand, but it's what's called a safety arrow. It it is a domed, unpointed arrow.

Sarah:

And shot with a crappy bow. It's a piece of wood with a string.

Mark:

You you would have to you might not be able to stab somebody with this kind of arrow. Yeah. Like if you took it and plunged it into them. And from experience that I'm not maybe proud of

Sarah:

Have you tried this?

Mark:

A good winter jacket would stop that arrow.

Sarah:

Was it your winter jacket or somebody else's?

Mark:

I'm just saying I have some experience with arrows of that type.

Sarah:

So Simon's spine must be really soft and squishy?

Mark:

Well, so he's walking along and I thought about this. So they show him walking along and then they cut to the arrow being shot and the arrow going through the air. And then he falls over with the arrow in his back. Mhmm. I bet he had the arrow in his back as he was walking along waving Culley.

Sarah:

And then had to go, oh,

Mark:

and then falls on the floor.

Sarah:

Poor Culley. He might have been her big chance.

Mark:

Somebody would have seen this. This is just blatant outing

Sarah:

She was behind the palm reader's tent. No. It's the best cover ever.

Mark:

So here we go with days mixed up. Yeah. Because the next scene is Barnaby and Troy rushing

Sarah:

Well, people to they they question people at the FET.

Mark:

At the FET.

Sarah:

And as they're leaving, they put together, oh, all these guys were in school together.

Mark:

Including Ian.

Sarah:

Ian is the only one still alive.

Mark:

So we should rush over to Ian's place right away.

Sarah:

And they run off screen.

Mark:

They run off screen.

Sarah:

And go home and go to bed.

Mark:

Well, but what? They they drive up

Sarah:

and They're incomplete. Skid

Mark:

to a

Sarah:

In completely different clothes.

Mark:

The next day.

Sarah:

It's a continuity issue, I think.

Mark:

It's like they said, Oh, it's 05:00.

Sarah:

Yeah. So care if he might be murdered tonight. He might be killed later, but, oh, you know, it's okay.

Mark:

Where's Ian? He's in

Sarah:

an empty house with Charlie.

Mark:

Yes. Bob goes in, gives him up.

Sarah:

Hey, at least they shut the front door.

Mark:

At least they shut the front door. Unlike other people who are bulking. He's upstairs with Charles. He's paying him. He's 19.

Mark:

Okay. So the reason why they're rushing over to see Ian is to protect him from whatever is killing all these schoolmates. Right? Right. And Ian has like this soliloquy in front of an open window.

Mark:

Yeah. I'm like, man. I'm not gay. Maybe you should keep him away from the window.

Sarah:

Well, and then they just leave him there. So apparently being gay is protection against murder.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

Or not being gay.

Mark:

So there was a group of them. They were called the sign of the four after Sherlock Holmes. There was an initiation for this new Felix kid. They had no idea what was gonna happen. They put a rope around his neck and put him on a chair and tied his arms behind his back.

Mark:

And he slipped off the chair. It was complete accident.

Sarah:

And they were off having a sneaky cigarette, so they didn't know.

Mark:

And then everybody thought that he committed suicide.

Sarah:

Right. And then his mother was so bereft that she wasted away and basically died too.

Mark:

And we know it's the next day because Joyce has arrived at the church.

Sarah:

Waiting for Barnaby to get there at eleven. So maybe they got up first thing to go and see Anne?

Mark:

As fast as they could drive. Yeah. Next, they go see Agnes. Yeah. And Claire, and they lay out the whole history that the girl was a modern girl.

Mark:

She, people blame Agnes for the boy's death. She just slipped away. And Barnaby says, I need to know what kind of alarm clock Angela has.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

Which is a cryptic.

Sarah:

Which means, I've got it. Because they're they he has to go he says, I need to be at the church. I'm running late, but first we need to stop by the vicarage because I need to know what kind of alarm clock Angela has. And Troy's like, It looks like confused dog. What?

Mark:

Tom arrives and says the service has to be canceled. Is that how you would do it? I don't know. But Joyce, who was ready to kill bread before. Is like, Oh, okay, whatever.

Sarah:

Well, she's not surprised, but he confronts Steven. He says, I know you're the killer and everything. He does kind of say to Joyce and back up, right? But if it were me, if I was Tom and I was coming into that church, I would have come in and said, I'm really sorry, Joyce and Cully, but I need a moment to talk to Steven. It's about the case.

Sarah:

I gotta ask him a question.

Mark:

Maybe call for backup also.

Sarah:

And I would take him over to the side.

Mark:

Some uniforms.

Sarah:

And then I would confront him. Exactly. Not with my wife and daughter standing right there. And I love Cully's face when she realizes what he's saying that Steven's the murderer and Steven is like, Yeah, I'm the killer. I kill all the people.

Sarah:

Kill. I kill, kill, kill. And I'm not sorry that I did it. Cully, like, rolls her eyes like, great. Told you it was

Mark:

a vicar. This murder has gotten in our way again.

Sarah:

Yeah. Stupid murder.

Mark:

When the recreation of the crime happens, you hear the thud of the head? Dumb. Yeah. Barbie says it's old testament. And Steven's like, I'm glad I did it.

Mark:

I'm crazy.

Sarah:

I should have done it a long time ago. Know. Yeah. He could He yeah. He says he's gonna go pray and then he takes a run up the stairs, up into the tower and goes and hangs off the scaffolding.

Mark:

But before that, he kicks Troy.

Sarah:

Yeah, well, because he's an athlete. Stephen is an athlete. He

Mark:

must be.

Sarah:

Because he rides that bike.

Mark:

The athletic vicar.

Sarah:

He is in good shape. Shape. He's in good shape. And he makes it to the top of the tower.

Mark:

Troy says, Stop, don't.

Sarah:

Yeah. So when Steven gets to the outside of the scaffolding, he sees that Angela's walking up the way. Angela? And he shouts at her to get her attention to make sure she sees him fall.

Mark:

Yes. It's like not fall.

Sarah:

He jumps. Well, yeah. But it's like he wants to make sure she sees it.

Mark:

I should have done it years ago.

Sarah:

Yeah. And off he goes.

Mark:

He does some great dead body acting there.

Sarah:

Yeah. And they've got a couple of good stunt people there too.

Mark:

Yep. And the Barnabas are off on holiday.

Sarah:

Yep. They're off in the Orient Express. Tom's got an ascot on. Like he looks like he's going on the love boat or something. And then before they pull away, Collie gets down in the window and she's got this little box of something.

Sarah:

And every time I see this episode, I think she's gonna hand them condoms.

Mark:

But it's confetti.

Sarah:

It's rice paper Yeah. But I always think she's got a hand of condoms. Like, they're past it, Collie. Don't worry about it.

Mark:

And so ends episode one of season two, Death's Shadow. Though there's no real shadow.

Sarah:

It's the shadow of the death of Felix.

Mark:

Oh, guess.

Sarah:

It's been over all their lives, their whole life.

Mark:

I would guess so.

Sarah:

And it's weighed on Steven. When he confesses and he says that Jennifer understood that he was a vicar and that nobody could know, he also says that they were his life.

Mark:

And she died after a few And he had to bury both of them and not tell anybody.

Sarah:

Not tell anybody and still live with Angela. Yeah. It's amazing he didn't go on a murderous spree earlier.

Mark:

Then, yes. Like he could

Sarah:

have just machine gunned down the vet.

Mark:

The inciting incident of this episode is the worst doctor ever's lab. Yeah. Screwing up. If that hadn't have happened.

Sarah:

If Richard hadn't confessed to Steven.

Mark:

None of this would have happened. Nope. None of it.

Sarah:

Nope. Ian would still be bonking Charlie and- Cully would be And bonking Charlie would still be a jerk and happy ending. Yep. Yeah. It's all that lab's fault.

Mark:

And they would have had their marriage vows renewed.

Sarah:

Yeah. Even Joyce would be happy.

Mark:

But the worst doctor in the world. So this is the first episode of really the real, well not real, of the Midsomer that we are more familiar with.

Sarah:

Yeah, the Midsomer of murderers that are ever so slightly crazy. I mean, there are murders like that in the first season, but they kill like one person.

Mark:

And the murders, the method of murder is related to their madness.

Sarah:

Yeah, There's a connection between them and you just get this sense that it's the craziness is kind of the product of being in a village.

Mark:

It's the way I explained it was everything is turned up to 11 here.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Except for Barbara, who could not be in the episode at all. Brenda. Brenda. Yes. Not Barbara.

Mark:

Brenda. Yeah. In fact, if Brenda and Ian weren't together, Ian wouldn't even need to be there.

Sarah:

No. Well, he would he would have a motive to kill Richard because of the tie house thing. I guess. He'd be angry about that.

Mark:

He'd have his personal houseboy, and it would be over.

Sarah:

But the one thing I can say about Brenda Eastman that makes her interesting is that the actress who played her is interesting, Jessica Turner. She was in an episode of Bergerac.

Mark:

Mhmm.

Sarah:

And she she was also the star of this wacky British tweens show called Poltergeists. Poltergeists? Yeah. About a mother and daughter who ran a hotel that was full of funny ghosties. It's called Poltergeists.

Mark:

I will have to look up Poltergeists.

Sarah:

I watched about ten minutes of an episode It's ten minutes, I'll never get back.

Mark:

Is it filmed in video?

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. On a stage.

Mark:

On a stage.

Sarah:

Yeah. On a Yeah. She ran that show.

Mark:

Now, in relation to that, Richard Briars, plays

Sarah:

Steven- Steven.

Mark:

Steven, had played a vicar in a whole bunch of other shows.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

So I think that this is also a big get for them.

Sarah:

Yeah. I think he's definitely a big star. And I think Angela Wentworth, who plays Angela, is too. They're both actors with a lot of history and a lot of really good Shakespearean work and a lot of Agatha Christie and masterpiece kind of work. Richard Briars got an OBE and a CBE before he Yeah, was in this

Mark:

he must have been like, when he was on set, everybody must have been like overjoyed with him.

Sarah:

Yeah, and from everything I read about him, he was just a super happy

Mark:

And he has so much fun with this. Yeah. You can tell he's kind of having fun with it.

Sarah:

He was in the same Doctor Who that Elizabeth Spriggs, Mrs. Rainberg was in, was like a four episode kind of mini series He was in that too, and they're so funny together. We joke about how England only has like 30 actors. And it's especially true when you look at actors who are over like 60. Because they've all done stage productions together.

Sarah:

They've all been in these older TV shows together like Coronation Street. They've all

Mark:

The Bill.

Sarah:

The Bill. They've played parts in those things. It's just interesting to see where they overlap. Because even Gordon Gostalow, who plays Reg, was in a Doctor Who and a Bergerac. Like, there were And only so many actors to go around.

Sarah:

I think Bergerac and Doctor Who both were kind of like Midsomer in that they had a core characters. And then every episode they had new kind of guests. Exactly. And so you've got this group of actors who are they're just those guest players, but they're good at it.

Mark:

They are fantastic. And this to me, the pilot is still the best episode so far, but this is second best.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark:

I really like this episode.

Sarah:

It's the magic of Badger's Drift.

Mark:

It is the magic of Badger's Drift.

Sarah:

So we talked about Mrs. Bundy Yeah. Being a repeat character and Olive Bovisolme Yes. Is a repeat character in the within the season anyway.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

But there's another character in this episode who exceeds them in the number of episodes that he's in.

Mark:

Who is that?

Sarah:

And he plays the same character.

Mark:

Oh, I have no idea who

Sarah:

this is. In four episodes.

Mark:

Who is this?

Sarah:

His name is Neil Conrich and he plays police constable angel. Wow. And he's in four episodes.

Mark:

In four episodes already?

Sarah:

As police constable angel.

Mark:

I we need to talk to this man.

Sarah:

Because he's foundational. Yeah. He was there from the beginning and he's Once you know who he is, he's everywhere.

Mark:

Is he in many more of the episodes?

Sarah:

I don't have a list of which episodes he's in. It's on the Midsomer Wiki, which is super well maintained. If you guys haven't checked it out, you should. But he's on a bike, he's in the back with a clipboard, he is one of the constables that they talk to. I think he's standing next to Richard's front door when Tom and Troy come out of the house after finding his body.

Mark:

That brings up the axe?

Sarah:

I don't think so.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

He might be though.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

But I'm not sure. Yeah. But he's in four episodes in the first two seasons. Wow. So

Mark:

we've I will find all those pictures of him and place them in the show

Sarah:

notes. So we can see where he's Yes. We've joked about one of the things we'd like to do on this show is to do brief interviews with people who played bit parts in and he would definitely be a good one. There's another one, and I'm asking listeners to help here.

Mark:

Yes. We need your help.

Sarah:

We need your help with this one. So what's the name of the episode?

Mark:

The episode is The Electric Vendetta.

Sarah:

That's right. The Electric Vendetta, which is the one you you'll remember immediately. Season four. It's with the crop circles where they find a body Uphologist. Uphologist.

Sarah:

Uphologist. Where they find a body face down naked in a crop circle at the very beginning of the episode. Naked. It is the best in corpse the whole show ever. Close ups of his face.

Sarah:

And his butt. Yes. But this man, the actor who played this character is un credited.

Mark:

He's named in the episode. Hasn't been credited.

Sarah:

Yeah. We think he may have been played by a stuntman. Possibly. So he's not credited as playing that part.

Mark:

I'll tell you how crazy it is. I looked up all the stuntmen and looked for pictures of those stuntmen to see how closely they looked to the dead body guy, the naked dead body guy.

Sarah:

Because if we could interview anybody who played a small part in Midsomer, that guy would be one of the ones

Mark:

I would wanna talk to.

Sarah:

But if there are other kind of small part characters

Mark:

Or anybody who's part of the production.

Sarah:

Yeah. That you're interested in that you want to suggest we try to get a hold of, we are more than willing to make an effort. Absolutely. So please give us your suggestions on who you'd like to hear us talk to and what questions you might have for them.

Mark:

Our next episode is season two, episode two, which is Strangler's Woods. Oh, it's a good one too. I always think it's a much later episode than it is.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's so good. It's their best maid ever. If you haven't seen it lately, go watch it. Go rewatch it.

Mark:

So again, we wanna say thank you to everybody who's been listening and making comments. We've just been absolutely blown away by the response of the show already. We just dropped the third episode today, and the number of downloads for this today has been our most ever already. We're In one day, gaining steam and popularity.

Sarah:

And what I love is all the comments that say, I found my people. I found the people who understand what I'm talking about. Other people who like the show. I thought I was the only one. Clearly, Midsomer is a super successful show.

Sarah:

There are lots and lots of people who like it. But for some reason, outside The UK especially, it's like a secret.

Mark:

And in fact, we're gonna record this week a little interlude to play before the fourth episode of thank you comments, actually reading out some of the comments. And we've had one individual send us an audio clip.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's great. It's just so Fantastic. We're away. So thanks for listening and tune in next week.

Mark:

For Stranglers Wood. Stranglers Wood.

Sarah:

You're making garrotting motions with your hands. Bye Maniacs. Bye Maniacs. I'm gonna pause here for a second.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

When you come back from a drink, you make this sound. Okay. You'll want to edit it out. Okay. I'll edit that out.

Sarah:

Meanwhile, Mekem is like, that killer is going to strike again. The first time it was on the thirteenth. And the second time it was eight days later than the thirteenth. And today is eight days later than the last time it was thirteenth, and it's a full moon. Even though we see the moon in a few minutes and it's not full, it's like three quarters, but somebody else is going to die.

Sarah:

Hey, Maniacs.

Mark:

Hey, Maniacs.

Sarah:

Welcome to Midsomer Maniacs. This is episode seven.

Mark:

Which covers season two, episode two, Strangler's Wood. Yes. Just a reminder off the top like we always do, if you let your kids watch the show they should be able to be fine to listen to the podcast but if they do not can't handle the show then they can't handle this podcast.

Sarah:

I don't know. I can't handle Toby's hair. Toby's hair is fantastic. Makes his debut as the coroner filling in for George, and he's got an awesome mullet.

Mark:

Did they say, hold on. We haven't noogie ed enough.

Sarah:

Yes. Noogie it more. Make it look like he just took off one of those paper bonnets. No. More.

Sarah:

More. Make it sweaty. Noogie it more.

Mark:

This episode was filmed June and July '98 and broadcast the 02/03/1999. 10,700,000 viewers, which is more than the last episode. Hey. This is also once again not a book. It's an original screenplay.

Mark:

In fact, there's no more books to talk about.

Sarah:

So There's books that weren't turned into episodes, but there are no more episodes based on books.

Mark:

Exactly. We're

Sarah:

off the rails now.

Mark:

Directed by Jeremy Silberton Silberston, and once again written by Anthony Horowitz.

Sarah:

Again, it has those weird watercolor credits at the beginning with the spooky store window. In what will become a Midsomer tradition, we have an episode that starts with a milkman driving his little milk float around.

Mark:

Now, this is the same milk company as the last episode, but it is not the same milkman who is credited as the milkman, but actually is called Darren.

Sarah:

Darren. He does have a name.

Mark:

Anthony Howes plays him. He speaks a line. He's he is a line.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because Leonard calls him Darren. I kinda wanna drive one

Mark:

of those little milk slopes. They look so fun.

Sarah:

They do look fun. Semi skimmed.

Mark:

For our American listeners, semi skimmed is what we call skimmed. It's skim milk.

Sarah:

Oh, I thought that would be 2%. No. Semi skimmed isn't 2%?

Mark:

Semi skimmed is skimmed in The United States.

Sarah:

I didn't know that.

Mark:

And it doesn't come in bags. It comes in bottles. That's for our Canadian listeners.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because we don't do that bag thing here in The United States like you Canadians do.

Mark:

Nope. So we're introduced to Leonard Pike. I, for one, love Leonard Pike.

Sarah:

He's wonderfully snooty and is one of those poor men who must see to his nostril hairs every single day.

Mark:

They're huge.

Sarah:

He does a good job.

Mark:

He does.

Sarah:

But his nostrils are open for the world. Yes. And it's and it even made worse because he's so snooty. He keeps his nose in the air quite

Mark:

a bit. He does indeed.

Sarah:

So he runs the the hotel?

Mark:

The hotel that, if I can interject is actually Dorney Court. It stands in. This house has been given no less than three different names in the course of episodes. It became the Fox and Goose Hotel in an early episode, Strangler's Woods, and appears in two later episodes. This is once again from the Midsommar's on location book.

Sarah:

So do we know what town, what village we're in?

Mark:

The out village is not named. Because they say I moved to the village, but it's Costin all the way.

Sarah:

Okay. So it's not a specific little village. So we've got this hotel. The milkman is delivering milk. Leonard Pike meets him at the door.

Sarah:

Yep. And then the milkman drives on, and we get a creepy old guy coming out of the woods.

Mark:

A creepy old guy in the woods with a tie.

Sarah:

Yeah. We don't know who he is yet.

Mark:

Right? Nope. We get a lady doing tai chi with a sword.

Sarah:

Yeah. So that that's Liz Francis, and she's played by Trudy Styler who is Sting's wife.

Mark:

What? Why what? Yeah.

Sarah:

She is Sting's wife

Mark:

since Like, Tantric

Sarah:

Since 1992. Oh. They've been married. They have four kids together.

Mark:

My.

Sarah:

So here's a little interesting tidbit. A little interesting tidbit. Beyond just that she's Sting's wife. So when they met in '92, she was in a play and dating Peter O'Toole.

Mark:

Okay. Peter O'Toole is easily forty years older than her.

Sarah:

He would have been in his sixties. Yeah. And she would have been in her thirties.

Mark:

So thirty years older.

Sarah:

Peter O'Toole was quite the man though.

Mark:

Quite the man.

Sarah:

Right. Even in his sixties, he's the man. And in walks Sting. Oh, choices, choices. I think she went with the right one.

Mark:

Well, you know, for longevity. Longevity and tantrism.

Sarah:

Yeah. If you don't know about that and sting, you can Google it.

Mark:

Yeah. Just well, anyway.

Sarah:

So so Trudy's got some exciting life going

Mark:

on. I I guess so.

Sarah:

The tai chi with the sword is just a small part.

Mark:

Now I and I mentioned this to you. Before I watched this episode again, I knew about Leonard. But for some reason, I thought she was the killer

Sarah:

or she

Mark:

had caused this or something.

Sarah:

It's funny when you go back to watch an episode you haven't watched in a while, And they always start with kind of the cast of characters. You kind of see them in situ in some way. You're introduced to them, and your memory plays tricks on you.

Mark:

I thought for sure she had something to do with it.

Sarah:

Like, I thought the actor who played Leonard Pike, whose name is Peter Iyer, I could have swore he was the same actor who was in a later episode who's a nudist.

Mark:

Yeah, those are completely different guys.

Sarah:

Yeah, but I mean they're both tall,

Mark:

but And they have nostrils.

Sarah:

Yeah, everybody does. So then we go to the Merrill household.

Mark:

Oh, before that, though, Bill Mitchell drives by.

Sarah:

Oh, that's right.

Mark:

Yo, Ollie.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. Bill Mitchell in his convertible almost runs the milk float off the road.

Mark:

He does.

Sarah:

Yeah. We'll talk about Bill.

Mark:

We move on to the Merrill household, and we are introduced to a gem. Anna. Anna Santa Rosa.

Sarah:

Played by Debbie Chazen, I think is how you say her last name.

Mark:

Who is not Brazilian. No. Not Portuguese. She's British. She's British.

Sarah:

Yes. But she has this awesome over the top Brazilian accent and pretends not to understand English. No eggs, Anna. You want eggs?

Mark:

She just opens the door with

Sarah:

Jays?

Mark:

Jays.

Sarah:

Jays.

Mark:

The milky cum.

Sarah:

You know, but it doesn't surprise me that Debbie Chazen can do an accent that's pretty convincing. She I I don't think I'd ever seen her in anything before this. But after this, she's in a Sherlock. You might not recognize her in the Sherlock because she's very thin in the Sherlock. Oh.

Sarah:

The scene where he's in his mind palace and he's in like a courtroom and he's interviewing all of the women who

Mark:

have dated him. She's in that.

Sarah:

She's there. She was also in Torchwood for a while. But the reason why I'm not surprised she can do accents is she speaks five languages.

Mark:

Does she actually speak Portuguese?

Sarah:

No. But she does speak Spanish. Okay.

Mark:

Well, maybe we'll get it confused like Troy does.

Sarah:

Troy does. Yeah. But she's she speaks French, English, of course, the Russian, German, and Spanish.

Mark:

She's Fluently. Fluent in several languages. That's impressive

Sarah:

for anybody.

Mark:

An absolute fun lady.

Sarah:

Yeah. She is fun. And she's in another Midsomer. She's in Midsomer Life, which is a 2,008 episode without a Brazilian accent.

Mark:

No. She draws the pictures.

Sarah:

Yeah. So we've got the breakfast scene. We've got Kate, who's the mother, and John, her

Mark:

Don't you mean Lady Jane?

Sarah:

Yeah. Lady Jane from Lovejoy. Yeah. There's another show if you haven't watched it. You gotta go watch Lovejoy.

Sarah:

It's not really a murder mystery, but it's awesome.

Mark:

With really bad Italian accents. Ian McKellen? Ian McKellen.

Sarah:

Right. So we've got this, kind of hectic morning situation where Anna's trying to force eggs on people. Kate notices that her husband John doesn't have on his watch.

Mark:

I've lost it.

Sarah:

The Rolex. No. No. He took it in

Mark:

for repairs. I took it in for repairs.

Sarah:

And then there's David, their son.

Mark:

The rudest child on the planet.

Sarah:

Yeah. My notes just say super rude. He's a little asshole. He won't even say goodbye off on his bike into the woods. But then we we find out later why he's in such a hurry.

Mark:

So the kids in the woods make fun of him.

Sarah:

Yeah. And

Mark:

then the kid in the who obviously is like a bully character then goes, where are you going? Come back. Like

Sarah:

because that's what bullies do.

Mark:

Yeah. I don't

Sarah:

know. Come back so

Mark:

I can hit you. It was it was Yeah. But they go off into the woods, and what do they find? They find a naked dead lady with a tie around her neck.

Sarah:

And she's not English. You can tell by looking at her.

Mark:

She's bare naked. Naked. Not really. No. Because you could clearly see her shirt.

Sarah:

Well, she's got, like, a flesh tone leotard on.

Mark:

Yeah. Like, a flesh tone leotard.

Sarah:

Well, they couldn't exactly have her do the same naked body acting as they do in later episodes of male No. Small part actors.

Mark:

But You hit on something there, though. Because Troy, in a later in the scene coming up in a few minutes, says she's not British. She's naked.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well, didn't you know British people never get naked?

Mark:

And she's not talking. No. So how exactly does Troy know she's British?

Sarah:

He can just he not British. He can just tell by looking at her. She looks foreign in the way foreign people are naked.

Mark:

I guess. Carla Costanza.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

So we get the old credits. Lovely cold opening ends with a naked dead lady in the forest. Foreigner.

Sarah:

And then we see that Joyce is going away. It's such a kerfuffle. It's like she has a baby at home. I remember when the kids were super small, anywhere I went, I made sure whoever was watching out for them, like, okay, this is here and this is there. And if this happens, then do this and call me and my number and la la la la la.

Mark:

These are two grown adults.

Sarah:

She's just leaving Tom and Collie behind and they can't get her out of the house soon enough.

Mark:

With lots of food.

Sarah:

And is her hair flat, or is it flat?

Mark:

It's okay. As mentioned in the last podcast, Cully's hair is awesome, and Choice's hair is awful.

Sarah:

But it's awful in a new way. In the episode before, she had this weird, like, bubble on And now it's like they've just said, no, that was bad. We're just not gonna do anything to her hair now. We're just gonna flatten into her head so she looks sad.

Mark:

And so and and Cully, season two Cully, pixie cut, no sleeves.

Sarah:

Mock turtleneck, no sleeves.

Mark:

Mock turtleneck,

Sarah:

no because your neck gets cold, but your arms don't. So she's leaving and, you know, they're gonna have a little father daughter time except, of course, the phone rings. And, you know

Mark:

He's already absent minded. That old trope. Like, Joyce, is she gone yet? What? Whatever.

Sarah:

Tom's gone. Yep. He's got a case.

Mark:

Yes. Some kids on the way to Costin Comprehensive, Troy's old school, and Brian Clapper's old school. So my question is did some of these students have Brian Clapper?

Sarah:

Are you sure it's the same school? Because these kids have uniforms on, and the kids in Brian Clapper's school didn't.

Mark:

They say it.

Sarah:

They must have gone uniform since

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

Since the Brian Clapper incident.

Mark:

So there's a woman starkers in the forest strangled with a necktie, but that is not the most fantastic thing in the forest. The most fantastic thing with five exclamation marks in my notes, Toby. It's Toby Jones. As Dan Peterson.

Sarah:

Who so Toby Jones, if you're not familiar with him, you probably are familiar with him. You probably watched this episode and went, wait a minute. Haven't I seen him in something else?

Mark:

You've seen him in everything else.

Sarah:

In everything else. And if you haven't watched the Detectorists, oh my gosh, you are missing out. You have to go watch that show. Pause this. Go watch that show.

Mark:

The Detectorists may be the best half hour comedy show of the last twenty years.

Sarah:

It's so subtle and beautiful and funny

Mark:

And hilarious.

Sarah:

And Toby's great in

Mark:

it. Toby is fantastic.

Sarah:

This is not his best acting, but it is his worst hair.

Mark:

It is.

Sarah:

Because George is away. Where where did George go?

Mark:

He's in Corfu.

Sarah:

That's in Greece?

Mark:

It's in Greece.

Sarah:

Yeah. So George is finally getting a vacation, you know, because that last crime scene was too much for him.

Mark:

So still, we have no idea how they've discovered that this young lady is foreign.

Sarah:

Yeah. They're all saying she's foreign.

Mark:

But they find some clothes.

Sarah:

Yeah. And they clearly have tags where the clothes were made in Sao Paulo. Italy? Brazil.

Mark:

Yet another time in this episode in which Troy does not understand that Italy is where people speak Italian Yeah. And that Portugal is where people speak Portuguese, and Brazil is where people speak Portuguese, and Spain is where people speak Spanish.

Sarah:

And other countries.

Mark:

It's all Hey.

Sarah:

He went to cost and comprehensive. What can you expect?

Mark:

Brian Clapper. Maybe he was a geography teacher too.

Sarah:

That would explain a lot of Troy's confusion about geography.

Mark:

And they find a man's watch.

Sarah:

Yeah. They find a nice Rolex and they It's beautiful. And they know right away that Rolex is expensive enough that they're gonna be able to track down the owner by a serial number. And that's true, by the way.

Mark:

And Tom remembers where he is. Where is he? Strangler's Woods. It's only it's not woods. Wood.

Mark:

It's wood. Yeah. There's a single wood.

Sarah:

That's not the real name of it. It's really Raven's Wood. Right? But it's known as as Strangler's Wood because years ago, what, nine years ago?

Mark:

Nine years ago.

Sarah:

Three women were murdered by strangulation in those woods.

Mark:

And it's an old case, and they go back to the station house and they look at some old papers. Yeah. Now I gotta tell you, the people who did the production documents for this episode went above and beyond. Yeah. They did.

Mark:

They did

Sarah:

a really good job.

Mark:

Not only these newspapers, but when we get into the old guys' secret stranglers wood room, that the the stuff on the walls is just incredible.

Sarah:

Yeah. And and we've watched a couple documentaries about people who create that kind of documentation that create paper props for movies and TV shows. And the amount of work that goes into something that really is meant to not stand out is incredible.

Mark:

Yep. Just for instance, the Cost and Echo, the paper they show first, it's your favorite local newspaper, number one for news and events. Things that do not like only strange individuals like me look at this. It's eighteen p, the horror horror in local beauty spot. There's a body in a woods headline.

Mark:

It's by Barry Dawson.

Sarah:

You really did look at it close.

Mark:

And there's a picture of a tree.

Sarah:

Now I would have really been impressed if the reporter's name was the same name as the girl, in the, cult episode.

Mark:

I'm betting that somebody involved with the production of these papers is named Barry Dawson. Probably.

Sarah:

That would be a good little thing to put in there, wouldn't it?

Mark:

And then they show The Sun, which is a known entity in England. Yeah. Right? England has national newspapers the way that USA Today is a national newspaper here in The US, but they're very tabloidy.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

News of the world and The Sun especially. So The Sun is huge headlines. Monday, June 14, horror as young woman found raped and strangled in Stranglers Woods. But you can also win £60,000 in bingo.

Sarah:

Hey.

Mark:

Exactly.

Sarah:

And this is where we get one of our first big inconsistencies with this episode, isn't it? They've got a a photo of

Mark:

No. No. We don't we haven't got to the the this is all old papers.

Sarah:

Oh, okay. Yeah. Those are the papers about the original three

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Killings in the woods.

Mark:

Barnaby asked Troy to get on the phone to the Rolex people and to talk to whoever is investigated that case originally.

Sarah:

And we find out that's George Meakim. And as soon as we see him, we know he was the creepy guy in the woods when the milk float went by. So he's bowling? Yes. Lawn bowling?

Sarah:

Yes. At the lawn bowling club?

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Why do you have to wear white?

Mark:

Because it's a lawn bowling thing. The Why? In one of those I'm Canadian, so I'm close to being British things that Canadians do. There was lawn bowling in the town I grew up with, all the towns that I grew up in, and they all wore white. Why?

Mark:

I don't know. So that they could get stains on the grass.

Sarah:

That's what I've always thought too. And I don't understand why cricket players always wear white either.

Mark:

I also have a question about this lawn bowling shot. There is a dolly shot here, and it's a rapid dolly shot, so they probably laid down rails.

Sarah:

Okay. Wait a minute. You're talking all movie maker thing here. Speak English.

Mark:

So when they filmed the ball rolling on the ground Yeah. They had the camera low to the ground on a series of rails being pushed along as the ball went down the the, the pitch.

Sarah:

Is it not possible that a cameraman just had his camera really low, maybe on a stick or something and just moved along smoothly.

Mark:

It wouldn't have been as smooth as it is. Well, they

Sarah:

went through a lot of effort for that shot.

Mark:

They did. I don't understand why.

Sarah:

Somebody got a new set of rails or something. I guess It's a beautiful shot and it introduces, wow, the uppity, stuffity retiredness of that whole bowling club.

Mark:

Exactly. And especially George Meakim, who is angry.

Sarah:

Yes. He is. You'll never find who killed them. I couldn't find him. You won't find him ever, ever, ever.

Sarah:

I suppose you need my help. No, we don't. We'll consult you if we need you.

Mark:

Yes. But where does he live? Loose End House.

Sarah:

Yeah. That's what they named it. Yeah. They moved he and his wife moved there just so they could be closer to the crime scenes because he's so obsessed.

Mark:

So while Barnaby's talking to George, Troy is doing some actual police work. Yeah. He gets a bunch of information about the watch and and is off on some bad driving adventures.

Sarah:

Yeah. And and when Tom gets in the car, he can brief him on all kinds of boring stuff that we didn't have to watch him figure out. Right?

Mark:

No. Super super good explanation and super good dialogue there.

Sarah:

Including the fact that they should keep this coroner, this police surgeon, because Toby is a magician.

Mark:

He's a magician.

Sarah:

Not only does he have the mullet The mullet. And the white noogie suit. The noogie. Noogie mullet. That's gonna be the name of the episode.

Sarah:

Toby's noogie mullet. That was the name of my fourth grade band. And up next, Toby's noogie mullet. Hey. No.

Sarah:

But Toby has been able to figure out that not only did Carla die about a week ago, but it was between nine and midnight.

Mark:

It's amazing.

Sarah:

How does he know that?

Mark:

He was a miracle worker.

Sarah:

How does he know that? The only way you can know a window of time like that is body temperature. And by the time she's been there a week, that's moot. It's not like she had a watch. Before she died, she wrote

Mark:

on her skin. I'm a foreigner and I was killed at this time.

Sarah:

Between nine and midnight. Yes. But we have to trust Toby's information. We'll go with it. Right?

Mark:

I trust in Toby.

Sarah:

And we know now that Troy has traced the watch.

Mark:

Yes. Nikum goes home. We meet his wife. Emily. And we learn how crazy he is.

Mark:

He's nutsy bobbos.

Sarah:

Because she knows he was in the woods. Yep. And sometimes he even stays the night there.

Mark:

And then he goes upstairs into his strangler's wood room. His murder room. And he dramatically opens the door. It opens the drawer.

Sarah:

It's full of ties.

Mark:

It's full of ties. And he takes a tie out.

Sarah:

He

Mark:

wraps it around his neck, and he makes the weirdest That

Sarah:

That actor must have regretted that face. And there should just be like a big, like, school of fish swimming across the screen. Red herrings. Red herrings.

Mark:

Yep. Herrings. Then

Sarah:

Troy and and Barnaby go to the watch repair shop. They traced it down. The watch repair guy is fantastic.

Mark:

He's He's so Renwick.

Sarah:

Yeah. He's such a great name. And he says it's a a Rolex Oyster Perpetual GMT Master.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Which in The US sells between $12,000 and $15,000.

Mark:

Jabanga.

Sarah:

That is not a cheap watch.

Mark:

It's not my watch.

Sarah:

To have just, you know, oh, I lost it.

Mark:

Well, she is Lady Jane. And she does write in agony and call them. Yeah. I must bring

Sarah:

in the big He says that Troy is tetchy. Tetchy.

Mark:

We find out that Kate Merrill is an agony aunt, with the blonde lady.

Sarah:

Yeah. Kate and Liz write this agony aunt column together, though you can't imagine that it it pays hardly anything. And if you split it between two people, it really doesn't pay. Yeah. I don't how does Liz support herself?

Sarah:

She doesn't have a job.

Mark:

She has no job. She's got sting.

Sarah:

That's true. She's got a beautiful house.

Mark:

She does.

Sarah:

A sword to do Tai Chi with.

Mark:

Sword to do Tai Chi.

Sarah:

And a laptop. Crazy.

Mark:

A laptop and a lot of dandelion tea.

Sarah:

She does have a lot of dandelion tea. So she must be, like, independently wealthy or her divorce settlement was really, really good.

Mark:

I guess so.

Sarah:

I guess her ex husband was super rich.

Mark:

The reason why Barnaby and Troy show up there is because they found out the watch was bought by Kate Merrill.

Sarah:

Yeah. For her husband.

Mark:

So they show up, and Anna, again, is in fine form.

Sarah:

Two men, they come.

Mark:

Two men, they come.

Sarah:

She just walks away. Now she is supposed to be an au pair, not a maid. She's not the housekeeper. She's supposed to be watching David.

Mark:

And but then she just slams the door and leaves. She's just

Sarah:

Well, she's not doing a very good job with David either. No. Because he's a jerk face.

Mark:

In fact, I don't think I'm pretty sure they don't appear in a scene together.

Sarah:

Other than that breakfast scene?

Mark:

Yeah. That's it.

Sarah:

That's it.

Mark:

Elizabeth is there. That's the blonde lady. And Troy obviously reads and has sent in information to the Agony ad call.

Sarah:

I so wanna know what he wrote in about. And so when you write into, like, Dear Abby or something, you don't put your full name. You go, like, confused in Chicago

Mark:

or Troy incosted. I'm in love

Sarah:

with the governor's daughter. My boss's daughter wears a mock turtle with no sleeves. Hot. Yeah. There's this whole kind of dancing around, you know, like, she says, I recognize your name or whatever.

Sarah:

Yeah. So so now Kate knows that he lied that John lied about where his watch was.

Mark:

You're right. And then Elizabeth wants to leave. Again, in the rewatching it the first time, I'm like, oh, she's in on it because she wants to get out of there as soon as possible. But, no, she's just being polite.

Sarah:

You know, being a nice person who doesn't wanna be so nosy into their neighbor's affairs.

Mark:

John's in London. He works for Monarch Tobacco.

Sarah:

No. That's not in London.

Mark:

No. No. But He's in Costin. It's in Costin, but he's in London.

Sarah:

He's in London.

Mark:

Yes. Meeting with the marketing people.

Sarah:

You're right. We don't see that we don't see that meeting yet, though.

Mark:

Nope. And they moved there just before the first murders nine years ago.

Sarah:

Yeah. So all of our players were in that area Yes. When the murders happened.

Mark:

Exactly.

Sarah:

And then we get this weird little flash to London. They do one shot of the intersection of Harley Street in London. It's the street in London, best known for medical practices. Absolutely. So they've got this nice little B roll shot that identifies the street and then we're in the interior.

Sarah:

We could be anywhere.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

And it's clearly a doctor's consulting room and somebody's pouring gasoline everywhere and lighting it on fire.

Mark:

They have that old phrenology skull.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because you know

Mark:

Doctors still do phrenology.

Sarah:

It still amazes me that they even pretend that any doctor's surgery could look like an oak paneled office, where the only sign that there's a doctor at all is that over in the corner, there's this nice tufted leather examination table that's never been touched.

Mark:

And the phrenology head.

Sarah:

Well, could be in anybody's office.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

They're just interesting. So I guess the idea is if you go to Harley Street, the doctor doesn't touch you.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

You just sit across the table and just tell him stuff.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

And just writes prescription.

Mark:

There's a whole bunch of problems with this doctor, but we'll get to those.

Sarah:

Yeah. But he's gone now because the whole place has been burned down.

Mark:

Lights on fire.

Sarah:

It'd be a national story if there was a fire on Harley Street.

Mark:

I would think so.

Sarah:

Yeah, it'd be a big story.

Mark:

Off we go to the Fox and the Goose. Now this is what you were mentioning earlier. The cost in echo is the greatest paper ever invented. Not only have they got it on the front page already, but they have Carlotta's picture.

Sarah:

Carla.

Mark:

Carla. But they don't know who she is. How did they get that picture?

Sarah:

And it's not a photo of her body.

Mark:

Did Toby clean her up and and scrunch her

Sarah:

put the lipstick on her and open her eyes and pose her?

Mark:

Where did that picture come from?

Sarah:

Toby's amazing, but he's not that amazing. Yeah. How do you put a photo on the paper if you don't know who she is?

Mark:

And all we had was a naked body.

Sarah:

Yep. A foreign naked body. They don't know who she is. And, Gloria Bradley, who's like the maid of all jobs at the hotel, she seems to do everything.

Mark:

She does everything.

Sarah:

Is organizing the papers and everything and clearly is supposed to take a paper up to Mrs. Pike but hasn't.

Mark:

No. We returned to the Barnaby household where, Tom is so engrossed with what he's doing. He's not eaten his breakfast and it's cold.

Sarah:

Collie has a little tantrum.

Mark:

She does.

Sarah:

It's cold now. She just dumps it out. So they decide they're gonna meet for dinner and you know he's not gonna make it. No. You know, from from the time they mentioned it, he's not gonna make it.

Mark:

So Troy has an idea of who the body is. Mhmm. And they go back out to the hotel.

Sarah:

They must have just asked the reporter because they obviously know.

Mark:

I would assume so.

Sarah:

Yeah, they head back out to the hotel and Gloria's there, and says that Well, the reason why they think they know who she is is because Gloria has called the police and said, I recognize her.

Mark:

From the picture in the paper that we don't know the source of.

Sarah:

Right. Because that's Carla Costanza and she was staying in this hotel. Not George Costanza. It's Carla. It's Constanza.

Sarah:

Constanza. Not Costanza.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

And that she heard her having a fight in her room. She was booked in for a week, but she stayed for one night and hasn't been back.

Mark:

It was a right on Barney.

Sarah:

And, they go into Carla's room and they find that in her diary, it says on the day that she died 1400, meaning 02:00, right? Yes. Draycott. Draycott. So now they've got a hot lead.

Mark:

They got a name.

Sarah:

Then Mr. Pike comes home, Leonard comes back to the hotel and honks, honk honk

Mark:

to let his mother know he's back. He's nice. He's a good boy. No. No.

Mark:

No, he's not.

Sarah:

He's not. And it's so Bates motel now. As soon as you know his mother's upstairs.

Mark:

Yeah, it gets very

Sarah:

He's so Norman Bates all of a sudden. More than we know at this point.

Mark:

So he comes in and Barnaby and Troy explain what's happened, that there's a body in the woods strangled. And he does some good acting here.

Sarah:

He does. No. It's not possible.

Mark:

Because he knows it's not possible. Because he didn't put her there. Yes. Because he's that strangler.

Sarah:

Unlike the other three. Don't take the papers

Mark:

up to mother.

Sarah:

Yeah. He says his mother's dying. Well, she's been dying for five or six years. We're used to it now.

Mark:

We're getting used to it. But then he's very proud of something. His up to date phone system.

Sarah:

That's right. It's very

Mark:

technologically savvy. And we find Carla made two calls.

Sarah:

Yeah. She called, the Merrill household and she called Monarch.

Mark:

The phone it rings. Leonard goes up to see his mom who's not dead.

Sarah:

No. She's not dead. Nope. She's in a wheelchair, and she's got a couple IV bags.

Mark:

Now wait a minute. Okay.

Sarah:

Which

Mark:

She has the cancer, and she's in IV bags. She has IV bags, and she's in a wheelchair. So I'm gonna go out on a limb and say she's an invalid. Yeah. Okay.

Mark:

I'll bring that up again later.

Sarah:

At least she's very, very weak. Frail. Her her four poster bed is surrounded by plastic sheeting. Yeah. I know it's weird.

Mark:

Yeah. Is she the boy in the bubble, but the old lady in

Sarah:

the Only when she sleeps?

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

And one of the IV bags looks like a blood transfusion. Whose blood is in there? You do not give blood transfusions at home.

Mark:

Or over a period of time.

Sarah:

The the district nurse is not gonna stop by and hang a bag of blood and leave. Nope. That just doesn't happen.

Mark:

No. Because she's in another episode, remember?

Sarah:

Yeah. Later. Yeah. But He lies to her and says Yeah. They were just there to to warn him about some counterfeit money that's going around.

Mark:

The Lord wants me to suffer. He's punishing me.

Sarah:

Oh, she's so bitter.

Mark:

Leonard, no paper for you. Yeah.

Sarah:

Read your bible.

Mark:

Then we're off to monarch tobacco, or as I like to call

Sarah:

it, a manor house. Now wait a minute. Before we go there, one question. Yep. He gives her the Bible to read instead of the newspaper.

Sarah:

Yes. And says, read Ezekiel. You like Ezekiel. Do you know anything about Ezekiel?

Mark:

Oh, it's got all the rules and it's got all the retribution and the revenge stuff in it.

Sarah:

Ah, so that's why he knows she likes it. Yeah. Because we're not giving any spoilers away here. We all know this. Right?

Sarah:

He is one of the killers. Yeah. So he he is responsible for the three earlier stranglings, and she knows that. Yes. Which is why she's clinging on to life because she's told him

Mark:

If you kill again, that's it.

Sarah:

Yeah. No more murders while I'm alive. Yes. Like, once I'm dead, go for it.

Mark:

So I have a problem with his character then. So why does he just kill her? Really. He had no problem killing these other girls. Why does he just kill mom and then kill other girls?

Sarah:

Can't kill mother. Not mother. He doesn't like her. But that makes it makes more sense then why he gives her the bible and says read Ezekiel because she's all into rules and punishment and retribution and she's alive just despite him. So Absolutely.

Sarah:

Yeah. So then we go to Monarch Tobacco. Sorry.

Mark:

Which is in a manor house.

Sarah:

Yeah. Of course it is.

Mark:

And we meet Bill Mitchell.

Sarah:

Yes. Who is played by Jeremy Clyde. That name's familiar. No. It wasn't.

Sarah:

It wasn't familiar to you till I told you. Jeremy Clyde was in this awesome musical duo called Chad and Jeremy. Chad and Jeremy. Back in the sixties, they made a couple of really great songs that if you're of a certain age or if you have parents of a certain age like I do who exposed you to their music, you won't recognize these. We'll have to include them in the show notes.

Mark:

Yep. I'll include the music in fantastic. Show They are.

Sarah:

And as soon as I saw his face, the first time I saw him as an actor in an episode, I thought he has a face sort of like Prince Charles. He has kind of those, I don't know, Stuart features sort of.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

So not only was he in this I'm not gonna say they were a rock and roll band. They were No.

Mark:

They were more like a folky duo.

Sarah:

Like a Simon and Garfunkel kind of duo.

Mark:

Without the crazy Simon and Garfunkel stuff.

Sarah:

Right. Or the afro. There's no afros involved. No white man afros.

Mark:

Maybe Toby should have been in the

Sarah:

He's got the mullet, not the afro. He's more he's more, you know, makeup metal than

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Yeah. Jeremy Clyde has royal connections.

Mark:

Royal connections?

Sarah:

So his great, great grandfather was the first Duke of Windsor. Wow. The current Duke of Windsor is his cousin. Oh. But because his grandfather was also Duke of Windsor.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

When Queen Elizabeth had her coronation, Jeremy Clyde was in it. Wow. He carried his grandfather's crown. Wow. In the coronation.

Mark:

That's crazy. And

Sarah:

which was a gigantic TV event. Huge. There's gotta be footage of him as a little boy walking

Mark:

behind his a huge British TV event. Like, that was, like, the first major British television event that everybody tuned in for.

Sarah:

Was that before or after the moon landing?

Mark:

Oh, it was way before.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's in the fifties. It was like the reason to buy a TV.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Right? Yes. And the whole neighborhood would gather around

Mark:

It was like the moon landing.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

Where everybody watched it. There's a Doctor Who about it.

Sarah:

Oh, that's right. Yeah. I remember that now. Yep. Yeah.

Sarah:

So he's got some cred. He does. He's a good actor though. And so he's in charge of of Monarch tobacco, which means he's John Merrill's boss. Yes.

Sarah:

And he's also Carla Constanza's boss.

Mark:

You know who else is in charge of Monarch? Troy chatting up that receptionist. Yeah. Ask him what she's doing.

Sarah:

Hey, baby. Hey. How are doing?

Mark:

I'm Troy from Costin.

Sarah:

Hey. Remember me? Where are you from? Uruguay?

Mark:

So they have a very important brand of cigarettes.

Sarah:

With the worst logo in the universe. Oh my god.

Mark:

Just, like, her eye makes it look like it was her eye was removed, and then they painted

Sarah:

her eye. It's like really big and her eyelashes look like, I don't know, tarantula legs coming out of her face. It's it's not even pop art. It's like, it's supposed to be realistic and it's so not. It's so So we find out that Carla was the spokesmodel for this brand.

Sarah:

The brand was called Carla before they found her, but because it's a brand to be marketed in South America, they wanted a South American spokesmodel, and they found Carla whose name just happened to be the same name.

Mark:

And she became a huge star because of this.

Sarah:

Right. In South America, specifically in Brazil, she's huge. Yes. Very well known.

Mark:

And they, he's freaking out. This is bad for us. They ask about Dracott, and he says, I've never heard of him.

Sarah:

Right. Which gives him away because it's Doctor. A. Cott, we find out. Right?

Sarah:

So the fact that he knows that it's a man and not a place or something like that.

Mark:

So now, okay, I need to go over this. They go to the hotel and talk to the maid and find out that it's Carla. Right. They go directly from there to Monarch.

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

K. I don't understand is the next scene, John and Kate know that it was Carla because the radio said so.

Sarah:

Yeah. See, if John knew, that would be okay because you can figure Bill is probably gonna call him and go, dude, we're in trouble. Our spokesmodel's dead.

Mark:

But he says he heard it on the radio. Yeah. And in the previous scene at Monarch, Barnaby says we're gonna have to release this, the name to the media like it's gonna happen in the future.

Sarah:

Maybe try call the radio station from the car.

Mark:

Best media in the world. Not only can they get a picture before

Sarah:

They know who

Mark:

she who knows who she is, they can release her name before they even have confirmation of

Sarah:

it. John says that, okay. So my watch isn't at the repair shop. I lost it. It wasn't a

Mark:

lie. It's very angry.

Sarah:

But then Tom and Troy show up and start doing some sleuthing. They do. There's clay on the tires of his Land Rover. Just like those weird blotches of clay in the woods. Those are weird.

Sarah:

Like what prop person had to put blotches of clay on the ground?

Mark:

I don't know. And Barnaby pokes at it with his pen.

Sarah:

Yeah. I poke at it with this deak. Kate just throws Anna under the bus.

Mark:

Anna goes under the bus. Now, I have a question. I missed this earlier, but I wanna ask about it. Troy speaks to Anna in Spanish because he's taking Spanish night class.

Sarah:

When they leave the house this time, yeah, that's when he talks to her.

Mark:

Yet she's Portuguese. Now I know they're similar, but one of the things that when we went to Brazil, the people said was don't speak Spanish.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

They'll be insulted. Right. Like, if you don't know the Portuguese word, don't say the Spanish word.

Sarah:

But Anna's nice.

Mark:

Whisperer.

Sarah:

So we went to Sao Paulo. Was it, like, ten years ago now or something like that? We were in Sao Paulo.

Mark:

And More than ten years ago.

Sarah:

We were just kinda relaxing in the hotel room between these gigs that we were doing, and we're watching Portuguese TV, Brazilian TV. And this is when the show Ghost Whisperer.

Mark:

Ghost Whisperer.

Sarah:

It was really popular. We kept seeing ads for it, and they called it Ghost Whisperer. The only Portuguese I remember is Obregado.

Mark:

Yes. And and there was some strange television commercials in Brazil. Remember those commercials? Yes.

Sarah:

Well, we see the Carla commercial. It's strange. It is indeed. How many sweaty banditos can you have in one commercial?

Mark:

They don't realize that it's very different than British advertising.

Sarah:

She lights a match on a guy's face. That would hurt.

Mark:

That would hurt so bad.

Sarah:

Never mind that it wouldn't work because that's not how matches are made anymore. You have to strike it against that surface for the chemical reaction to happen. Anyway

Mark:

Back at the Merrill house, we find out that John takes baths. Always a bad sign in this show.

Sarah:

He's gonna go take a bath.

Mark:

Well, we'll see another bath later on

Sarah:

too. And Kate goes and visits David. She's tucking him in. And guys, you may not have noticed this when you watch the episode. Watch this little bit again.

Sarah:

She goes in. David's in his bed. She's gonna talk to him specifically about the night in question because she's away. She was volunteering on the helpline

Mark:

with Mrs. Bundy. Mrs. Bundy.

Sarah:

And while Kate's away doing that, this is the night that the murder occurred between nine and midnight. Yes. So John and David weren't home alone. And that's his alibi, is that he was home with David and read to David. And then David says to Kate, actually, dad left for a little while, but I think Anna was back by then, so he wasn't alone anyway.

Mark:

But I could have dreamt it.

Sarah:

The thing I want you to look for, if you rewatch this scene with Kate tucking David in, is the weirdness of his bedroom door. She has to climb over a rafter to get into his room. And it's kind of like a parallelogram door. And we've watched enough British restoration shows to know that some of those old listed houses have second floors added on where there wasn't one before and you can't move the rafters because they're protected, and so you have to kind of build around them. But I've never ever seen somebody leave one diagonally across a doorway.

Sarah:

Move the door.

Mark:

Yeah. Exactly. And he has comic book pictures on his walls including spawn and things like that, but that door is just wow.

Sarah:

It would get on my nerves climbing over it every day.

Mark:

So he throws his dad under the bus. Totally. So Anna and the dad are under the bus now. Yep. Barnaby goes home, but he's forgotten something.

Sarah:

Kelly's at the restaurant waiting for him.

Mark:

And the next morning, she's pissed. She should be. She should be.

Sarah:

I thought there were cell phones by now. Why couldn't he call her? I think he didn't even remember to call her.

Mark:

But he has a plan. Yeah. He's got two tickets for the Pinter play tonight.

Sarah:

No, he doesn't.

Mark:

Well, says he does.

Sarah:

Meanwhile, Meekam is like, the killer is going to strike again. The first time it was on the thirteenth. And the second time it was eight days later than the thirteenth. And today is eight days later than the last time it was thirteenth. And it's a full moon.

Sarah:

Even though we see the moon in a few minutes and it's not full, it's like three quarters that somebody else is going to die because he's meek and he's showing his teeth all over the place.

Mark:

So strange. In there also, Barnaby goes to get the tickets for the caretaker, the pinter play.

Sarah:

He goes to the costume playhouse.

Mark:

Let me tell you about the costume playhouse.

Sarah:

Tell us about the costume playhouse.

Mark:

So somewhere in there, they go to the costume playhouse to get the tickets, which an old lady says is sold out. But

Sarah:

Speaking of old lady Okay. The ticket seller Yeah. Elizabeth Tyrell is her name. Yes. She was also in death of a hollow man.

Mark:

Was she?

Sarah:

She's old lady.

Mark:

Because she refers to death of an old of Hollow Man.

Sarah:

I know. Well, because Tom does. Yeah. Because she's like, oh, do you think there's gonna be another death? He's like, I

Mark:

don't know.

Sarah:

Anyway

Mark:

So remember in that they called it the Corn Exchange. No. Yes.

Sarah:

Oh, yes. In Death of a Hollow Man, the theater is called the Corn Exchange, and it's a completely different exterior.

Mark:

In Death's Shadow, it is the Costin Theater.

Sarah:

Right. Because they're two different theaters.

Mark:

And this is the Costin Theater too.

Sarah:

The Costin Playhouse. This is where Cully had the workshop with Simon Fletcher.

Mark:

So this is in Wallingford. Uh-uh. And the name of the building is the Corn Exchange. The Corn Exchange was built in 1856, and this theater and cinema was home to the Sinodan Sinodan Players. World famous detective writer, Dame Agatha Christie, was a former president.

Mark:

The creator of Hercule Poirot and miss Marple lived in the outskirts of town for some forty years and was buried in a nearby churchyard. Situated on the east side of the marketplace, the Corn Exchange is well known in Midsomer and Murder fans as the Costin Playhouse.

Sarah:

That's great. So the two theaters so far in Midsomer are the Corn Exchange and the Costin Playhouse, but the Costin Playhouse is actually in reality, Corn Exchange.

Mark:

Yes. It appeared in four episodes, Death of a Hollow Man, Strangler's Woods, Death's Shadow, and death of a stranger, which we haven't got to yet. Several instances, members of the sin players are used as extras.

Sarah:

That's great.

Mark:

Who could forget the scene in the death of a hollow man when during the performance of Peter Schafer's Amadeus, the lead character commits involuntary suicide on stage.

Sarah:

Involuntary suicide is not something you hear every day. No. That's almost as good as Toby's nookie mullet.

Mark:

I accidentally killed myself. Oops. So he gets tickets by using his badge.

Sarah:

Yeah. He does a good thing to get the tickets.

Mark:

And they see Anna who's bought a whole bunch of stuff.

Sarah:

Yeah. Meanwhile, Kate's finding she's digging around in John's stuff because now she's looking for evidence because she's convinced that he's guilty of something. And she finds a shirt with so much lipstick on it. Like smeared. Like a giant amount on like the shoulder.

Sarah:

That's not lipstick on your collar.

Mark:

In that narrative, he strangled her and then rubbed his shoulder all over her face.

Sarah:

Well, maybe she struggled and like you know, against his shoulder

Mark:

while he was straining. I don't know. Worst killer ever. I'll leave my watch and this bloody It's not blood.

Sarah:

It's lipstick.

Mark:

Lipsticky shirt here.

Sarah:

Yeah. I'll just bury it in my wardrobe. Nobody will ever find it.

Mark:

Hey. You know what? It's Troy's birthday.

Sarah:

Happy birthday.

Mark:

Happy birthday, Troy. And what's Troy gonna do?

Sarah:

Skulk around a hotel for

Mark:

his birthday. And cause the death of another character.

Sarah:

That's true. He does. So while Tom's talking to Leonard about the old murders and seeing if he recognizes Carla and if he recognizes John and Mitchell. Troy is pretending to get a drink in the bar when he's really upstairs.

Mark:

Talking to old lady Dorothy Pike. Dorothy Pike. Casual sex. Casual sex.

Sarah:

Oh, the way the way Leonard says it is so

Mark:

But who has been having casual sex?

Sarah:

John and Liz. John and Liz. John Merrill and Liz Francis. Wow.

Mark:

You don't The Joneses.

Sarah:

You don't take Sting's wife to a hotel.

Mark:

No. You don't. He's gonna come over and play his bass and be friends with you. You don't think he'd

Sarah:

get mad?

Mark:

And Troy tells the old lady that, no. No. It's not £20 notes. We're investigating death in the woods, and she freaks out. Vengeance is mine.

Sarah:

Vengeance is mine. And I don't blame her for that. No. She's lived all these years thinking her son is a killer.

Mark:

Well, Knowing her son is a killer.

Sarah:

Knowing her son is a killer and thinking she has stopped him, and now he's done it again. Again. He at least deserves to be grounded. It's not possible. Kathy wants sex.

Sarah:

The way he says it is so yeah.

Mark:

Lady Jane goes to see Bill.

Sarah:

Who is her uncle?

Mark:

Why were we not told this before?

Sarah:

We're not told this until now.

Mark:

Okay. So then there's this weird mirror thing.

Sarah:

At the golf club? Yeah. The weird mirror thing. Yeah. I think the director was just kind of No.

Mark:

I think they're

Sarah:

at Monarch. Doing some tricks. No. They're at a golf club.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Yeah. She's talking to to Bill about, oh, I think my husband's a killer. My husband who you got a job for in She your big

Mark:

just basically goes through all the clues.

Sarah:

Yeah. She lays it all out for him. Ain't that convenient?

Mark:

Yes. And then she phones Barnaby. And Barnaby has the Spider Man dilemma. Which is? Should I go meet with Kate Merrill and find out what she knows about the killer?

Mark:

Or should I go to the play with Cully?

Sarah:

When I've already let her down once. But Kate will only talk

Mark:

to him. Only is gonna talk to him.

Sarah:

There's a the scene when he's on the phone with Kate. They do this kind of close-up of the side of his head while he's intently on the phone.

Mark:

And we find out.

Sarah:

That his ear is pierced. His ear is pierced. Which it doesn't I guess it doesn't surprise me. I don't I doubt that John Meadows has worn an earring for a long time. But yeah.

Sarah:

Meanwhile, Meekum Is weird and goes out again. I'm going out.

Mark:

Me and my red herring tie are going out.

Sarah:

Well, Emily's watching a show about praying mantises, so she's busy for the evening, I guess.

Mark:

But it's nice to know that Leonard Pike recycles. A lot.

Sarah:

He's got a bar they've got a bar. So Yeah. Yeah. And that's when we see that it's not a full moon even though George Meakim is like, it's going to be a full moon. Somebody's going to die.

Mark:

No. No. Sorry. But somebody is gonna die.

Sarah:

Poor Anna. Anna just The

Mark:

truck, it comes.

Sarah:

She's just walking home. You know?

Mark:

Bill, he killed me.

Sarah:

One man. He come. He killed me.

Mark:

And he he hits her in the car, and they they do a pretty good effect there.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

You know? The the windshield of the car gets broken and everything, but that's not enough.

Sarah:

And an ugly leather coat rolls up on

Mark:

that hood. That's not enough.

Sarah:

No. That's not enough. He's gotta inject her.

Mark:

With neon Neon tobacco.

Sarah:

Neon nicotine in a in a syringe.

Mark:

That he just has hanging around.

Sarah:

Well, he does work at the tobacco company. They use it for experimentation.

Mark:

Is it not a controlled substance?

Sarah:

So liquid nicotine, number one, is not green.

Mark:

Oh, it's bright green.

Sarah:

No. It's not. It doesn't look like the ingredients of a glow stick.

Mark:

Looks sort To dance, I go.

Sarah:

It looks sort of like vanilla. Yeah. Number one. Number two, the most common use of liquid nicotine is in pest control. It's an insecticide.

Mark:

I wouldn't talk about Anna like that.

Sarah:

Well, he injects her with his glow stick in her throat. She's not going to a rave. Initially, thought he was going to back up and run over her again.

Mark:

I thought so too, but no. No. I'm going to give you this clue of how I killed you.

Sarah:

I'm going to inject you with my Day Glow injection. Yeah, because he's trying to frame John, who also works at Monarch.

Mark:

Speaking of John

Sarah:

And used to be a chemist.

Mark:

Yes. Kate tells Barnaby about the evidence.

Sarah:

That she found the shirt. And that he likes to strangle her.

Mark:

Okay. Let the kids out of the room for a second here. So the conceit here is that John likes to wrap a robe around her neck while they're having sexy time.

Sarah:

Non casual sex.

Mark:

Now we know John is not the killer at this point in time. Right. That is the worst fetish luck ever.

Sarah:

Yeah. Like, couldn't he be into high heels or something? He wanted Carlos' big shoes.

Mark:

It is just a ginormous coincidence that he likes to strangle people when he's in bed with them.

Sarah:

Never mind that she's got a neck like a goose. And wouldn't you notice marks on her neck?

Mark:

You would think and the same with Elizabeth. Yeah. Liz. Worst fetish luck ever.

Sarah:

Yeah. And it's gotta be bad luck because if uncle Bill knows he likes that, that's weird. That's really weird. Yeah.

Mark:

Like I hadn't thought of that. She's grown.

Sarah:

She confides in her uncle, but she wouldn't tell him that. No, no. So they go to the, they, Tom and Troy, go to the morgue to check up on Toby's progress with Anna. And Toby's hair is Is even worse. Fantastic.

Sarah:

It's freshly noogieed. And he tells him that she was injected with the nicotine and

Mark:

Now the actress who plays Anna, what's her name again?

Sarah:

Her name is Debbie Chazen.

Mark:

She's not a tiny woman. No. Not at this point. No. And she is on that gurney rock solid.

Mark:

Yeah. She is. No no breathing movement. No nothing. She is a fantastic dead dog.

Sarah:

Long shots with the the other actors acting in front of her. So it's not like a still shot.

Mark:

No. She can't just go on breathing there.

Sarah:

No. No. She does a good job.

Mark:

She does a great really, absolutely bloody, unbelievable job.

Sarah:

She's not my corpse of the

Mark:

episode, but she's very good. She's she's very good.

Sarah:

Absolute bloody unbelievable is what Mitchell says.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Then we get the awesome awesome marketing

Mark:

meeting. Is it a marketing meeting or is it an X Files briefing?

Sarah:

I wanna know. It's a dark, smoky room with a projector.

Mark:

With slides. Slides. Not PowerPoint.

Sarah:

Slides. Because, you know, they can turn this whole Carla thing to their advantage.

Mark:

Well, they are American.

Sarah:

Well, only the one lady is American.

Mark:

And she's American.

Sarah:

Yeah. She is, she's credited as ad woman.

Mark:

Ad woman? But

Sarah:

her name is Tara Hugo. And she says that this could be to their advantage.

Mark:

Did you find out where she was from?

Sarah:

She's British.

Mark:

She really? I know.

Sarah:

British actors are wonderful. They do a lot of great accents. But for some reason, whoever coaches the actors who pretend to be American in Midsomer thinks we all talk like this. Absolutely. I'm American.

Mark:

The only worse American acting is in the old father Brown in that weird castle episode.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah. Well, they're all like, yeehaw. I'm from Kentucky or whatever.

Mark:

Oh, it's just horrible.

Sarah:

But so Tara Hugo, who just has this, like, one line, she's kind of interesting.

Mark:

Oh, how so?

Sarah:

She doesn't do a lot of acting. What she's better known for is the fact that Philip Glass has written several compositions just for her. What? And she performs them with him.

Mark:

So is she involved with Philip Glass?

Sarah:

They're they're not married or anything like that. I don't know. She also performed Leonard Cohen.

Mark:

Oh, Lenny. Yeah. So so we have Sting, Philip Glass, and Leonard Cohen connections here. Yeah. That's amazing.

Sarah:

I was just like, well, she must be really special if Philip Glass writes compositions just for her. I guess so. But but she's from Texas in this episode. We can use this Carla thing to our advantage.

Mark:

We find out that John researched hyperactive kids, that Bill is Jane's uncle again, and

Sarah:

Kate and David had moved out. Yep. John's in the pokey talking to the police.

Mark:

Barnaby knows all about the affair. You're in deep trouble here, John.

Sarah:

And John acts like an utter asshole. He does. But you almost can't blame him once you know, especially if her uncle knows about, oh.

Mark:

I just wanna get you home and put a rope around your back.

Sarah:

He probably does now. Like, your damn uncle's framing me for murder. And you're letting him.

Mark:

So arrest me.

Sarah:

Yeah. So John and Liz used to be lovers. Yep. He admits that.

Mark:

And then they go talk to Liz about it.

Sarah:

Yeah. And she's just so casual. She's like, yeah. I screwed up. I wrote him a letter.

Mark:

The tea is going to revitalize your energy points. And

Sarah:

It's ginseng this time.

Mark:

And why would you need revitalized energy points?

Sarah:

For the rumpy pumpy. Is rumpy pumpy? Keds are all thick.

Mark:

So we have bonking. We have ass pirates Bandits. And bandits.

Sarah:

Rumpy Pumpy And cat zoolfix. Cat zoolfix.

Mark:

Yes. She wrote a letter.

Sarah:

He claims he never got it.

Mark:

He all he also did the neck thing with her.

Sarah:

Yeah. Which she's like, oh, yeah. He like to strangle me too. Mhmm.

Mark:

Worst fetish luck ever. And

Sarah:

meanwhile, they're asking everybody they know. Do you know Dracot? Do you know Dracot? Do you know Dracot? Do you know Dracot?

Sarah:

Knows Dracot. But then Barnaby has the epiphany later.

Mark:

So Yes. So we return to the hotel. Now the music here is really Michael Nyman. It's still the theme, but I noticed it's very Michael Nyman. If you don't know Michael Nyman, he does the music for Peter Greenway films, and he did the music for the piano, a film in the the eighties.

Mark:

And he is famous for staccato rhythms, like done done done done with subtle changes between those. Right? Like the psycho music. Yeah. So we're we definitely have a psycho vibe because

Sarah:

Leonard's gonna take a bath.

Mark:

Leonard's taking a bubble bath. Do you think he uses mister bubble?

Sarah:

I don't know. He uses some kind of bubbles.

Mark:

Some kind of bubbles. So now when you have a bath, and I know you don't like baths, but let's say you did like baths

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Or you have taken baths.

Sarah:

I I am familiar with bath taking.

Mark:

You fill the water in the bathtub. Yeah. And then you get in the bathtub.

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

And then you get down on your butt. In the water? Yes. Yeah. Because it's warm and sudsy.

Mark:

Right. Not not Leonard.

Sarah:

What's Leonard do?

Mark:

He stands around

Sarah:

singing. But how can his mom be silhouetted like Norman Bates if he sits down?

Mark:

Someone is coming with a knife.

Sarah:

We have knife cam.

Mark:

Knife cam. And

Sarah:

Dorothy's found a little bit of energy.

Mark:

An invalid.

Sarah:

She's feeble and weak. She's not paralyzed.

Mark:

But he's a grown man. He's not ancient. Yeah.

Sarah:

But he's not paying attention. He's not ready for it. Still. She's got a big knife. Oh.

Sarah:

And vengeance will be hers.

Mark:

Dorothea gets some energy.

Sarah:

She stabs stabs a lot. Stabby stab stab. It's not rumpy pumpy. It's stabby stabby.

Mark:

Kelly's got some colorful pots, and then they're interrupted again.

Sarah:

Yeah. She tries to make dinner.

Mark:

Nope. Nope. Back out to the fox and

Sarah:

with the covered dishes.

Mark:

I don't know.

Sarah:

Every time they have dinner, their food's in covered dishes. I don't think I've ever put a covered dish on the table.

Mark:

They like the covered dishes.

Sarah:

I guess.

Mark:

They get out to the fox and hound, and it's gory.

Sarah:

Yeah. And Leonard And Toby goes, it's a full time job around you two. He's his hands in the bathroom. That's the crime scene.

Mark:

I wanted him to run his hands through his hair just to make it even better.

Sarah:

I want him to just rinse him in the bathtub. Well, it's sudsy water. Why not?

Mark:

Bloods and blood and suds. Blood and suds.

Sarah:

And Leonard's not just been stabbed once or twice. He's been stabbed a lot.

Mark:

Yeah. And he does some dead body acting.

Sarah:

He does. So now so not only is he dead.

Mark:

Right? Shirtless. He's probably got some Swim trunks or something. Some swim trunks on.

Sarah:

But he's laid out in sudsy water. Now this water's not gonna be warm because they that shot, it's a big scene. There's lots of people. It probably took him a couple of hours. Yep.

Sarah:

The water is certainly cold. Yep. He can't get in and out because he'll smear the blood around. Yep. And it's gotta be in the spatter pattern

Mark:

of the He's in the tub. Knowing him as an actor, I've seen him in a bunch of stuff. I bet you he's funny. Yeah. And I bet you he was cracking jokes the whole time he was doing that.

Mark:

And he's a little blue. He is.

Sarah:

And I think he's probably naturally a little blue because he's cold.

Mark:

His nipples are perky too.

Sarah:

I didn't notice that you're weird.

Mark:

I didn't notice that.

Sarah:

Yes, you didn't know. You can't see him, but he's turning kind of pink right now. Like he did when I said about Bill Mitchell knowing about John Merrill's fetish. So, yeah, so he's dead in the bubbles. That's what my notes say.

Mark:

And we know who did that.

Sarah:

Yeah. We know.

Mark:

It was Troy.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because he went and riled up Dorothy and told her told her the truth about what crime they were investigating. And she's like, vengeance is mine. I have to kill my son now.

Mark:

We go off to the hospital to see her and she can pay she confirms everything.

Sarah:

Yeah. And now they know they've solved the old case.

Mark:

So they have to go to the Meekums.

Sarah:

Yeah. To confront crazy Meekum.

Mark:

And the wife shows Barnaby in the murder room. There's so much stuff in the background.

Sarah:

He's even got the strings and the tacks.

Mark:

He does. It's it's George Mecum's murder room. I'll have to do the the meme of the guy with the red lines on the wall, but have George's head on him instead.

Sarah:

But his wife is so happy. She's like, we can finally leave because he's going to be over this thing. Yeah. He's not. He's going to be all pouty because he didn't solve the murder.

Sarah:

Yeah. And the killer's been there the whole time. You know he's not gonna be happy.

Mark:

You sir are a red herring.

Sarah:

Yeah. Sorry. Meanwhile, Mitchell and David are going out on a boat.

Mark:

It's a nice day for a

Sarah:

boat ride. With their flippy floppers.

Mark:

You don't need a life jacket because I'm going to kill you.

Sarah:

Yeah. You're not going to survive this boat trip.

Mark:

Joyce is home. Sort of. Joyce is in one scene in this

Sarah:

episode. Well, no, too. She's leaving. And when she comes back and goes, wasn't Tom here?

Mark:

Yes. That's true. Two scenes. Yeah. She didn't really work all that hard

Sarah:

on this final scene. Three.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Yeah. Tom goes back and he's like, I'm gonna go see my wife. No. Wait a minute. What does Cauley say to him that makes him realize that it's doctor Acot?

Mark:

Something about mister or something like that.

Sarah:

Yeah. And so he figures out, oh, it's not Dracot. It's doctor Acot.

Mark:

So they rush back to the cop shop. Yeah. And who is at the cop shop? Constable Angel.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

Our recurring character. And he has lines

Sarah:

this time. He actually does.

Mark:

He's fantastic. And they go to see Toby and his worst hair.

Sarah:

It gets worse. You know, I think it's supposed to be a sign of how stressed he is filling in for George.

Mark:

And they find out that Carla was sick. Yeah. She had emphysema.

Sarah:

So that's why she was gonna go see doctor Acot.

Mark:

And then the other lady tells him that Ian Acot was killed. Yeah. And Toby's all confused.

Sarah:

And his hair is all confused.

Mark:

Okay. I'm Carla. Mhmm. I've made a lot of money from a cigarette company Mhmm. That I now realize is killing me.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

So I get on a plane and I fly to England. Mhmm. And the first thing I do is go see a doctor. Mhmm. Now why do I go see a doctor?

Mark:

Because I already know that it's killing me. Mhmm. So why did she go to the doctor?

Sarah:

She didn't know.

Mark:

Then why did she get on the plane?

Sarah:

Okay. So she knows she's sick. Okay. And she knows she can get better care in England. Right?

Mark:

No. That's

Sarah:

Because not she doesn't know she has emphysema because if she did, she wouldn't have got angry at the ashtray and thrown it into the fire after she saw the doctor.

Mark:

But they have doctors in Brazil.

Sarah:

I don't know why she goes to England then.

Mark:

Because if

Sarah:

she didn't go, she couldn't be murdered. I also think at this point in history, people are not stupid about what cigarettes do to you. Yes. Why she should be mad at Monarch, I don't understand.

Mark:

I don't. It's Me kind of

Sarah:

a foregone conclusion that that can happen.

Mark:

Lady Jane and John have a fight and it

Sarah:

means Oh, John has lost his shit.

Mark:

He has.

Sarah:

Oh, he's gonna strangle her now.

Mark:

He's got rope now. Oh, yeah. It's time for sexy You

Sarah:

want me to strangle you? Oh, I'm gonna strangle you.

Mark:

Well, I'm gonna stab you.

Sarah:

Yeah. So she stabs him with a kitchen knife and runs out. He was really drunk. Bill

Mark:

and There's a line here that Bill says, I don't know if you noticed it, where he goes, it's a smoke screen. And I'm like, get it? Get it? Yeah. Smoke.

Mark:

Scream. And he reveals David's plan because David is the one who's framing his father.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because he doesn't like his dad because he knows his dad is having an affair because he's the one who intercepted the letter.

Mark:

It's pure Agatha Christie.

Sarah:

Yeah. So David's the one who put the clay on the tires. Yep. He's the one who planted the lipstick shirt, which means that the little creep went into his dad's closet, got a shirt, took it out in the woods, rubbed it on a dead woman's face, and then put it back in his closet.

Mark:

And didn't mess up that face. I don't I She must have had

Sarah:

a lot of lipstick on.

Mark:

I guess. There there's problems there. And she was naked. And he's, like, 12. He's creepy.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

He rubbed a shirt on a corpse's lips. Yeah. And then we have the the realization that Anna must have heard Carla's message.

Mark:

And she was taking notes with her little pad.

Sarah:

Yeah. So let's get this straight. Carla doesn't really speak English.

Mark:

Barely speaks English.

Sarah:

But speaks English well enough to get a diagnosis from a British doctor.

Mark:

No. No. No. Carla left a message in Portuguese.

Sarah:

She speaks English well enough to get a diagnosis from a British doctor.

Mark:

Okay. That's what I said. Okay.

Sarah:

And then thinks she can call the Merrill's home and leave a message in Portuguese, and they're gonna understand it.

Mark:

Yeah. Maybe they need Troy there with his Spanish.

Sarah:

Then Anna is standing there with her little notebook as if it's her job to take down notes from the voicemail

Mark:

She is an au pair.

Sarah:

Who doesn't really speak English. So if it's her job to make notes from the voicemail, it's not the right job for her.

Mark:

No. And she does not pair the o.

Sarah:

Because she's clearly ready to take notes before she realizes, oh, this message is in Portuguese.

Mark:

Oh, and I can blackmail someone with it. Yeah. How does she know about Bill? Like, bad.

Sarah:

Yeah. I don't really I mean And

Mark:

how does Bill know that she's driving, walking down that way at that time?

Sarah:

Well, know how she is. She goes to costume, stays out all hours.

Mark:

Well, know, he's got the glow stick stuff.

Sarah:

So The car, it comes.

Mark:

The car, it comes.

Sarah:

So we get all the pieces put together. Yep. And then Tom goes back to see Joyce. She's in the flowers. She's

Mark:

in the flowers. It's beautiful. And it's implied that Troy is dating Cully.

Sarah:

It's implied that Cully has gone out with a policeman.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

And if she is dating Troy, it's Tom's fault because he gave Troy the tickets

Mark:

to go to the theater. Unless it's constable angel.

Sarah:

You mean she's dating constable angel?

Mark:

I'm pulling for constable angel. I have I have one little problem.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well So

Mark:

I'm Bill. My company is in ruins. Right? Potentially. Yeah.

Mark:

I strangle Carla, making it look like a strangler's wood killing. Right. So that's intent, and that's foreshadow thought. Right?

Sarah:

Right. Because she confronts him about her being sick. Yep. And he's like, oh, we can't have this. Nope.

Mark:

And he kills her. Right. He waits for Anna to walk down that road. Right? He is a cold blooded killer.

Mark:

Yeah. He's I would say, he's close to a serial killer at this point.

Sarah:

No. It's only two. It's only two. Gotta have three.

Mark:

And yet, just can't kill

Sarah:

the boy. Even though he's a little shit. And

Mark:

he's like, if he kills the boy, he's home free.

Sarah:

Even not killing him, why does he come back to the dock with a boat? It's a big boat. He could've just kept going.

Mark:

Just just get on that channel and go.

Sarah:

I mean, the kid off somewhere, you know. Why come back? Sell him into white slavery or something, but keep going.

Mark:

Do you think it was the white slavers?

Sarah:

That's a Poirot reference. Yep.

Mark:

The comp them cook. So thoughts on this episode?

Sarah:

It's got a lot of fun things in it, but man, it's got a lot of inconsistencies in it. It's clear to me that it's not based on the books because I think Carolyn Graham would have plugged those holes. There wouldn't be Carla's photo in the paper before they know her name. That stuff wouldn't have happened because it would have been in the book and it would have been tight. Yeah.

Sarah:

But I think they wrote this episode to feature characters who were really interesting, and they just kind of missed some stuff with the mystery part.

Mark:

I think it went like this. I think they had the Leonard Pike thing whole at first. That there's a serial killer. He kills three girls. Why does he stop?

Sarah:

Yeah. That's intriguing all by itself.

Mark:

I think they have Meekum, the mom, the whole thing. Mhmm. And I think somebody says that's not enough.

Sarah:

Yeah. So who's the actual killer now?

Mark:

So so they have to add this whole monarch thing on top of it, and it grows and it grows and it grows. I think that is stuck on. Now I agree that I don't think the whole Leonard Park Pike thing is enough.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because if it had been Leonard killing again, that that's not really a mystery.

Mark:

No. Not at all.

Sarah:

And Meakim is ineffective because he's clearly closed minded and not a good investigator. That's why he never solved it because Yeah. He he didn't know what he was doing.

Mark:

And there's no closure there either.

Sarah:

No. It's just

Mark:

the whole thing. And then to throw the agony ants in and then Elizabeth, who remember I said, I thought she was involved. Turns out it's a rather nice woman

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Who is happy.

Sarah:

Independently wealthy and does tai chi. Yeah. And just likes a little rumpy pumpy. That's She is sleeping with her best friend's husband. She is.

Sarah:

But she

Mark:

loves him. I think she loves him. I don't know how she could, but I think she does.

Sarah:

Or at least she did. Yeah. But, you know, Kate is really the victim of all of it. Her son is weird enough to try to make his dad look like a murderer. Her best friend is sleeping with her husband.

Sarah:

Her uncle is a killer.

Mark:

Yeah. She comes out very badly.

Sarah:

When it's over, she's alone with her psychopathic son. I mean, what eight year old sees a dead body in the woods and goes, A chance to frame my dad.

Mark:

Lipstick smearing. I'm going go get a shirt quite quickly. And just watch.

Sarah:

It's a bad situation. Also- You know why David's weird? He has to climb over that board every time he wants to go in his room.

Mark:

That has driven him into weird way. It's not the spawn posters. It's that damn board. So who's best corpse? I think Anna's best corpse.

Sarah:

Yeah. See, I I think, Leonard wins best corpse.

Mark:

It's it's pretty tight. It's pretty tight.

Sarah:

Yeah. He's in the water. The killer's not really a psychopath or anything. Mitchell's basically just doing it for business.

Mark:

Yeah. Which what is his plan? Like, I'll kill Carla.

Sarah:

Isn't it sad that our spokesmodel got strangled?

Mark:

I guess. But then why kill Anna? Like, these people are

Sarah:

Anna was gonna blackmail him and and tell everybody.

Mark:

As soon as I'm blackmailed, I become a killer. Now I haven't been blackmailed, so I don't know. Maybe it pushes you over the edge.

Sarah:

He's in charge of a multinational business. A lot of people's livelihoods ride on it.

Mark:

Okay. Then why in hell does he have time to drive around on a boat? Rich people do that. I guess. What the helicopter too?

Sarah:

When he's not strumming his guitar and his little duo Yes. Or being related to royalty.

Mark:

The net, Maniacs, is stranglers wood.

Sarah:

It's a good episode. It was fun.

Mark:

It is.

Sarah:

What's our next one?

Mark:

The next episode is season two episode three, Dead Man's 11, which has all sorts of fantastic

Sarah:

stuff in it. So if you disagree with us about who the best corpse of the episode was, let us know. We're going to be sure that we put in the show notes a little link to Chad and Jeremy and their musical awesomeness.

Mark:

Yes. And Mekem as the crazy conspiracy guy.

Sarah:

Yeah. Lots of good stuff there. So thanks for listening.

Mark:

Thanks for listening. Once again, we're available on all of the podcast outlets that you might find. Our email address is Midsommar Maniacsgmail dot com. Our Twitter feeds are MidsomerManiacs and I'm typewriter. And I'm Intelligirl.

Mark:

And we just love all the Instagram, Facebook comments. It's just completely still I cannot tell you how much we are blown away.

Sarah:

It's fantastic. Mark Mark comes in every morning while I'm, like, doing my hair and makeup, getting ready to go to work, and he reads me the the latest comments, and it's always so fun.

Mark:

It's so fun.

Sarah:

It's a good start to the day. We're so grateful that you're listening, and we hope you'll keep listening.

Mark:

Absolutely. Thanks for listening, Maniacs. Bye.

Sarah:

Bye, Maniacs.

Mark:

Bye, Maniacs. Yes. Once again, we have absolutely the the, situation where I don't know. I don't know where I was going with that.

Sarah:

I think you were just gonna repeat what I already said.

Mark:

I think so.

Sarah:

Because he there should be like repeated repeated loop of Emily. Yeah. Obviously, quite the arc. Welcome to Midsomer Maniacs.

Mark:

Hey, Maniacs.

Sarah:

This week, season two episode three of Midsomer Murders, Dead Man's 11.

Mark:

Dead Man's 11. This is episode eight of our podcast. I can't believe we're at eight. It's just crazy amazing.

Sarah:

We're turning it up to 11. We're

Mark:

turning it up to 11. Dead Man's 11.

Sarah:

Except, you know, there's like give and take a few players that make it 10 re leap. We'll get there.

Mark:

Oh, there's a lot of logic problems with this episode. Just a reminder that if you let your kids watch the show, they're more than welcome to listen to the podcast as well. But if the show is too much for them, maybe the podcast will be also.

Sarah:

The Coopers are, maybe too much for me.

Mark:

The Coopers are problematic, and the Creepy. The blood or lack of blood or problems with blood in this episode.

Sarah:

There's lots of I love this episode, but there are problems with this episode. Yes.

Mark:

It was filmed in April and May 1999, which is months after the first episode the second episode of the series was filmed and broadcast months after. Like, last week's episode was broadcast in, like, April, I think, and this was broadcast in September 1999, eight months later.

Sarah:

Well, I know why they had to wait. Why? They had to let Joyce's hair grow out.

Mark:

And Toby had to get in to see somebody for his hair.

Sarah:

They they had to they had to bring in a hairdresser. Stat.

Mark:

Stat. This episode had 11 o 7,000,000 views, which is 1,000,000 more than the last week and the top rated episode of Midsomer Murder ever.

Sarah:

Ever? Far Up as to that point.

Mark:

No, ever. As far as I can tell.

Sarah:

It's not anywhere even close to my top 10 episodes.

Mark:

I know, but it There must

Sarah:

not have been anything else on

Mark:

It was the spectacular episode. The most viewed episode of Midsomer Murders when it was originally aired, directed by Jeremy Silverstone, and once again written by Anthony Horowitz.

Sarah:

Not based on a book? Nope. Set in Fletcher's Cross.

Mark:

Yes. A new village. Yeah. And the pub in this episode, which features prominently, is the queen's arms, which I was thinking today, like, the the sign has the queen with her arms, but I think it's probably arms like,

Sarah:

you know Bones.

Mark:

We have swords and stuff arms, but I could be wrong.

Sarah:

It could be the queen's elbows. The queen's foot. The queen's knees. Oh, we start with sir Percival Prance a lot.

Mark:

Well, yes, we do. This awesome story being read to a child.

Sarah:

You think it's an awesome story? I think it's the lamest fairy tale ever. Sir Percival Prancelot? Nobody else was brave enough to go, so he had to do everything.

Mark:

Plus, I think the the child is way too old to be being read to. Yeah. And then she's sick, and then that's completely forgotten completely.

Sarah:

And she just has a cold or something. I guess. She's not dying of tuberculosis or anything.

Mark:

So they do a juxtaposition here of reading the story of Sir Percival Prancelot, which is a book that they created just for this episode.

Sarah:

You looked that up?

Mark:

I did indeed. I'm

Sarah:

glad they made it up.

Mark:

I'm I'm glad that somebody who probably did the dragon picture for the episode

Sarah:

The Written in Blood.

Mark:

The Written in Blood episode probably did these pictures also. Yeah. Juxtapose that with the scene of a quarry where a worker is trying to blow something up with the worst safety goggles of all time. Like, goggles they give you in high school to protect you.

Sarah:

From the middle school science lab.

Mark:

Yes. They're from middle school science lab.

Sarah:

But the detonator wires don't

Mark:

The plunger does not work. And he said, oh, I I hate the way he says Frasier because it's Frasier, but he says, Frasier. Frasier. And so there's a whole kind of the king in the night and the dragon is the explosion, and then boom. And the curtains fly open for some reason.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well, it's just coincidence.

Mark:

And then we're left with the shot of the dragon.

Sarah:

Yep. On the floor.

Mark:

Then we do not get

Sarah:

No watercolors.

Mark:

No watercolors. We get the watercolors in the pilot in season two episodes one and two, and that's it. That may be one of the most obscure Midsomer trivia questions there is.

Sarah:

Yeah. That would be a good pub quiz question if it was a Midsomer pub.

Mark:

Yes. And there's a cricket game going on in ring. To the cricket. I'm just gonna say right off the top, even though I've watched several videos on how cricket is scored and played, still really don't understand the game, and we're not going to go into it or why Troy sticks out his tongue and his finger.

Sarah:

So I was in Jamaica on a vacation once, and one day it rained all day really hard. And so I sat in a bar having fruity drinks and watching cricket with a couple of people who were from Jamaica, like natives who were from Jamaica.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

They explained cricket to me while I was sitting there. Cause I said, I don't understand this game. They're like, Oh, well, we'll explain it to you. And over the course of about a dozen umbrella drinks, I learned about cricket and I understood it then. And now I don't understand it anymore.

Mark:

It's some it's like bridge. It's a game in which the rules are made up by the people to confuse the people watching.

Sarah:

Yeah. And there's a tea break.

Mark:

There is. There's several tea breaks. Apparently, you can go for a snog with your girlfriend.

Sarah:

Or, you know, drive off to work or wherever you need to

Mark:

Wherever you need to be.

Sarah:

So one of the things that I wondered when whenever I see cricket, I always wonder why they wear white. And we saw in the last episode in Stranglers Wood, we saw people wearing white at the bowling club too. Yes. And so I did some research into the white, uniforms for cricket. And I'd like to say that what I found helped me understand it more.

Mark:

Well, it's cricket, so it it does not work that way.

Sarah:

The explanation for the uniforms is as elusive as the rules of the game. So the story goes that the players originally, they just wore whatever, but then they started all wearing white. And the reason they wore white was to reflect the heat. Because you know, The UK is so hops.

Mark:

Stupid hot in The UK. It may go close to, you know, 25 degrees Celsius.

Sarah:

You wear white to reflect the sun so that you can also wear a sweater and not get too hot apparently. And the sweaters and their caps are wool because wool absorbs the perspiration and doesn't get cold, while cotton might absorb it, but then gets cold. So while you're trying to stay cool, wear the wool because it keeps you warm even when it's sweaty.

Mark:

And people say my game of hockey is complicated.

Sarah:

I looked really hard because I guess originally, initially when the white uniforms were introduced, the shirts were a white button up shirt that had big red polka dots all over them.

Mark:

Oh, pretty.

Sarah:

I could not find a photo of those, but I did find quite a bit of documentation about how to get cherry streaks off your pants. So there's a scene in the second game when Troy's playing where he's about to bowl and he rubs the ball on the crotch of his pants.

Mark:

Yeah, I have a note about that.

Sarah:

Apparently all the bowlers do it is to clean the ball like you would with a baseball to make sure it's not got dirt on it or anything. But when you do that, the varnish of the ball can stain your pants.

Mark:

And those are cherry stains?

Sarah:

They call them cherry stains.

Mark:

Or at least that's what you tell your wife there.

Sarah:

Because it's like a cherry red varnish.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

So that's what I know about white cricket uniforms.

Mark:

You know what else is happening while the cricket game is on? There's a storm. The Barnabas are buying a house.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because Joyce doesn't have enough to do.

Mark:

It's all Cully's fault. It's Cully's fault.

Sarah:

Well, so they're gonna buy a new house because, you know, they can downsize a little bit because Cully's moving out. She's moving in with Nico in London.

Mark:

And we'll cover that when it comes up.

Sarah:

Well, that's the conversation that they have.

Mark:

Well, no. They don't talk about Nico then.

Sarah:

That's right. They find they talk about that after. So First, they go to the to the Cooper's beautiful thatched cottage.

Mark:

So the Cooper's house is beautiful, but what is inside?

Sarah:

Maybe not. They're a weird couple. So it's a thatched cottage on a village green. This would be a million dollar house.

Mark:

Yes. Easy. And we meet Christine Cooper, who is better known as Umbridge from Harry Potter.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's Imelda Staunton. She played the evil Dolores Umbridge. She's also been married forever to Jim Carter, who plays Carson in Downton Abbey.

Mark:

Oh, I didn't know that.

Sarah:

Yeah. They've been married for a very long time.

Mark:

Oh, that's nice. They're cute sure together. They're happy. So she clearly puts her face forward by saying it's lovely that crick the sound of the cricket bat. And she knows that if Jesus was to play a sport

Sarah:

It would be cricket.

Mark:

It would be cricket.

Sarah:

And she and Colin are born again. So she's got a personal relationship with Jesus and has

Mark:

a personal relationship with

Sarah:

with His sporting preferences.

Mark:

Then we notice while they're showing the game that the old guy from the car, who we haven't really been introduced to other than he's the king, the boss, is playing cricket. And there's some problem with how they play. Him and a young player get into an argument, basically.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's Robert Cavendish and Charlie. Charles Jennings.

Mark:

Christine's husband, Colin, arrives.

Sarah:

And they're one of those couples where the man is very tall and the woman is very short.

Mark:

So I looked up how how tall they were because there's a shot where you're like, woah.

Sarah:

He's gigantic, and she's miniature.

Mark:

He is six four, and she is five feet even. They are fourteen inches apart.

Sarah:

That would explain it.

Mark:

But, boy, they like to get all over each other. And he says that he was just down at the church getting it ready for Whitsunday, which is a name that is used especially in Britain and Ireland throughout the world of Catholic Anglicans and Methodists for the Christian festival of Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter. So Easter is usually let's just take it as the middle of April. Mhmm. So that would mean two more weeks in April.

Mark:

The four weeks of May puts this Pentecost festival usually in the last week of May or the first week of June.

Sarah:

Do you remember what Sunday when you were at church as a kid?

Mark:

No. I don't. Not at all.

Sarah:

So it's not a big thing? No. It's not like Palm Sunday where it's a big thing.

Mark:

It's a celebration as far as I can tell that it's seven weeks after Easter.

Sarah:

And that's what they're celebrating.

Mark:

Wow. That Easter, seven weeks ago. And he works security at Costume Museum.

Sarah:

I don't know what's in that museum. It should be a murder museum. Would make it a lot better. Like, the the the minister's scimitar should be in there

Mark:

and, you

Sarah:

know, somebody's head.

Mark:

All the arrows and the head. The orchid. Yeah. They're gonna quit their jobs and do missionary work. That's why they're selling the house.

Sarah:

Right. They're gonna go

Mark:

to Africa. This incredibly expensive house. How did they get that? Oh, we'll find out.

Sarah:

Oh, we'll find out. Yeah. So he's a he's a security guard at the museum and they're selling the house And they they asked Tom what he does for a living. And before he can answer, Christine tries to guess. And she says that maybe he's businessman?

Sarah:

Or a civil servant.

Mark:

A civil servant.

Sarah:

He says he's a policeman, and all of a sudden They freak. But she doesn't hide it very well either. She's like, oh.

Mark:

But they do some good acting there. They they're they're both very good actors. And Barnaby immediately, as soon as they leaves, calls them barking mad and says they're suspicious.

Sarah:

Well, yeah, because they live in a house that they should not be able to afford. Yes. It's just kind of obvious.

Mark:

Off to the queen's arms for lunch.

Sarah:

Yep. With Collie. This is where we find out she's moving to London to live with Nico.

Mark:

Okay. Now you all know what kind of nerd I am. Hollow Man was broadcast 03/19/1998.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

And this was broadcast 09/12/1999, which is one point four years different,

Sarah:

not two years. Kelly says she's been dating Nico for two years.

Mark:

And what about wasn't she dating Troy in the last episode possibly?

Sarah:

She went out with a policeman, or maybe Joyce just said that to kind of stab at Tom.

Mark:

And what about what's his name? The play guy who gets shot

Sarah:

by Simon Fletcher?

Mark:

Simon Fletcher. Like Who she would have

Sarah:

been happy to kiss a kiss with.

Mark:

I gotta tell you, Nico. Maybe some stuff going on.

Sarah:

Well, it's not like she stays in London for long anyway.

Mark:

No. Not at all.

Sarah:

So Joyce wants to move to a village. She wants to move out of Costin. Tom's not excited about it. And he says that the country is full of blackmail, deviancy, suicide, and murder.

Mark:

Murder. And they call him a townie. Like, that's a bad thing. As a proud townie.

Sarah:

You don't wanna be a villager?

Mark:

No. God, no.

Sarah:

So we go from there and we cut to the Cavendishes at the cricket game. We meet Robert Cavendish.

Mark:

Who hits a ball through a window.

Sarah:

Yeah. He's played by Robert Hardy, who most people know better as Cornelius Fudge from the Harry Potter movies. So that's our second

Mark:

Second Harry Potter. Overlap.

Sarah:

There are a couple interesting things about Robert Hardy. First of all, he played Winston Churchill six different times.

Mark:

I am not surprised in the least.

Sarah:

Really? Because I don't think he looks anything like Winston Churchill.

Mark:

Yeah. But he's kinda like Winston Churchill as an actor guy.

Sarah:

Oh, just because he's good at playing, like, uppity ups and kind of being snobby?

Mark:

Because he's kind of chubby and bald.

Sarah:

But he has kind of a pointy nose and Churchill was a very round man.

Mark:

I guess so.

Sarah:

Anyway, the other interesting thing about Robert Hardy is that he went to Oxford and had two famous professors. One was Tolkien the other one was CS Lewis. Wow. So that kind of dates him

Mark:

a little bit. Does date him, but I'm sure he's the talk of when that comes out.

Sarah:

Well, and he had an, not an OBE, but a CBE and for the Queen's birthday, he was on the honored list and got

Mark:

Very rid of good actor.

Sarah:

He's dead now.

Mark:

But He does a great job in this.

Sarah:

Oh, he's and there are lots and lots of interviews with him about how do you feel playing poncy asshole characters. Yes. And and he's not he was not one as a person, but he's very good at playing that role.

Mark:

Speaking of being an asshole, he sure is an asshole to his wife Tara

Sarah:

Oh my gosh.

Mark:

Or Tara as the rest of

Sarah:

Not as mean as he is to his daughter-in-law, but He's

Mark:

he's mean to all of them. He tells Tara to go fix the the problem with the window by throwing money at it.

Sarah:

Yeah. So she goes off and meets with the woman we will later find out is Doreen Beavis. Yep. That's your Beavis. And gives her £20.

Mark:

For a for a broken leaded window.

Sarah:

It's only one pane.

Mark:

I don't care. It's one enough.

Sarah:

It's not enough. And Doreen negotiates up to 45 because a vase was broken as well.

Mark:

See, Doreen is great. I like her.

Sarah:

I think she's got a stack of spare glass in the back and she's just pocketing the cash.

Mark:

And I think she says, Mrs. Cavendish, because she's letting her know, I know exactly how rich you are. So you can pony up another £25.

Sarah:

Yeah, it seems like a regular thing that happens too. That window gets broken. Though I don't think of cricket as a game where the ball really gets out of control all that often. It's not like baseball where you're hitting home runs.

Mark:

No. Yeah. No. Hit a home googly or something.

Sarah:

Wickety wick or something. So yeah. So Tara goes off to do that. And then we get to meet Steven, who is Robert's son. And he immediately is like, Hey dad, how about that extra money you were going give me?

Sarah:

Like, this is not the time to ask your dad about a lot.

Mark:

I agree with dad here that this is not the time.

Sarah:

Yeah. Like go away. And then Jane, I don't know how I feel about her. Sometimes I feel sorry for her, other times I think she has exactly what she asks for. So she goes into the cricket pavilion and gets a piece of strawberry cheesecake and comes out and stands right in front of Robert and Tara as they're trying to watch the cricket game in her big frumpy sweater.

Sarah:

Like, stands poke her away. As they should. Yes. She's standing right in front of them.

Mark:

I do like Tara. I do like her. I like Jane, and I'll tell you why when we get to the part where I change my opinion about her.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because right now, it's clear that she's supposed to be a frumpy stress eater

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

Basically, because, you know, Tara doesn't eat puddings.

Mark:

So Steven doesn't get his money. So what does he do? Off to snog the girlfriend. Yeah.

Sarah:

Off to the pub, which is far enough away he has to drive.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

I think it would be right there. When he gets there, that's when we meet Patricia Smith-

Mark:

Who is the same person who served the Barnabas. And where are the Barnabas? They're still at the pub.

Sarah:

Right. They're at the same pub. Yeah. That's who Steven's having an affair with.

Mark:

Steven is 40. The actor is 40 at this time, and Trish looks about 18.

Sarah:

Yeah. She does.

Mark:

And and ugh.

Sarah:

Well, but, you know, that's less of an age difference than his dad and his stepmom.

Mark:

That's true. That is true.

Sarah:

Because his dad's 60 and his stepmom's 38.

Mark:

But I can't snog you tonight because I have to go to my dad's birthday. Worst excuse ever. I have

Sarah:

to go to my dad's birthday party. Sorry.

Mark:

I'm sorry. I gotta go to my dad's birthday party.

Sarah:

Then we get.

Mark:

Oh, Steven's wife. But remember, one thing we missed was Tara's great line, I don't do puddings.

Sarah:

No. It's just more of her, like, rubbing it into Jane that Jane's some kind of fat cow. Yes. And they do make her look really fat. Annabelle Apson, the actress who plays Jane, is not a great big fat woman at all.

Sarah:

They put these big sweaters on her, but

Mark:

They implied that she's just packing it away, but she doesn't look like it.

Sarah:

So So Wait. But I gotta tell you something I found out about her. Okay. When I'm my job as part of the prep for episodes is I go through the actors list, and I usually just pull it from IMDb and I, you know, do some Googling and read some articles and, you know, read some reviews of other performances that actors have done. And I try to find something interesting.

Sarah:

And that interesting thing is usually related to their acting career. Yes. That's what I typically find. Usually. Usually.

Mark:

Unless they're royalty like Poncey Bill.

Sarah:

Right. Jeremy. Yes. From last episode. But Annabelle Apson, she's a great actor.

Sarah:

She's in lots and lots of things, including Shameless. Yep. She's been in Shameless a few times now, but she's also a follower of this holistic body treatment movement called the Rosen Method.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

And she's like a co founder of this thing. And it's like a meditative, I don't know, body treatment thingamabob system anyway. But in an interview, she said that the biggest benefit that she's got from it Okay. Is that she is able to move her boobs without moving the rest of her body. Now And then she did it.

Sarah:

There's footage.

Mark:

Those that'll have to go in the show notes.

Sarah:

And she's not doing, like, pec exercises. It's very weird.

Mark:

Are there tassels?

Sarah:

So so now I'm thinking of her eating cheesecake, moving her boobs without touching them with the rest of her body being still. It's just so it's so strange.

Mark:

It's like a party trick. I can move my boobs without moving my body.

Sarah:

Yeah. Basically. Yeah. And it's like evidence that this Rosen Method has been good for her.

Mark:

Good for her.

Sarah:

So so now you know about that.

Mark:

Good for her. So who interrupts the snogging at the queen's arms but Barnaby?

Sarah:

Coming out of the bathroom, still zipping

Mark:

his fly. Still zipping his fly. There's two fly zipping scenes.

Sarah:

There is. Yeah. There is.

Mark:

So he interrupts the snogging, and then they go outside to meet the fled Fletcher's Cross rambling association. Led by Zelda Fraser. Zelda is a great name.

Sarah:

She's played by Delia Lindsey, And and the best thing I could find about her was that she was in this hammer movie in 1970 called scars of Dracula.

Mark:

Yeah. I saw that.

Sarah:

And she's one of those hot tamale wearing something you can see right through kind of nightgown characters in that movie. Oh, okay. She's beautiful.

Mark:

Oh, I'll have to I'll have to find the the poster and maybe a shot from that movie.

Sarah:

And this, she is notes. A bossy trudging rambler.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

She's so excited.

Mark:

They have a 107 signatures.

Sarah:

It's not hard to imagine being excited about anything that's against Robert Cavendish because he's such an ass.

Mark:

I do understand. And Burnaby's like, oh, blah blah blah blah. I'm

Sarah:

not even from here.

Mark:

I'm not even from here. Culley's like, I'll sign it. Whatever it is.

Sarah:

Of course you will.

Mark:

Burnaby asked, who would wanna walk across a mirror anyway? A mirror is a lake that is often more broad than it is deep. Like a swamp? Yes.

Sarah:

Okay.

Mark:

It's a fancy British word for swamp. Yeah.

Sarah:

Which is why Zelda can fall in it later. Yes. And we're all kinda like, yay. Boo. At the same time.

Mark:

Cricket's all done, and Cavendish is the coach. So he talks about defeating Badger's Drift who was who they were playing. And who knows how they defeated them 113 to 14 with six chuckers and an extra googly. They're gonna play Midsomer worthy next week, and Charles, can I have a word? And this is where I realized it was Charles Jennings

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

From Death's Shadow. Death's Shadow. And he kicks him off the team and calls him a gutter snipe.

Sarah:

Tells him he can keep score next week. You could keep score. Well, he says, I'm gonna kick you off the team. And if you talk back to me, I'm gonna fire you too. So now we know that Charles He works there.

Sarah:

Works for Robert in some capacity.

Mark:

Now we move to another pitch, cricket pitch, which the first time I saw this a while ago, I got confused here. But we're on Midsomer Worthy's cricket pitch now.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

Troy has been recruited, for the team by Ian Fraser from the cold open. Troy's answered

Sarah:

an ad Yes. Because they need players. Well, you know Apparently, he's some kind of savant at at cricket.

Mark:

He's quite good, apparently.

Sarah:

I wonder if, the actor is good at cricket.

Mark:

I don't know.

Sarah:

I wasn't able to find any reference, but he he does seem to have skill.

Mark:

Ian Fraser is certainly crazy, though.

Sarah:

Yeah. He is. We're gonna kill him.

Mark:

We're gonna kill him.

Sarah:

I mean, his team. I mean, in the game, maybe. And he wears that hat. Is that like an Australian hat? I don't know.

Sarah:

What is that hat?

Mark:

What is up with that hat?

Sarah:

But he wears it like right down over his face and gets real close to Troy. And I can just imagine his breath is not good. It's kind of rattlesnake skinny. So that's why I was kinda it looked kind of Australian to me, but I

Mark:

don't know. I don't know. Off to the manor to creep town creep tastic. Because who do you hate more than the rich guy in the manor? The rich guy in the manor who collects Nazi stuff.

Sarah:

Yeah. And gets a dagger for his birthday.

Mark:

She gives him an RLB dagger used at El Alamein. RLB stands for Reichslafen Flussenbund. Wow.

Sarah:

Maybe you should've let me read that.

Mark:

It's Reich, like the third right, Luft Schwarzbund.

Sarah:

It's from the Wehrmacht.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

Official air raid protection group for the state, I e, Nazis.

Sarah:

Yeah. The the Wehrmacht were basically the German army.

Mark:

And Al Alamein is in Egypt, and he he gets lovey dovey over the diaper.

Sarah:

He does. You don't have one of these.

Mark:

He's just like he almost weeps.

Sarah:

It's still got the little leather thing.

Mark:

And she for all their strangeness and their problems with their relationship, he really loves her and she really loves him.

Sarah:

Yeah. I think so.

Mark:

Absolutely. Because she really wanted to get him a present that he really liked.

Sarah:

And she knows him well enough to know

Mark:

He really doesn't already have. Nazi dagger.

Sarah:

Likes his Nazi dagger. We get the birthday cake,

Mark:

missus Wilson. Brings out the birthday cake on a big silver platter.

Sarah:

Yeah. And Jane

Mark:

And Jane cannot like, she just jumps across the table and pushes her face.

Sarah:

I cut it. And licked my fingers between every slice. I thought you like cheesecake. I like chocolate too. I like all of them.

Mark:

And then Steven's like, god. And you go, what's wrong?

Sarah:

He's such an angsty teenager. Nothing. Nothing.

Mark:

Oh. Oh. And this house is like a mausoleum. Look at us, man. We're just sitting here.

Mark:

Just a few of us at dinner. It's so sad.

Sarah:

Well, there's a solution for that.

Mark:

Yes. Somebody could die. Oh, no. They can move.

Sarah:

They can sell the house.

Mark:

We're off to Florida.

Sarah:

We'll make you even sadder. Orlando. Orlando. Now then I just have this image of Robert Cavendish wearing Mickey ears, which is just awesome. And I have to draw attention to the most epic, gigantic, out of proportion, dried flower arrangement I have ever seen.

Mark:

I didn't even notice it. I will have to put a How picture in the

Sarah:

could you not? It's clear at the end when he's sitting at the table alone. It's right behind him. It's like a story tall. Missus Wilson could spend her whole career just dusting You that

Mark:

know, when you have revenge to plan,

Sarah:

you need stuff to keep her busy. Well, she's already a housekeeper for two houses. I think that's enough for her.

Mark:

I would think so.

Sarah:

That flower, I I can't. It's I'm lost for words. It's that big.

Mark:

I I did not notice it at all. I don't I will have to ask.

Sarah:

I don't know how you can see anything else. You have to, like, move it aside to see the actors at the table.

Mark:

I'm not giving you a loan, Steven. No money for you. No. And then why does the dog start to bark?

Sarah:

Yeah. Because Charlie's outside the window. Yeah. The dog. Kaiser.

Mark:

I Nazi. Whenever whenever Maybe we should

Sarah:

just say Nazi instead of Robert.

Mark:

He shows Barnaby the Nazi stuff, and Barnaby is just like, you know, we beat them.

Sarah:

They were bad people. Best campaign ever.

Mark:

Best campaign ever. And, like, I was so like, Barnaby's one second away to to say, oh, well,

Sarah:

they still lost. Even Troy is like, I know what Nazis are, and I know they're bad, so that's bad.

Mark:

Next day, Tara goes for a walk. Kaiser, come here. Aktum, Kaiser.

Sarah:

While we see Steven get up at 07:50AM Yes. And leave Jane behind in her hideous plaid pajamas. Okay.

Mark:

They sleep in so many clothes. It's just.

Sarah:

Well, and that every effort is made to make be Jane

Mark:

like Troy and sleep with no top on

Sarah:

at all. Every effort's made to make Jane look as frumpy as possible. She's plaid pajamas are right on. They are frumpastic.

Mark:

I have to go to work. I eat snog my hot girlfriend.

Sarah:

On Sunday morning. Yes. Not even 08:00 yet. Yes. Yeah.

Sarah:

And Tara and when Tara leaves with Kaiser, she says, I'll be back around ten to missus Wilson. Yes. Even though everybody later says she usually walks for an hour. Clearly, she's planning on a longer walk.

Mark:

Meanwhile, Cavendish is fondling his knife. My knife.

Sarah:

He's fingering his Nazi stuff. What? That's what it says in my notes. It's not the first time. It's not the last time he does it either.

Sarah:

He fingers his Nazi stuff again later.

Mark:

We see Tara walking close to the quarry edge, and then she gets whacked with a cricket bat.

Sarah:

Because Kaiser is a bad dog.

Mark:

Kaiser is a crap dog.

Sarah:

She has to say his name at least, like, 50,000 times.

Mark:

And, like like, our dog is a giant lump of English bulldog, but we at least go, don't do that. Yeah.

Sarah:

So not

Mark:

only Kaiser just takes off and is like, I'm off

Sarah:

somewhere else. Not only does Kaiser not listen, obviously, and stay near, he's willing to growl at somebody at the window, but when somebody beats Tara to death with a cricket bat, he's like, okay. I'll go home. Yep. Well, I'll goof around for a couple of hours and then I'll

Mark:

go home. Well, Mrs. Too.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well, he didn't like Mrs. Beavis probably. So that's Sunday.

Mark:

So we get a death here. Yeah. And so how is Tara's dead body acting?

Sarah:

We don't see much of her. We see one shot of her face.

Mark:

It's not bad. It's not bad. She doesn't breathe or blink or anything.

Sarah:

Unless she's on screen for, like, a split second. Well,

Mark:

yeah. It's very, very quick. She's been missing all night. So Troy and Barnaby show up the next morning and Barnaby says he's not an easy man to deal with.

Sarah:

Troy says that. Yeah. Because Troy's already talked to

Mark:

him once. And Barnaby has no patience for crap like this.

Sarah:

No. None at all. No. He's not one of those cops who is like, you know, overly polite to people of a higher social station. Yeah.

Sarah:

He doesn't care about that. And that's one of the things I like about him.

Mark:

And I gotta tell you, the guy playing Cavendish here, what's his name again?

Sarah:

Robert Hardy.

Mark:

He does some really good acting in this part.

Sarah:

He's grief stricken. He In the scene where they tell him that she's dead Yeah. He's convincingly upset

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Unlike his daughter-in-law.

Mark:

But even before that, he he does some good acting. Yeah. It's about time you people showed up. What's your rank?

Sarah:

He's clearly concerned because she she should have been back around ten the day before, and now it's Monday morning, and she's still not home.

Mark:

And Kaiser, you know, goose stepped into the house. At noon the

Sarah:

day before.

Mark:

She's 35.

Sarah:

He's 60.

Mark:

Second wife. Yeah. Oh, look. I have Nazi stuff. Is

Sarah:

it any surprise he's divorced from his first wife?

Mark:

Yeah. It's not really a surprise. And then missus Wilson drops a plot cut point.

Sarah:

Oh my gosh. And this is one of many, but at least hers is on purpose. Yeah. She's like, no. She said she was going for a walk after I made her breakfast.

Mark:

No. She didn't.

Sarah:

And she didn't really say anything else. Oh, wait. I think she said let me think about where her body is.

Mark:

Mhmm. Where did I kill her again?

Sarah:

Where did I kill her? Oh, yeah. The quarry. I think she said she was gonna walk by the quarry, and that's the long and tall of it.

Mark:

Beding, beding, beding. Like, are you paying attention?

Sarah:

That's where her body is. Go find it.

Mark:

Go find it.

Sarah:

I can't frame

Mark:

somebody else if you don't find Tell the constables with the white poles to poke there.

Sarah:

Yes. You know, for a county that has one DCI apparently, they have a lot of constables that just up here out of nowhere

Mark:

when there's a search. Poking around with sticks. They got

Sarah:

a lot of white sticks.

Mark:

Oh, to be an extra on Midsomer and to be constable. That would just be a dream. That would be so awesome.

Sarah:

And when they're leaving Cavendish Hall, we get Troy's line of the episode.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Because he sees Charles.

Mark:

And he accuses Charles of being a male prostitute or in Troy's words, bum boy.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah. That's

Mark:

not bum boy. Thought we had left, you know, crunk Troy behind, but no. He's back with the bum boy coming.

Sarah:

He's not sophisticated.

Mark:

So they find the body, and Toby has had a haircut. Thank God. And he's only in this episode for a little tiny little bit. Yeah. Says eight or more blows with the cricket bat.

Mark:

It's a true play. It's red on top and black on the bottom.

Sarah:

So we've we've already had Robert Hardy who was Cornelius Fudge in Harry Potter. We've had Umbridge. The and Mela Staunton who was Umbridge. Umbridge. And now we've got Toby Jones who played the voice of Dobby.

Sarah:

Yes. In the video game too.

Mark:

Yes. It's Harry Potterathon.

Sarah:

Yeah. So this is the second Toby episode of four.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

You know, what I remember this time watching that is that he's in Wayward Pines.

Mark:

Yes. He is.

Sarah:

Do you remember watching Wayward Pines?

Mark:

He's in Wayward Pines. Yeah. A strange American television show about

Sarah:

A town that's isolated. That's isolated. He plays like the evil scientist overlord who's like engineering all the things that are weird.

Mark:

I still really like him. Well, certainly Detectors. If you haven't watched Detectors yet, what like, stop

Sarah:

already said

Mark:

stop Yeah. This podcast. Go watch the Detectors.

Sarah:

It's really good.

Mark:

But I like the movie that he's in about the sound in the movies and how that kinda drives him crazy a little bit.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah. I forget the name of that.

Mark:

I forget the name of it, but it's really good. I like

Sarah:

been in a lot

Mark:

of things. He's a very good guy.

Sarah:

Who's in a Gomez music video where he plays a businessman who's afraid to go up an escalator?

Mark:

A Gomez?

Sarah:

Yeah. You ever heard of Gomez?

Mark:

No. You'd like Gomez. Gomez is like on the Adams family.

Sarah:

No. There's a band called Gomez.

Mark:

I've known You'd like him. Never heard of that band. Yeah. Okay. Cavendish is upset.

Mark:

He does some really good acting here.

Sarah:

Yeah. He's legitimately just didn't

Mark:

say no over and over again. And that no changes every time he says it.

Sarah:

Yeah. And it's really good. Because it's sort of in response to questions they're asking him and sort of just in denial of this nightmare that's happening to him.

Mark:

It's just good writing and good acting.

Sarah:

Then Jane walks in and she's like, what's happened? Have you found Tara? She's dead. Oh, okay.

Mark:

Do you have any cake?

Sarah:

She was killed with a bat. My husband has a bat.

Mark:

A bat just like that with his initials on it. Does this bat

Sarah:

have initials on it? Then I got him for his birthday or right before the season.

Mark:

Meanwhile, Cavendish is like, is it a Nazi bat? I

Sarah:

like Nazi bats the best. We joke about the stuff we Google when we're prepping for this show.

Mark:

As long as he's not fingering his Nazi bat.

Sarah:

And I tell you, I have looked up liquid nicotine dosages. I've looked up beheading by scimitar, all this stuff. The thing I was most nervous and like most eager to go into incognito mode in my browser was looking up Nazi stuff. It's just gross. I don't want it in my history.

Mark:

And that guy, as we said, is a great actor. Yeah. He's probably a really nice guy. In the same way that what's his name from Lewis? Fox Yeah.

Mark:

Who played evil Nazi scum in Foil's War

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

Must have just hated the words coming out of his mouth. Yeah. It's just

Sarah:

But it's shorthand for reprehensible. All they have to do is say, this guy, you know, revere Nazi military tactics. And it it he could be saving kittens and babies at the same time, and he's still reprehensible.

Mark:

Shorthand for bad guy.

Sarah:

Yep. So they go and, talk to Steven.

Mark:

At his work, we finally find out that he's an interior designer. Now, have you seen his house? Oh yeah. Because it's in need of some interior design.

Sarah:

He lives in a little cottage on his dad's estate. Basically, he lives in his dad's backyard.

Mark:

But still, he could have designed it a little nicer.

Sarah:

Okay. The suit he's wearing at work on Monday is all the evidence you need. It's a safari suit, a nineteen nineties safari suit, and it's hideous.

Mark:

I'm off to Kenya.

Sarah:

But it's not nearly as ugly as Christine Cooper's sweater. Oh, Christine Cooper. Did you notice that sweater?

Mark:

That is just and she keeps moving it, and it makes it more noticeable. It's just hideous.

Sarah:

My notes say her sweater is hideous, shredded, brain like, nubby. I couldn't think of enough adjectives to describe just how nasty it is.

Mark:

So Steven says, I was at work on Sunday morning not snogging my hot girlfriend.

Sarah:

Why does he keep his cricket bat in the downstairs loo?

Mark:

Well, you know, sometimes when a man is on the loo, he needs to stroke his cricket back.

Sarah:

Who knows? And it's like, is it right next to the front door? So it's like home defense. Is it a way to scratch your back when you're sitting on the toilet?

Mark:

I don't know. I I don't understand. Maybe his googlys needed googling.

Sarah:

And he just he just says it like, oh, I keep that in the downstairs loop.

Mark:

Yeah. Like, everybody keeps it in their

Sarah:

And anybody could have obviously had access to it, I guess.

Mark:

People just come into my house all the time To use the loop. They leave, and missus Cooper comes out and spills the beans.

Sarah:

Yeah. He wasn't at work on Sunday morning.

Mark:

All the invoices are up to date. We're born again, so we can't lie. Except about our creepy sex stuff and stealing coins.

Sarah:

Yes. But that's that's different.

Mark:

That's different.

Sarah:

And so Steven calls Trish to the pub. Now I know Trish is young, and I know she hasn't been in the village long. Nope. And she hasn't worked at the pub very long. Nope.

Sarah:

But when you answer the phone at the pub, you answer. Queen'sArms. Steven. Apparently, she just answers every call. Steven.

Sarah:

She does not know how to answer the phone.

Mark:

And he calls Trish to plan the alibi.

Sarah:

Yeah. And this is also where we learn that Charlie also works at the pub because he lives there.

Mark:

Exactly. Barnaby and Troy are there because Barnaby knows Troy is not telling him something. And the thing he's not telling him

Sarah:

Is that he's on the cricket team.

Mark:

He's on the Midsomer worthy cricket team.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

I should stop. Barbie's like, no, This keep is handy. This will get interesting.

Sarah:

Is where, shortly after, during after practice, Troy goes and has a a beer with Ian and finds out he was the foreman Yes. In the explosion that we saw at the beginning of the episode. You might have recognized him. I didn't recognize him.

Mark:

We also see Midsomer Ramblers are gonna do their walk on the July 10. Yeah. So now this is one chronology of the episode. Saturday is the first cricket game. Sunday is when Tara goes for her walk and gets killed.

Mark:

Right. And the next Thursday is the second cricket game. Right. That is one way to look at it. Opposed to that is the notion that the Cooper said that it was with Sunday, which we've already established would be the last weekend or May Yeah.

Mark:

Or the first weekend in June.

Sarah:

But Zelda's posters about the ramble make it on July tenth, eleventh?

Mark:

No. The walk is on the tenth, so ninth would be Wednesday, eighth would be Tuesday. This is riveting

Sarah:

Bloody.

Mark:

Ninth is Wednesday, eighth is Tuesday, seventh is Monday, sixth is Sunday, the fifth.

Sarah:

So we can only guess that Whitsunday is celebrated later in Fletcher's Cross. I guess. For some weirdness or So Colin's really late getting the church ready.

Mark:

The the months are really screwed up.

Sarah:

Or you know, maybe they just assumed that the Barnabas were so ungodly that they wouldn't know Oh. That Whitsunday was like two months ago.

Mark:

But we know Barnaby knows his bible.

Sarah:

So He does. But they don't know that. Would know. After Christina, goes out and talks to Barnaby and it says, you know, Steven wasn't here on Sunday morning. She goes back in the office and she tells Steven, well, he's buying my house.

Sarah:

Well, he might be buying my house. But then she goes home Yes. And talks to Colin.

Mark:

They're not interested in us. Colin tries to make her feel

Sarah:

She's that the police are just pretending to investigate a murder because they're trying to entrap It's

Mark:

going to find out. And then we have the first creepy thing, which is You know The what you

Sarah:

do in your marriage is your business.

Mark:

We're not even there yet.

Sarah:

But he calls her flopsy. Flopsy.

Mark:

And the way he said it is just gross. And in that moment in which you're like, oh my god. That's the grossest thing ever. She turns to him.

Sarah:

I need to be punished.

Mark:

I need to be punished. And he's like, I don't punish you.

Sarah:

I need to be hurt.

Mark:

I'll hurt you. And then right into the rough stuff.

Sarah:

Hey. He destroys that hideous shirt. That's true.

Mark:

He's good. I'm done with this sweater.

Sarah:

No. He doesn't destroy her cardigan because she has it on again later. But he does destroy that awful peach ruffle shirt

Mark:

she Man, has on underneath it's it's people older than me having sex. That's what it is.

Sarah:

Yeah. Though, I don't know how old these people are when they made this episode.

Mark:

I know. Hate to tell you, honey.

Sarah:

How to feel old in one easy step. Meanwhile, Charlie's using a typewriter.

Mark:

Okay. Yes. We're gonna use a type

Sarah:

icky topic. We're gonna use

Mark:

a typewriter and blur out the name of the typewriter so Mark has to watch the scene 16 times and still doesn't know what kind of typewriter it is.

Sarah:

Which you wouldn't care about except you collect old typewriters. It's a

Mark:

modern typewriter. It has plastic keys. It's not what I'm interested in. But still, it's even electric. I think it's an electric typewriter.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

But the but the worst, the type is all smudgy

Sarah:

and everything. Somebody needs to clean those keys.

Mark:

Yes. I know. I want £500.

Sarah:

Big money. Yep. Then miss Boviso

Mark:

Is Beauvoiso? On the scene again, and now she runs the engine agency. I wonder what happened.

Sarah:

She she says to Joyce, do you wanna see this, restored, this converted post office? It's called Dunmailin'. Dunmailin'. Joyce

Mark:

totally doesn't get it, Yeah. But it's

Sarah:

My note says hearty harp. Hardy Har. Because it's one of those it's almost like one of those goofy names that, old retired guys give their boat, you know? Yep. So you put in all this effort to restore a post office and turn it into a home and you called it Dunmailin.

Mark:

It's just horrible. Back at the cop shop, we find out Cavendish closed the quarry. It is Steven's bat. He confirmed it. Oh, yeah.

Mark:

That's the that murder weapon? Oh, yeah. It's totally mine.

Sarah:

Mhmm. But it it's usually in the loo.

Mark:

And we have a time of death, and then we have country living.

Sarah:

Yeah. And we find out the quarry was closed nine years ago.

Mark:

The ad in country living for the manor includes the following statement and outstanding residential dairy and arable farm situated in the veil of and I couldn't read the rest of it.

Sarah:

You're such a nerd.

Mark:

But it said it was, like, seventy five minutes away from a London subway station.

Sarah:

Yeah. And so the impression we get is that Robert has long decided to sell the estate because Yeah. It's already in the Yeah. Which you would assume that they would have had to written that story like a month in advance so it could be in the magazine.

Mark:

Yes. Yeah. Let's go to Steven's house.

Sarah:

Yeah. Missus Wilson works there too because she's everywhere where it's convenient.

Mark:

Yes. Robert's selling the hall and moving to Orlando and they oh, okay. Let's talk about plot. Let's talk about what people are wearing, but let's talk about putting whipped cream in your coffee. And she gives them, like, half an inch of coffee each In gigantic mugs.

Mark:

In gigantic mugs and then fills it with with whipped cream. Like like, I'm surprised she didn't take a snort herself.

Sarah:

But that's not the most notable thing about that coffee We'll and get there. No. She has magical cookies.

Mark:

She she does have magical bickies.

Sarah:

Magical bickies. So there's a continuity error in the scene where Jane's talking.

Mark:

She gets three bickies out of the kitchen. She says

Sarah:

maybe just one and grabs three. And she's got a rectangular cookie that she dips in the whipped cream. Rectangle. Rectangle. Yes.

Sarah:

And she licks the whipped cream off.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

And says something. And then the camera cuts to Barnaby.

Mark:

Who says something.

Sarah:

Who responds. And then the camera cuts back to her and she's holding a round biscuit.

Mark:

She's already snogged the first one. Do

Sarah:

you think See, I'm I'm saying it's a continuity error.

Mark:

It's totally

Sarah:

a continuity saying she inhaled one biscuit and has already dipped a second one in the time that it took Tom to take one sentence. Must eat more whipped cream. Never mind that she licks it off and then puts the cookie back down. Oh

Mark:

gosh. Jane. Jane. Jane. I really didn't like her.

Mark:

And then we get to the part when so This is where

Sarah:

we find out about missus Emily Beavis. Yes. The former housekeeper who fell into the quarry eighteen months ago.

Mark:

What? This is a total Midsomer trope. This important murder or there were death that happened a while ago, you're only telling me about halfway through the episode?

Sarah:

They must not have a location database in in this county.

Mark:

Would would Troy and Barnaby not have investigated this death?

Sarah:

That's what I'm I don't know if they would have investigated the death since it was so obviously chalked up to an accident. But still But I would think that before they went out to the Cavendishes Hall the first time, they would have done a little background check.

Mark:

You think?

Sarah:

And said, Wow, somebody died there just 18 ago. Yep. Tom probably would have remembered.

Mark:

I would think so.

Sarah:

But you know, she was just helped. So maybe they didn't really, you know, it to the cops very much.

Mark:

Speaking of jerks, Steven returns.

Sarah:

I lied about Sunday morning. We know.

Mark:

Let's keep that between us. I was off snogging my girlfriend.

Sarah:

Who's half my age, but she's only been here for a year and she doesn't know anybody.

Mark:

She doesn't know anybody. He's so mean to Jane. And then Jane says, oh, yeah. You go into prison and me starting a whole new life. How terrible that would be.

Sarah:

Excuse me while I make a cake.

Mark:

Then I like her.

Sarah:

Because you know, she's not dumb.

Mark:

No. She's well aware of what's going on.

Sarah:

And she's not gonna get in the way of whatever's happening. Nope. If he's guilty or if somebody's framing him, that's the worst thing I can imagine.

Mark:

But this is exactly like the last episode where the husband who is a jerk is also being framed and is really innocent

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

Other than being a jerk.

Sarah:

No. Go ahead. Frame him. It's okay. Yeah.

Sarah:

I gotta tell you something about Patricia Smith. Trish, the young girlfriend.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Zoe Hart is the actress who played her.

Mark:

Yeah. I tried to find her age. I couldn't find her age.

Sarah:

You couldn't find her age because she only was an actor for about two years. She's now a Pilates master.

Mark:

Yes. I did see that that she's a Pilates master now.

Sarah:

Yeah. She owns her own studio.

Mark:

Well, congratulations. Go Zoe. Zoe. And the problem is there's a character in some American show about Dixie in which there's a character named Zoe Hart.

Sarah:

Oh, so it's hard to find her.

Mark:

Hard to find her. Yeah. Nazis out shooting skeet because, you know, guns.

Sarah:

That's what you do when you're upset.

Mark:

Yep. Somebody was spying on us. And, Beavis, what are you talking to her for? Talking about with her. Go talk to her sister in the village and waste more time.

Sarah:

So then we know that Ms. Beavis is the same Ms. Beavis of the window breaking. Yes. And she's wonderful.

Sarah:

She's like, oh yeah, my sister, she asked, oh, I didn't nobody told you she died in the quarry. There was nothing suspicious about it. Nothing suspicious? Well, except the letter that she got. And?

Sarah:

But nothing else. But but but, well, there was the break in at the same time that she died.

Mark:

But nothing suspicious.

Sarah:

But but nothing else. And you just wait for her to go, well, there there was that letter that she wrote in her own blood next to her in the dirt. Or or maybe she came back to me from the dead and told me that she was pushed. Like but but nothing suspicious.

Mark:

So this is a trope. Right? A total Midsomer trope.

Sarah:

The old lady who knows something that you have to drag out of her.

Mark:

They and they say it's not really what it is. When everybody is very aware of what it is. And this is kind of the whole basis of the movie Hot Fuzz. Yeah. Because the whole idea of Hot Fuzz, and I'm gonna spoil the movie a little bit here, is that all these people keep dying in the village, and it's just accidents.

Mark:

Yeah. It's just accidents when it's clearly We

Sarah:

have the lowest crime rate in The UK.

Mark:

Like, there's a person who gets decapitated. It was an accident. It's just an accident at a Fed. So that whole movie is definite Midsomer referencing.

Sarah:

I feel bad for anybody who's seen Hot Fuzz and who hasn't seen the Midsomer Murder kind of like British quaint mystery shows because they missed half the jokes.

Mark:

They missed half the jokes.

Sarah:

Simon Pegg nails the quaint village British murder mystery in Yeah, that

Mark:

absolutely. To the point where we have a theory because he plays PC Angel in that in

Sarah:

that movie. Simon Pegg's character.

Mark:

Yeah. Simon Pegg's character in Hot Fuzz is PC Angel, and there is a PC Angel in Midsomer. We absolutely think that's a reference. Yeah. I think so too.

Mark:

Absolutely. So nothing suspicious. Just, you know, a break in and a letter and some stolen coins and, you know Wow. Off the side of a cliff. Oh, terrified of heights too.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. So And I'm Kaiser pushed her. Yes. The Nazi dog.

Mark:

If

Sarah:

you could only do that and bark at the same time, I'd be impressed.

Mark:

At the pub, Trish Trish is good with figures. She's good with that's the long and the tall of it.

Sarah:

He was there from eight zero five and two seconds to eleven twenty and thirty two seconds.

Mark:

And we were bonking because

Sarah:

he doesn't love his wife. She doesn't understand him.

Mark:

Snog. Snog. Snog.

Sarah:

He's gonna leave her and marry me even though I'm only 12 years old. I'm good with figures.

Mark:

That's the long and the tall of it. Yep. I'm not very tall. They go to visit Colin Cooper at the museum, which you're right. What is in this museum?

Mark:

Some old books on a table.

Sarah:

Yeah. In a in a case. Some cases. That apparently he's still interested in even though he works there because he's looking at them when no one else is there. Boy, it's a bustling museum, isn't it?

Mark:

He knew Emily Beavis, a friend of his, and he found the body. And now we find out how perverted these people are.

Sarah:

Because we get the flashback

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Of the day that Emily Beavis died. And okay. So we see Emily Beavis for the first time. She and her sister Doreen could not look less alike. Only thing they have in common is their little old ladies.

Mark:

I don't know if they shared a parent. I don't know

Sarah:

if they're in the same like animal kingdom. Emily looks kind of like an orc.

Mark:

Kind of.

Sarah:

Sort of. The distance between the bottom of her nose and her lip is like three feet. But she

Mark:

I don't want to be mean to her.

Sarah:

She's a cute. She's a cute little old lady, but she's a cute little lady in a completely different way than Doreen is a cute little old lady.

Mark:

I agree with that.

Sarah:

Okay. And she's trudging along, again, yelling at Kaiser

Mark:

because Kaiser the dog is crap.

Sarah:

That's what walking Kaiser is, is walking and yelling Kaiser over and Kaiser, something. Maybe that's Robert Cavendish's way of, like, converting everybody around him to Nazism. Maybe. By making them yell German words Kaiser, at the dog. Kaiser.

Sarah:

And he should have named him Heil Hitler. Because then Emily Biebus would have been marching around the quarry yelling, Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler. Maybe it would stop the bonking. And Tara would be saying, hi, Hitler. Hi, Hitler.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because meanwhile, the creepy coopers are down in the quarry.

Mark:

They like birds and meditating.

Sarah:

The creepy coopers are in the quarry.

Mark:

The creepy coopers in the quarry.

Sarah:

They're in the quarry having sex with their clothes on.

Mark:

Now there's nothing wrong with having sex. And if you choose to have sex in public in a place that you're not bothering other people, you know, it's your little red wagon.

Sarah:

Boy, but I tell you, when it starts raining old ladies, it kinda kills the mood.

Mark:

Well, what I always love about this is Colin hides her face.

Sarah:

Yeah. He doesn't want

Mark:

her to want Christine to see. He's nice

Sarah:

like that.

Mark:

He's nice.

Sarah:

I think they genuinely do care about each other. They're just weird.

Mark:

But she's dead.

Sarah:

But now it's

Mark:

At raining 04:16.

Sarah:

It's raining old ladies. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

Sarah:

Dead. The so the the stuntman, and I can confirm that it is a stuntman Yes. Who plays Emily Beavis in that fall. Does a great job. Yep.

Sarah:

He's got a pinafore on and wellies and a cardigan and a little wig.

Mark:

Yep. And Beavis does a pretty good dead body for that.

Sarah:

She's in a puddle and everything Yep. With her big lip and stuff. And she doesn't say cornhole oat once. No.

Mark:

So Colin leaves, and then it's addressing down to Troy. Oh, Troy. You're so stupid. Yeah. The body came down in an arc.

Mark:

It's not a dive. She was jumped to push, and it's the same killer.

Sarah:

Okay, Barbie. Because there should be one of those scenes, like in Sherlock where Sherlock is looking at something and you get to see like the externalized version of his thought processes when he's measuring and seeing everything. Barnaby looks at the cliff and looks at the ground and he looks at the cliff and he looks at the ground and he's in his head. There's a protractor and it's measuring the angle at which Emily fell.

Mark:

You can't do that and dress down Troy at the same time.

Sarah:

No. But I think Tom did it. Because he he there should be like repeated repeated loop of Emily. Obviously quite the arc. And she landed head down.

Sarah:

Yep. So she either was pushed or she did a swan dive.

Mark:

Swan dive.

Sarah:

To land on her head.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

And she didn't like heights, so that wouldn't be what she would do.

Mark:

Carly gets off the bus. Now, as we mentioned before, it's not yet Thursday. So let's say it's Wednesday.

Sarah:

No. I think it's

Mark:

the day

Sarah:

of the match, isn't it?

Mark:

Oh, yeah. It is. It might

Sarah:

be So it's Thursday.

Mark:

Yeah. It is the day of the match.

Sarah:

So She left Saturday or Sunday to go to London and live with Nico. Yep. And now she's back.

Mark:

Because Nico's on tour and there's nothing to eat in the house or it stinks or There's a leak. There's a leak in the house. She gave that live in four days.

Sarah:

She's only home for a little bit, and she didn't give it up. But I'm sorry. If you invite me to move to the big city to live with you, and two days later, you say, I'm leaving to go out of town.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

I'm not gonna be very happy with you. Why didn't you wait till after you were back?

Mark:

And Barnaby totally craps all over the country here. Anything goes with the country, which looks a lot like Costin. Like, what is the difference between Costin and the country, especially when old vicars can murderous old vicars can drive there on their bike in twenty minutes.

Sarah:

Costa has buses and stores. Oh, he's a townie. Mark, you don't kill somebody just because they make you redundant.

Mark:

Yes. Exactly. Unless it's in the country

Sarah:

where anything goes.

Mark:

Anything goes. Off to the cricket pitch, which this scene is a really good scene. They do there's a lot going on here. Right? Fraser oh, no.

Mark:

This is not the cricket. No. We get that. We get that. This is where The conversation between Ian and Troy.

Mark:

Mentions that it's it was Matthew Draper who died and he had a wife and kids at home. And there was an investigation and everything was blind on me and he died for nothing because they closed the quarry two weeks later.

Sarah:

Nine weeks later. Nine weeks. Again, so not only do we have the awesome Emily Beavis fall, we've got the stuntman playing Matthew Draper flying back from the explosion Yes. In his seventh grade science goggles. Yes.

Sarah:

But it's well done. It is.

Mark:

That's two There's there's an explosion in this episode. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not a little hut, like, later on. Later on.

Mark:

Yeah. So Zelda has a meeting with the ramblers, and there's someone in the back row.

Sarah:

Oh my gosh. Gosh. I'm still not over that woman's hair. My hair is not perfect. Okay?

Sarah:

But I make an effort.

Mark:

You have wonderful hair.

Sarah:

The woman in the back row of the Ramblers meeting made a lot of effort to do something to her hair. Okay. Oh, start the episode, fast forward to this meeting where Zelda is on the stage. And then a lady gets up in the audience to ask a few clarifying questions about the ramble the next day. Ramble.

Sarah:

And behind her in the back row Ramble. To her right is a woman with blonde tentacles. Tentacle hair. Nubs. No.

Sarah:

Because tentacles, you could say, oh, they're crazy dreadlocks.

Mark:

And they might move then.

Sarah:

They're not. They're It's like nubs all over her head.

Mark:

It's like hedgehog hair. No. It's not that much. But It's like buns. Yeah.

Mark:

It's just horrible.

Sarah:

Like six or eight buns.

Mark:

Sausages. It's like sausages. Yes. Blonde hair sausages.

Sarah:

Kaiser comes out of nowhere and bites her hair.

Mark:

Blonde hair sausages? Sausage.

Sarah:

Aryan sausage. I it's clearly hair that took an effort.

Mark:

The ladies like her and the one gentleman that's there.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's definitely a ladies ramble. Of course, when you actually see them rambling, it's more like a trudge. They're more like the Yeah. Flexors across trudgers.

Sarah:

It's right over here. On this path that we're all following Yep. This way, on this path that we're fall well, and this giant map I'm wearing around my neck like a lost child.

Mark:

The Cooper's called the police forty minutes after they found Emily Beavis.

Sarah:

Yeah. That's pretty damning.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

They they claim they got in their car and drove to town to call the police because, of course, they didn't have a cell phone, but they passed a lot of phones on the way.

Mark:

Yep. And now we're at the pitch with the the Fletchers cross versus Midsomer worthy game.

Sarah:

It's the big match.

Mark:

Now we're on Thursday, July 10. The only date we can be sure of in this entire episode.

Sarah:

Yeah. And what this tells us about this cricket team is that these are uppity unemployed people who can play cricket at 02:00 on a Thursday afternoon.

Mark:

Even Troy needs to ask for time off.

Sarah:

Yeah. But I guess we assume everybody else is just independently wealthy or something.

Mark:

So missus Wilson's there, and she's like, Trish? Trish, who? Well, you're stupid.

Sarah:

Oh, hi, lady. I hardly know. Oh, hello, young lady. I hardly know. We don't know each other.

Mark:

Meanwhile, Jane's like cookie monster.

Sarah:

Sandwich Nobody will notice. She grabs five, crams them in her face.

Mark:

Okay. Now we've mentioned we don't know much about cricket. Okay? But we do know one thing, that there are 11 people on a team.

Sarah:

Yes. Okay. So there are actually so this is how it breaks down. Okay? There can be up to 15 actual team members.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

But 11 people play in a Unless you're playing with these weird, like super specialized roles in which you can have a few people you trade out.

Mark:

Like, can make this stuff up.

Sarah:

Like in baseball, when you've got people who only bat but don't run.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

They have they do have some roles like that. But that only makes the team bigger. It doesn't make it smaller.

Mark:

So the the the minimum size it has to be is Is

Sarah:

11 because it's five to six batsmen, four to five bowlers, and one wicket keeper. Wicked? Wicked. Wicked. Like a sticky wicket?

Sarah:

Yes. Okay. Because there's those pins on top that need to fall off, but if they're sticky, if they might appear like they're glued on and you can't knock them off. Okay. That's a sticky wicket.

Sarah:

Okay. I do remember that from when I was drunk in Jamaica. So Robert was 11. He's not there because he's upset. Grieving his wife.

Sarah:

Right? So we're down to 10.

Mark:

Ten. Okay.

Sarah:

But Colin's gonna play. So we're back up to 11. Okay. But Charles has been kicked off the team, is now gonna score keep, so we're back to 10. 10.

Sarah:

So they probably don't have enough people to make

Mark:

a team.

Sarah:

No. But they play anyway.

Mark:

The truth of this episode is Midsomer worthy should win by default.

Sarah:

The truth is that there are not only magical cookies, but magical daggers.

Mark:

Oh, the dagger. We'll get to that. Cavendish is at home, fingering his dagger again.

Sarah:

He's fingering his Nazi stuff. Yeah. Literally, he's got the drawer open, touching things with his finger.

Mark:

Ian Fraser arrives. Okay? So he's there at the pitch. Cavendish is at home with all his Nazi stuff. Yes.

Mark:

Missus Beavis has a shield, which is a

Sarah:

Trashcan lid.

Mark:

Dustbin lid, gives Barnaby the letter about dad's coin collection.

Sarah:

Which Emily had asked Cooper, Colin Cooper, to help her value. Yeah. And isn't he nice? He did that for her.

Mark:

The walkers go on their walk, so they're out at Cavendish Estate.

Sarah:

They're ramblers. They're

Mark:

rambling. Sorry. Trudgers. Trudgers. There's a weird shot of the coin as it's flipped.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

It's very weird shot.

Sarah:

To to decide who bats first?

Mark:

Troy, bulls, and bats because we see him do that.

Sarah:

Yep. And Charles rubs the ball on his crotch. Wow.

Mark:

You have an itch, dude? Like, do you need to take him home?

Sarah:

It's a close-up too.

Mark:

It is. It is a lot of Troy crotch.

Sarah:

It could be a stunt crotch.

Mark:

It could be. Charles keeps score in the scorer's hut. Okay. Walker goes and gets a drink. Who is Walker?

Mark:

No. I have no idea what that line is.

Sarah:

Steven goes to the cricket hut, sees missus Wilson, and she gives him a cup of tea and says, can you take this to the scoring hut?

Mark:

But before that, Charles gets the count wrong. Yes. And the old lady goes in the drink. The walker goes in the drink. That's what my note is.

Sarah:

See, if you put rambler, you'd know.

Mark:

And they do that because the line has been cut. So let's follow the Nazi dagger.

Sarah:

The rope that holds up that side of the rope bridge has been cut, and Robert has cut it. And he's But

Mark:

He's like We don't

Sarah:

know that he cut it with his Nazi dagger.

Mark:

We don't know, but we assume that he used the Nazi dagger because he was fingering it before. Just before. So we'll follow the Nazi dagger on the map. It goes from the Cavendish Estate to the bridge.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

Okay. That's where it is now.

Sarah:

To the scoring hut. To It's like Door Of The Explorer. What?

Mark:

How did it get there?

Sarah:

Nazi collection, rope bridge, scoring Hut. It's like Dora the Explorer. Yes. Somehow gets into Patricia's hands.

Mark:

Yes. There's a reference to Kluto, which for our American people is Kloo. Okay. And Culley makes some Pluto reference to which all I could think about after that was what I have up here in my section on deaths of the episode, which is Charles the bumboy with the Nazi dagger in the scorekeeper shed.

Sarah:

Yeah. Except I win. Except he gets killed with it. But that's funny.

Mark:

It is.

Sarah:

Except I don't really don't think there's a mystery about the Nazi dagger because I think there's a little time gap. And what convinces me most that we don't have an issue with the Nazi dagger is that Robert loves that dagger way too much to use it to cut the rope of a bridge. He wouldn't do it.

Mark:

Okay. But

Sarah:

missus special.

Mark:

Missus what's her name's already at the place, and he was

Sarah:

looking But but Trish isn't. We don't know where Trish is.

Mark:

Yes. Trish is there too.

Sarah:

She's at she's in the cricket pavilion. Yep. But she says, go put go put the water on on the urn. Trish goes into the kitchen, and then we don't know where she goes.

Mark:

Oh, that's

Sarah:

She could have run back to Cavendish Hall, grabbed the Nazi dagger, and came back.

Mark:

Doing mental gymnastics for a screw up thing, mate.

Sarah:

No. I think it's critical.

Mark:

Then show a scene where she's taken the dagger out of the that somebody's taken the dagger out of the case.

Sarah:

Well, I think they must have done it while Robert was out in the woods teeheeing over Zelda fallen in the water.

Mark:

I bet you there's a cutting room floor scene of that. Yeah. It got cut.

Sarah:

Yeah. I think there is too. I think they just kinda went, she got it somehow. Anyway Yep. She uses it to kill Charles to further frame the Cavendishes.

Mark:

There's already a number of problems with this death. So the idea here is that Trish takes the Nazi dagger into the scorekeeper's hut. And as Charles reaches up to change the numbers, and they're killing him because they're blackmailing them. It's not really important. She stabs him in the back.

Mark:

Now I'm not a doctor, or I don't play one on a podcast. Okay? But I have to assume that there might be some spray of blood at this point.

Sarah:

I don't think so.

Mark:

I do.

Sarah:

I think if you stab somebody in the back close enough to their heart or to their spine either way to kill them quickly like it does, and you leave the knife in, I don't think there would be a lot of blood.

Mark:

I think it would seep out at the very least.

Sarah:

I think it would seep out, but I think it would take some time. And though she pulls him against her and her white shirt to lower him down onto the floor Yeah. She doesn't get close enough to him because the knife handle is between them.

Mark:

No. There would be blood everywhere. She would be covered in blood. I don't think so. And she goes, I think he was asleep.

Mark:

Like No. He wasn't asleep.

Sarah:

No. So she grabs his sweater and his hat and then sits down at the counter

Mark:

pretending to

Sarah:

be him. Yeah. And corrects the score because the score went up artificially because he was like, oh, after he got stabbed.

Mark:

Yeah. She screams. They find out he's got money in his bar in his pocket. And then Troy oh. Troy's interviewing Steven, and he asks him the question.

Mark:

Was your relationship of his sexual nature? Sexual. Sexual. He lawyers up, which is the smartest thing he does in this entire episode. Because the lawyer is gonna be like, they did it.

Sarah:

Yeah. So Steven's taken the tea to the scoring hut because missus Wilson didn't ask him to. Nope. Can you find somebody who might be convenient here and going back to the match who might carry this cup of tea? Oh, you'll do it?

Mark:

Oh, thank you. If if Steven said, no, woman, do it.

Sarah:

It would all be different. Ask that girl you don't know to take it

Mark:

to him. Yes. Even Burnaby says, this is all too neat.

Sarah:

Yeah. When they confront Trish after she finds the body and comes out

Mark:

I told you what he wanted me to tell you.

Sarah:

He might've been there later or earlier. I don't know.

Mark:

Now we're off to the Coopers because there's some truth telling to be done here.

Sarah:

Well, we've got the blackmail letter in Steven's cottage. Yep. Where obviously Mrs. Wilson has planted it. We know that Charlie was the one outside the window at the birthday dinner.

Sarah:

Yep. Staring into the window. We've got a little scene in the police station.

Mark:

Was the score miscalculation a message? Yeah. And why did Troy stick his finger and tongue out?

Sarah:

But I got infatuated with the dry erase board behind Barnaby. There's a

Mark:

lot of numbers on there that I didn't know about. They're phone numbers. There are phone numbers?

Sarah:

Yeah. One is Tim's phone number. Tim? Who apparently lives in Ponte Pool in Wales. Oh.

Sarah:

There's also another called Tim. There's also another number for Slough, which is just West of London.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Yeah. So it's a list of phone numbers.

Mark:

Well, it's a good thing to have in the police station just up on the wall.

Sarah:

Yeah. Random Tim, Bob, whatever. Slow. So then they go to the Cooper's house, which is named Portland Place, which is Portland Place is a famous road in London, by

Mark:

the way.

Sarah:

There's a lot of, like, dukes and stuff who live on that road.

Mark:

Barnaby is here for the truth. That's it.

Sarah:

They've got one chance to confess.

Mark:

You killed Beavis. Carnodial. And Colin is like, no. And then he goes, sweet Jesus.

Sarah:

Blasphemer? Well, they didn't kill her, but they did kind of let her die and then burgled her while she was dying.

Mark:

She wasn't dead. She pointed up. There was somebody on top of the hill and they snuck into her house.

Sarah:

Who is like so clearly Mrs Wilson when they show her?

Mark:

Clearly Mrs It's

Sarah:

her in a hat.

Mark:

Yep. Barnaby is so mad at them. They stole her coins. They break into the house with no gloves on at all. They touch everything in the house.

Sarah:

But they didn't think anything was stolen. Doreen didn't notice anything stolen, so they may not have fingerprinted everything. It's just a little village break in where nothing's stolen. Yes. I don't think they would have fingerprinted the place.

Mark:

Coin was worth a £100,000.

Sarah:

Yeah. So that was a Henry the third gold penny. Yep. And the reason why those pennies are so rare, they were minted in December and there were quite a few of them made at the time. But within a year, they realized that the gold they were minted it with was worth more than the coin was worth.

Sarah:

So people who had them melted them down right away. So very few of them exist. Last year, one went for sale at Christie's and it went for over £500,000. Damn. So they kinda got

Mark:

short waited.

Sarah:

Yeah. I mean, in in what, fifteen, twenty years, it went up by 400%.

Mark:

And missus Cooper is like, it was a thin. Yeah. Well, I'm a thinner.

Sarah:

They stole a £100,000 off of a lady who was dying.

Mark:

Yep. Arrest them Troy. Off to the clink.

Sarah:

Meanwhile, mister Eastman, Ian Eastman, from death's shadow is in Morocco. Divorced. Divorced. Which is why miss Beauvoisin.

Mark:

And she gives Barnaby the last clue, which is The house is called Long it's only been on sale for a short time.

Sarah:

Yeah. And the long And short. Tall of

Mark:

it. The long and tall short of it. It wasn't until this moment that I realized that Zelda and Ian were married. I was like, oh, yeah.

Sarah:

Why is that man in her house being so mean to her? Somebody sabotaged the bridge.

Mark:

She is incredibly annoying. And he is just fed up with her. Well, I

Sarah:

would be too. Can you imagine living with her going on and on and on?

Mark:

So they're driving out to the manor. Barnaby has this all figured out.

Sarah:

And we get the scene where Mrs. Wilson is giving Robert Cavendish wine at the table. Now we know Tom was supposed to meet Joyce at Long Trees with Ms. Bouvazone Yes.

Mark:

At 04:00. 04:00.

Sarah:

So somehow, missus Wilson got Robert to sit down at the dining room table at 04:00 like he's getting ready to have his dinner.

Mark:

By the way, I have a giant floral arrangement.

Sarah:

It's It blocks the whole window behind him.

Mark:

And Cavendish does such a good job acting here Yeah. With the slurring. And he he just does a great he is the actor of the episode.

Sarah:

Because she's put volume in the tea. Yep. In the, wine. Sorry.

Mark:

And missus Wilson spells out their whole evil plan. Let me explain our evil plan.

Sarah:

He killed my Matthew. He was my knight in shining armor.

Mark:

Troy almost kills Barbie and him.

Sarah:

Yeah. They're trying to pass

Mark:

that big truck. Did did they not have a siren and lady lights on their car?

Sarah:

I think Tom should have just leaned out the window and

Mark:

went, woo, woo. The makeup on Mrs. Wilson when they go to when she's young is really good.

Sarah:

Yeah. It is good.

Mark:

That and the Ian Fraser makeup is really good. Yeah. They make them

Sarah:

both look convincingly younger.

Mark:

Absolutely. And then Trish comes in with crazy eyes. Crazy eyes.

Sarah:

Yeah. And there's this weird dolly zoom with her. Yep. So she's holding this big silver serving platter with a dome cover. And calling her

Mark:

Because dessert dinner is almost served.

Sarah:

Mommy.

Mark:

Mommy, you killed daddy. Let me put my fingerprint all over this knife.

Sarah:

And it's like a scene from The Shining.

Mark:

It's very weird.

Sarah:

Because she's like moving but not moving.

Mark:

And then there's the scoring shed reenactment. I I have a note that there will be blood everywhere on her, but

Sarah:

Because Tom is is explaining to Troy Yes. He's too dense to understand. Yes.

Mark:

And so this is a long way to go to frame Steven. Like, I'm gonna have an affair with you.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's clear that missus Wilson, who never has a first name, by the way Nope. Has spent the last nine years twisting her daughter into a psychopath. Yes. Because she's allowed her daughter, who's what, 19 or 20?

Mark:

Something like that.

Sarah:

Because she can't be more than 10 or so in the flashback with the fairy tale.

Mark:

And that was nine years ago.

Sarah:

And it's nine years ago. Yeah. Who now has moved, supposedly moved to the village just to arrange to have an affair with Steven and and is having is having sex with Steven.

Mark:

They're at least at the snog fest.

Sarah:

Just to frame him.

Mark:

That's a long way to go.

Sarah:

And all to get back at Robert Cavendish. And until now, they didn't want to kill him. They just wanted to make him absolutely miserable. His wife is dead. His son's gonna go to prison, and now he is gonna commit suicide.

Mark:

And she could have totally just led him on the whole time, but it is well implied that they're bonking.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah. He goes to see her

Mark:

At 08:00 in the

Sarah:

morning on Sunday. Sunday morning. He's not doing that to hold her hand.

Mark:

No. Cavendish is like, I paid.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

And she goes to cut Cavendish's throat.

Sarah:

No. His wrist. And his mom goes Now this would have sprayed blood

Mark:

But mom says, no. Make it look like a suicide. So she slits his wrist, which would have covered her with blood.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah. That would have that would have sprayed. But then he kind of recovers himself and they wrestle and she ends up with the knife in her, which kills her instantly. I'm sorry. A steak knife in your gut is not going to kill It you looks like

Mark:

in her shoulder. It could it could have been a heart hit.

Sarah:

I thought it was like in her stomach.

Mark:

I thought it was a heart hit.

Sarah:

So Either way, she dies instantly.

Mark:

And then we're just done.

Sarah:

Yep. That's the long and tall of

Mark:

it. So Barnaby explains why Ms. Beauvoisin gave him the last clue. And this is my twisted mind. So it was because of the long and tall of it, they both use the same phrase, so they must be related somehow.

Mark:

Right. And I immediately thought about how the unabodimer was caught.

Sarah:

Because he had patterns in his language?

Mark:

Yep. I'm a broken, broken person.

Sarah:

And Joyce is like, fine. We'll live in Costin. Here's a whole bunch of listings for average mundane stupid houses that you'll like. Here's even one a bunch of above a butcher shop. I bet you'll love that one.

Sarah:

I never wanna go to the country again.

Mark:

Living in town is awesome. I'm just gonna say Barnaby is right here. Tom is correct.

Sarah:

As as one of the things that struck us about this episode, it struck me about the episode that I mentioned before we started recording that the quarry in this episode, and they've got kind of a crane shot of it. Yep. It's so dinky. And so we live in Bloomington, Indiana, which is where the limestone for the Empire State Building was quarried.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

We know a quarry

Mark:

around And that is no quarry.

Sarah:

And that is not a quarry. Is like a hole in somebody's backyard.

Mark:

I gotta say, with this episode in totality, this is again a step up. This second season is really from Bobo to nutsy Bobo.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we had, you know, Anna Massey's character. She was certainly psychotic. We've got the grief driven psychotic priest.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

And now these two, the mother and daughter, they are loony. Fantastically loony.

Mark:

Yeah. Their plan is loony. The whole the killer, the the guy they're trying to stop is loony. Everybody's loony. Colin and Christine are loony.

Mark:

The Ian Fraser's loony. It's all loony, and it's all awesome.

Sarah:

I'm impressed with missus Wilson that she knocks off Emily Beavis when it's raining old ladies and is so confident that she can take her place, that she will get hired to be the new Like,

Mark:

what if she doesn't

Sarah:

get hired? None of this happens.

Mark:

Next thing you know, unsuspiciously, another old lady gets rained.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's raining old ladies in the quarry until missus Wilson gets the job. I guess. The Coopers are like, we can't have sex anywhere anymore. I guess we'll have to go home.

Mark:

Damn Nazi dog. It's Kaiser's fault.

Sarah:

He keeps luring the old ladies to the quarry pit.

Mark:

Okay. So

Sarah:

So that's Dead Man's 11.

Mark:

Dead Man's 11. Our next episode will be season two episode four, Blood Will Out, which is the traveler episode, which I again thought was like season seven, but actually it's not.

Sarah:

Yeah. We get travelers or the less PC term gypsies. Gypsies. And the caravans. Yep.

Sarah:

It's awesome.

Mark:

It's fantastic. And the Falklands War.

Sarah:

So Yeah.

Mark:

So thank you very much for listening, Maniacs. We went a little long on this one, but, we'll do some edits. We had a great time. I think we laugh more in this episode than we ever have.

Sarah:

Thank you so much for listening. It's your comments are great. We we love to know that people are enjoying listening as much as we enjoy recording.

Mark:

I'll tell you how pleased we are. We're so pleased that our children are impressed with our podcast.

Sarah:

They think we're cool.

Mark:

They they think that I showed my son the numbers and he was like, woah.

Sarah:

And they're 17, so they're hard to impress.

Mark:

Yeah. They're very hard to impress.

Sarah:

Thank you for making us kind of cool in our kids' eyes.

Mark:

Excellent. That's quite the accomplishment. Twitter feed is MidsommerManiacs. Our Instagram feed is MidsommerManiacs. Our Twitters are mine is typewriter.

Mark:

I'm intelligirl. And we're available on any podcast station that you choose to listen to us on. Please, if you're on iTunes, rate and review us because that goes a long way to placing us in the search and all sorts

Sarah:

of other things. People find it.

Mark:

So thank you very much, and bye, Maniacs.

Sarah:

Bye, Maniacs.

Mark:

And the born the born dubbed the Bornabees. The born again bornabies.

Sarah:

I was thinking the born identity. The born

Mark:

identity piece. If I can't have my friends over anymore, I think we should split up. I think so.

Sarah:

When we say stuff like that, I just know that you're gonna extract that little bit of funny voice, and you're gonna put that right at the beginning of the podcast.

Mark:

Yes. That's what we're gonna do.

Sarah:

Welcome to Midsomer Maniacs episode nine.

Mark:

Hey, Maniacs. Hey, Maniacs.

Sarah:

Tonight, we are covering season two, episode four, Blood Will Ouch.

Mark:

The last episode of season number two. And just as a reminder, if you let your kids watch the show, they can listen to the podcast. But if the show is too much for your kids, it's probably too much for the podcast.

Sarah:

How many how many little kids do you think like Midsomer Murder?

Mark:

We finally we just broke in according to the statistics to the 18 to 22 market. We finally got some listeners down there.

Sarah:

When we break into the 12 to 15 market, that's when I'll be excited.

Mark:

That's that's the Midsomer slash Fortnite crossover podcast.

Sarah:

That's right. Yeah. We gotta work on that one.

Mark:

Before we begin, we get news. News? News. Yeah.

Sarah:

We should have a sound effect.

Mark:

Yes. We should have some sound effect for news. So, we're recording this on the September 9, but it goes live on the September 23.

Sarah:

Maybe if you have news, you should do it like the, Kermit the Frog. No. I'm in a little Kermit, but what I was trying to think about was the the old British newscasters that did it in, like, the American English,

Mark:

you know. Today

Sarah:

on the waves, there was a boat Yes. And a war and the queen. Look at our go. Are you

Mark:

sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

Sarah:

So what's the news?

Mark:

So first of all, October 1, Midsomer me Midsomer Murders will be leaving Netflix.

Sarah:

On the first?

Mark:

Yes. This is a huge talking point on Kerfluffle. It is full on kerfluffle. But just remember that a Acorn, Amazon Prime, and Pluto TV will still have Midsomer Murders, and Pluto TV is the where they have the channel that shows nothing but Midsomer Murders.

Sarah:

Twenty four seven, baby. Sweet.

Mark:

All for free.

Sarah:

You can't choose what episode you're gonna see, but they just keep rolling by.

Mark:

Also, the official Midsomer account on Facebook teased us on the September 5 with official Midsomer Murder T shirts. Merch. Merch. These included, one has a picture of the village. One has a phrase that says, I'm dying to visit Midsomer.

Mark:

One has, don't you think I look cool in my brand new Midsomer Murders T shirt? One way off in the background says, my blank went to Midsomer, and all I got was this blank. I don't know what it says exactly.

Sarah:

Hopefully, these are, like, first drafts of the shirts.

Mark:

But the one that I want is there is a picture of one that has a badge on it. And if it has a badger on it, that's the one I'm buying first.

Sarah:

A badger on the Midsomer Badge. It's the Costin PD. Yep. Right? The Costin constabulary.

Sarah:

I'm sorry.

Mark:

Stabulary. The CC. And finally, the biggest news of the week is you need to get ready for Midsomer Murders season 21 coming to Acorn TV December 1.

Sarah:

December is not that far away.

Mark:

It's not that far away. And we will have watched all of the episodes we can by

Sarah:

December 1. We're so bad when something new comes on TV that we're really excited about. Like, oh, we can't wait. We can't wait. We're we're gonna ration them.

Sarah:

We're gonna watch like one episode a night.

Mark:

Just one a week. One a week.

Sarah:

Yep. And then we just watch them all. And then we're like, oh, we've seen them all now.

Mark:

Let's start again. I suggest that maybe we livestream those episodes when they come out.

Sarah:

Oh, like we record our responses to them as we watch them?

Mark:

As we watch them. We might we might live tweet them. We could experiment. We could see. Something if we still have a podcast by the December 1 and we're saying those are two checks in the box in my opinion.

Sarah:

Or maybe we should gogglebox it and and put up a Twitch channel of us watching Midsomer.

Mark:

I would I would also be up for that. I could easily set that up where you would watch us watching Midsomer on Twitch. Nobody's

Sarah:

that lame. I'm so grateful for every single person who listens to our podcast that I would not put them through that.

Mark:

Oh my gosh.

Sarah:

The next week, the numbers would just drop.

Mark:

That would be so strange.

Sarah:

We have to come up with all this funny stuff because this episode wow. Oh. There's just there's nothing to be excited about about this episode.

Mark:

I gotta say that there are home runs in this show. Badger's Drift is a home run. You know? I I would

Sarah:

Death of a hollow man.

Mark:

Death of a hollow I would even say Strangler's Woods is a home run. This

Sarah:

is a

Mark:

bad bunt in anything.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

Yeah. So it was filmed in June 1999, May and June 1999. Now I wanna shout out to Midsomer locations on Instagram for setting us straight because we got some of the times that shows were filmed wrong. So for example, remember when we had the all the problem with the cult episode when because we said it was filmed in the winter and it was clearly not the winter.

Sarah:

Because the foxgloves were in bloom.

Mark:

So Midsomer locations on Instagram figured out what happened. Originally on Instagram, the shows were listed in production order, and then somebody reordered them in broadcast order.

Sarah:

You mean on, like, Wikipedia?

Mark:

On Wikipedia.

Sarah:

You said Instagram. Okay.

Mark:

Well, that he's from Instagram. He or she, that person who runs that account, and they reordered them in broadcast order but didn't change the filming order thing.

Sarah:

So So there wasn't some scene setter running around with fake foxgloves No. Jamming them in frozen ground? So

Mark:

the Midsomer locations on Instagram account sent me a list of all the right times and dates, and I absolutely appreciate it. That's fantastic. Thank very much. It was broadcast on the 09/19/1999. I can't believe we're not even into the twenty first century of this show yet.

Mark:

Nope. And it had 9,990,000 viewers.

Sarah:

Or 10.

Mark:

No. 9.99. This episode, we'll get into it. But this is the first episode directed by a woman, Mora Armstrong. She's a Scottish TV director, fantastic trailblazer in the industry.

Mark:

So I was so excited that a woman had directed this. And then I was like, the directing is okay, but

Sarah:

The writing.

Mark:

And then, written by, speak of the devil, Douglas Watkinson. This is his first Midsomer.

Sarah:

I know how that went. Right? We talked about this. Yeah. He had a list of ideas.

Sarah:

He's like, Travelers. Yeah. We ought to include those. And the Falklands. Yep.

Sarah:

Yep. Yep. That all

Mark:

Falklands and the Travelers.

Sarah:

Oh, wife swapping.

Mark:

Wife Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Wife swapping.

Mark:

Yeah. And we'll make it boring. How can you make wife swapping boring? They managed to do it in this episode.

Sarah:

And we'll cram all three of those topics into one episode. Everything together with geese. And all of it will be red herrings.

Mark:

And so many extras.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's a big cast.

Mark:

It's gigantic and includes Midsomer Juggalo.

Sarah:

You gotta wait for that. Don't don't give that away. Okay.

Mark:

Let's do this, baby. I can't

Sarah:

can't stop laughing every time I think about Midsomer Juggalo. He's in there. Okay. Cold open. It's beautiful.

Sarah:

We're in Martyr Warren. Yes. Martyr Warren. Even have Midsomer in it.

Mark:

It doesn't even have Midsomer in it. We have a horse and buggy coming up the road. It's Travelers. Right? Yep.

Mark:

Orville Tudway. Then for some reason, costumer said, let's make honeysuckle weeks look horrible. Yeah. How can we do that? Okay.

Mark:

Well, she's a beautiful 20 year old girl. Pantsuit. Yeah. Okay?

Sarah:

And and a pink helmet that looks more like a horse riding helmet than a motorcycle helmet.

Mark:

Well, what else could we make that pink purply color? The pantsuit. Yeah. Because you always match your helmet to your pantsuit.

Sarah:

Well, she is kind of a richie girl. Just Riding a janky moped.

Mark:

That moped is jank. Totally jank.

Sarah:

And I agree with you. I don't even think it runs. I think somebody added the folio in afterwards. I think it's like, that's a that's a moped.

Mark:

Somebody in the background go.

Sarah:

She rolls down the hill.

Mark:

This is Orville Tudway. Yes. And he meets up with Peter Fairfax who runs the store. Takes no checks.

Sarah:

No. No checks. They take no checks.

Mark:

He says, I got a letter for you.

Sarah:

Yeah. So Peter's got a letter that was sent to the grocery store for Orville, and it was he it was received a little bit after Easter.

Mark:

Norville reads the letter, freaks out.

Sarah:

But what time of year is it now?

Mark:

They don't say.

Sarah:

Like, how long has Peter had this letter?

Mark:

Probably at least a couple months, I would think.

Sarah:

Because he's clearly dying to know what it says. Yeah. Like, as soon as Orville opens it, he's like right there. We're sort of like, oh, what's sake?

Mark:

What's sake?

Sarah:

Can I see it?

Mark:

Can see it? Can I see

Sarah:

it? But all that time, he's just kept it next to the register. Just not opening it.

Mark:

And you've

Sarah:

You would have opened it.

Mark:

I would have opened it two seconds later.

Sarah:

Had the kettle out screaming that baby open. Orville who? Mhmm.

Mark:

The letter freaks out Orville, and then he's full on voice over crazy talk. Yep. Where he goes, it's bad news for somebody. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark:

And then we're back to the watercolors. Yeah. We we had no watercolors in season one, and then we have them for the first two episodes episodes of season two. For the third, and then they're back.

Sarah:

I don't think there's a secret conspiracy of watercolors, though. I don't think there's any meaning to whether they're there or not.

Mark:

I think it's a matter of do we have stuff that we can show the titles over?

Sarah:

Yeah. They they needed some b roll, and they didn't have it. So they had to put the watercolors in.

Mark:

Yep. And I think but I think this is the last time we see the watercolors.

Sarah:

That's what you said last time.

Mark:

I was wrong.

Sarah:

And we cut from the awesome watercolors to the torture of Tom.

Mark:

So Tom needs some new clothes.

Sarah:

His pants do look a little tight.

Mark:

And we are shown Tom in tight pants quite closely.

Sarah:

It's There's Tom crotch.

Mark:

Full on Tom crotch. Yeah. Cully asks for another size. Now the Francis Lee plays the shop assistant.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

And as soon as Gavin gets there, which on rewatching last night, I was like, how does Gavin know they're there?

Sarah:

Yeah. Oh, hi, Gavin.

Mark:

Like, Gavin has no idea that they're there. He's just wandering the streets of Costa and goes into a store. Look. It's the Barnaby's.

Sarah:

You know, I don't know. Because in this episode, Joyce and Cully have been brain swapped with some possessive overcontrolling women aliens.

Mark:

It's the diet episode. I wouldn't be surprised by now.

Sarah:

If they texted Gavin and said, come here. Human Tell him his pants are too tight.

Mark:

This diet would not work on any human being.

Sarah:

No. I mean, you might lose weight, but until you ate a meal.

Mark:

Like, I'm surprised Barnaby didn't go hangry here. Well, he's got

Sarah:

He's hangry the whole episode.

Mark:

I think so.

Sarah:

Because he's living on cabbage soup and raw vegetables.

Mark:

Hangry, Tom.

Sarah:

He's hangry.

Mark:

Yep. He he is aggressive in this episode. Wow. So he's like, whatever. You're on my size.

Mark:

I'm off to Marks and Sparks. Marks and Spencer.

Sarah:

You can't blame him.

Mark:

No. Definitely not. And also, they're like, you've been eating too many canteen lunches. Learn to cook, woman. Yeah.

Mark:

Really?

Sarah:

What are his options? Is he gonna take leftover sheep neck and stewed grapes for lunch?

Mark:

And they're all like, diet. Like, they all agree upon it. I'm like Except him. Does Tom get a say in this?

Sarah:

I'm disappointed in Tom. The fact that he goes along with it. Just why he doesn't put his foot down.

Mark:

Especially because he's angry.

Sarah:

The whole time.

Mark:

Okay. Fleur goes to get her thing fixed, her moped fixed, and it's totally implied that her and Will Saxby are doing something.

Sarah:

Yeah. But he's her dad.

Mark:

He's her dad.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

And his wife Muriel. His current wife. Yeah.

Sarah:

Muriel's all jealous.

Mark:

He's all jealous. You're jealous about spending time with your

Sarah:

daughter? Apparently.

Mark:

I guess so. But that

Sarah:

there's this weird thing. So Orville's kind of like I don't know. He's like a legend,

Mark:

apparently. I guess so.

Sarah:

He comes back to town on a somewhat regular basis, maybe an unpredictable basis because he certainly knows plenty of people who live in Murder Warren. And when he shows up, it's like, Orville's here. Orville's here. Hey. Hey.

Sarah:

Orville's here. It's like you expect there to be a dance number on the street. Yeah. Orville's back in town. Hey.

Sarah:

So he, you know, he pulls his wagon up in Will and Muriel's pasture. And Will's all like, sure, you can stay. And Muriel's like, oh, I don't know. But then when they're talking to him, they're petting his horse. Like, they're being made to pet his horse.

Sarah:

Did you notice that?

Mark:

They're okay.

Sarah:

They've got dialogue, but they're like, pet pet. I pet the horse. I pet like There are so many animals. There

Mark:

are so many animals and so many extras in this episode. It I I think they lost some of the plot by having so much going on. Yeah. Like, just the fact there's at least four different horses. Oh,

Sarah:

plenty. Yeah.

Mark:

And sulkes and all sort oh. There's no sulkes. Yeah. That's what they're called. Those the chariots.

Sarah:

No. I thought a selkie was a a Celtic water horse that drags people into the water.

Mark:

I'll look it up, but I think that's what they're called. They call them chariots. Yeah. And I thought I thought Barnaby was making fun of them calling them chariots, but that's what they somebody else calls them chariots later on.

Sarah:

Okay. So we're already talking about the chariots. There's something I gotta know about them. Okay? When you ride one of these things so this is the two wheeled cart Yeah.

Sarah:

That they race behind the horse.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Sit with your feet wider than you do at the OB GYN. Yes. Okay? Behind a horse Yes. That's running.

Sarah:

Yes. How do you not get horse shit in your face?

Mark:

Okay. First of all, usually horses when when they need to relieve themselves are not running. Okay. Okay. Second of all, it's not horse crap that you're gonna get in your face.

Mark:

It's all the mud from their hooves. Yeah. You're just covered

Sarah:

with stuff. And your legs aren't even out in front of you to kind of block it. Nope. I don't know why their legs have to be so akimbo as they're riding

Mark:

on those things. What they like to do.

Sarah:

I didn't grow up on a farm. You grew up on a farm. I'm just saying it looks a little messy. I don't want to ride in one of those chariot things.

Mark:

Speaking of Orville, he arrives while the Saxby's are fighting. Just walks in the door. Yeah. Bad moment?

Sarah:

You haven't seen me in years or whatever.

Mark:

He suggests that he's gonna bring one or two friends, and then he looks directly at the camera. Yeah. And goes,

Sarah:

like, you know it's gonna be more than one or two. Right? Yeah.

Mark:

You're in Like, I was almost ready for direct address at that point in time, which is never happened in Midsomer words.

Sarah:

If anybody should, it should be Tom looking at the camera going, I'm hungry. Please send bars, boss. Feed me.

Mark:

So then we meet Fleurs parents, Hector and Tricia, who are just awful.

Sarah:

No. It's Hector and Jenny.

Mark:

Oh, that's right.

Sarah:

See, you're doing it too. Oh, it's so hard to keep track of. This episode with all the wife swapping and all the extras and all the red herring parts, the names get all screwed up.

Mark:

It's it's because this episode is a soap opera of red herrings.

Sarah:

Yeah. There are not enough murders. I'm sorry.

Mark:

It's the young and the red herring.

Sarah:

Yeah. It is. There are

Mark:

not enough murders, and there's too much crap going on in the background.

Sarah:

Like Hector gets killed and nobody cares. They're like, good. Anyway, on with the show.

Mark:

On with the show. Fleur wants to go to America and basically blackmails her mother because she knows that her and Orville are wanting to do the Rumpy pumpy. Rumpy pumpy. Kazuo sex. What's that smell is the next thing that's asked.

Mark:

And that smell is cabbage soup. Yeah. But it's to eat oh god.

Sarah:

It looks like kale soup. It

Mark:

oh my gosh. He's allowed to eat as much of it as he wants, and they give it to him for breakfast and dinner. No human can exist on cabbage soup alone.

Sarah:

No. No. It's cruel. And Joyce is cooking it. So it's probably worse than just cabbage soup.

Sarah:

It's probably bad cabbage soup, which is saying something.

Mark:

And it's fresh fruit day. So he can have all the fruit he wants, but

Sarah:

no bananas. Because there's a whole another day just for bananas.

Mark:

And Troy drops a joke there and it just clunks. It's a clunker. So okay.

Sarah:

Tom is Troy's boss. Yep. How does Troy think he's gonna get away with policing what his boss eats?

Mark:

Apparently, it's how it's done in England.

Sarah:

Just let one of the people who work for me try that. And we'll see how long that lasts.

Mark:

That's no. No. But Troy also arrives with a story of a stolen goose. Yes. And it's like this episode is like, we'll we'll have a stolen goose, and then we'll tell goose jokes.

Sarah:

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. See?

Mark:

Wife's Look at all those goose jokes. Yeah. Oh, Shut up. This episode, the goose being stolen is taken directly by hot fuzz.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah. I love Troy trying to count the geese too.

Mark:

Counting animals is tough. I have had to count animals in my life, and it is one of the toughest things I've ever

Sarah:

had to do. It it plays like it's supposed to be this hilarious joke that Troy is trying to count these geese and doesn't he look stupid?

Mark:

Just falls flat. And did you notice that Fleur is like all over him? Oh, yeah. Like, and I'm

Sarah:

like In every scene that they're together.

Mark:

I'm like, that's weird. Like

Sarah:

He's young. She's young. She wants to get out of there.

Mark:

Guess. But

Sarah:

In any way But it's

Mark:

so far in the background, it's not even interesting.

Sarah:

Well, that's how he gets distracted from counting those geese. You know, there's a pretty young thing back there.

Mark:

So it's so Hector blames Tadwell and he says he's a diddy koi, a word I'd never heard before. Well, I've seen this episode a bunch of times.

Sarah:

And they're paying

Mark:

attention But to didn't pay attention to I

Sarah:

just thought they're travelers.

Mark:

It's a in Britain, it's one of a group of caravan dwelling roadside people who are not true Roma. They're half blood. Yes. Diddy koi.

Sarah:

They're half muggle.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

Half gypsy.

Mark:

The the geese can't fly away because their wings are clipped. So Barnaby suggests they walked.

Sarah:

So I looked up Diddy Koi in the urban dictionary. Yep. Because I really wanted to know when you encounter a term like this, you gotta know, is this an offensive term and I just don't know it?

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Cause I don't want to drop it if it's actually an offensive term. And urban dictionary is great for that kind

Mark:

of stuff.

Sarah:

Yes. Because it doesn't say that anything's offensive. You just assume that it is because it's on there. But the examples are always great. Yes.

Sarah:

And the example sentence, one of them for Diddy Koi is like, dang that Diddy Koi done stole our geese and our batteries, our diesel and our batteries. Her pigs are geese. Yeah. It's, it actually comes from a Romanic term. It's like Didi kai, which is, it's like a term of like respect, but it's been bastardized.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

When I first heard it, I thought maybe it was Puff Daddy's body double.

Mark:

Maybe. Didicoi.

Sarah:

Get it? Yep. Puff Daddy.

Mark:

That's a better joke than Troy made.

Sarah:

Did you try to help yourself? I almost dislocated my shoulder reaching for that one so hard.

Mark:

So the traveler camp is getting full with an invasion of travelers, and Troy and Barnaby are off to see what's going on. Yep. The saxbees do nothing but fight. Whatever. Yeah.

Mark:

And he asked them what he had for dinner, and he literally goes through the most luscious description of goose dinner you could have. Tom's like licking his lips. Tom's like, I'm so hungry.

Sarah:

And and and and bread pudding too. Was it good? Can I can I have is there any left?

Mark:

No. None left. Troy's over there.

Sarah:

No. You can't have anything good.

Mark:

None for you. Cabbage soup.

Sarah:

And they talk a little bit about people don't like Hector. Somebody even tried to kill

Mark:

him Yep.

Sarah:

Six or seven years ago. And Tom says that was before my time.

Mark:

Which was weird. Where was he six or seven years ago?

Sarah:

I don't know. Not in Costin apparently.

Mark:

He would have been in Costin. He he, it's just.

Sarah:

The question is where did he transfer from? Maybe he was in the hustle and

Mark:

hustle London. Continuity. Oh, no. Remember, he's in MI 5.

Sarah:

He just Oh, that's right. That's right. That's that's a later episode.

Mark:

Missus Dinsdale arrives and says, all these people have to go.

Sarah:

And this, dear listener, is the scene in which, if you look very closely, there is a juggalo in the background. He's got crazy hair.

Mark:

He doesn't have the face makeup, but that's only because they took it off him.

Sarah:

And and somehow this is the second time that we've managed to mention insane clown posse in our Midsomer Murder podcast, and it makes sense.

Mark:

I will post a picture of said Juggalo Smith.

Sarah:

I thought that lady in the back row of the Ramblers meeting had crazy hair. Oh, no. But this kid has her top, or maybe this is her son. Maybe. Because they have the same kind of like Pokey hair.

Sarah:

Pokey bunches all over. I'm just thinking if you're a traveler and you don't have regular access to like a nice hot shower the last thing you're going to do is put a whole bunch of tacky gel in your hair and spike it up. That kid can't even lay down except on his face. Yeah. Because it goes out in every direction.

Mark:

Maybe you should lay down.

Sarah:

I'm so excited about the juggalo in the background because there's so little else of interest in this episode anyway.

Mark:

Sorry. Missus Dins Dinsdale's upset. What about the ones by the church? They go off to look at the church.

Sarah:

And then no. Wait. Troy is kinky.

Mark:

Yes. Oh, no. We haven't got there yet.

Sarah:

Oh, that's right. Because that's the other traveler

Mark:

group at

Sarah:

the church. The Smiths. You're right. The Smiths.

Mark:

So there's two things okay. Two things that bother me about this episode because there's a lot more than two things, but two things. It's they don't understand Troy and Barnaby. First of all, they talk about the Bixby ladies, like her looks. They evaluate her based on her looks.

Mark:

Saxby. It's Saxby. Sorry. Not Bixby. It's not Bill Bixby.

Sarah:

Muriel.

Mark:

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. The Hulk would make this a better episode.

Sarah:

Who talks about Muriel's looks?

Mark:

Troy does. He goes Well, he does all this. Bad given her age.

Sarah:

Yeah, he says that kind of stuff all the time.

Mark:

And when we get to the second one, I'll bring it up, I stand by that they don't understand Troy

Sarah:

The writer? Yeah. Okay.

Mark:

So he's eating fruit, he gets his apple, someone's crying in the churchyard and they figure out that Orville probably stole the goose from Hector to taunt him. Yeah. And then there's like this weird Pink Floyd reference about bricks and walls and stuff.

Sarah:

There's this ongoing metaphor of a wall, of of little bricks of of wisdom that Troy should be building a wall with.

Mark:

And it's part of his education. Yeah. And and again, they don't know them.

Sarah:

No. That's not the kind of thing they say.

Mark:

I wonder if they've watched the show.

Sarah:

Well, they clearly have decided they being the writer of this episode has clearly decided that Tom is a hen pecked husband

Mark:

Who who

Sarah:

just rolls over

Mark:

Who just rolls over.

Sarah:

To the women in his life.

Mark:

And then sneaks like, Tom would not do that.

Sarah:

No. He'd eat a Mars bar right in front of them and say, I want it, so I'm going to eat it.

Mark:

Yes. We find out that everybody in the second camp, last name is Smith. It's a way to avoid prosecution. Right. So we get Including Juggalo Smith.

Mark:

So

Sarah:

we get John Smith, grandfather of Michael and Rachel Smith

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Who are brother and sister.

Mark:

And they call Troy kinky.

Sarah:

Yeah. Which we find out later why they call him kinky.

Mark:

Which Troy is all upset about being called kinky.

Sarah:

It was kind of out of nowhere.

Mark:

It was kind of out of nowhere, but like

Sarah:

If somebody walked up to you and said, hi. I'm Michael Smith, perv. You'd be a little perplexed, wouldn't you?

Mark:

How did you know that about me?

Sarah:

You just met me.

Mark:

There are other things in this camp, including the guy with the acoustic guitar and the acid washed jeans.

Sarah:

Who just seems to be there to strum and and stare off.

Mark:

Just ugh.

Sarah:

All of the extras because when they get to the Smith camp, they kind of circle around. Right? They circle around Tom and Troy. And as the camera changes angle, you see weird extras in the background. And yeah, this is, you're right.

Sarah:

This is where we get Juggalo Smith back there. But the people in the background are trying so hard to look suspicious and it's kind of sketchy and sneering and yeah. Yeah. It's And they're trying so hard.

Mark:

And there are just so many of them. It's to be honest, the frame is crowded. Yeah. And I think that is one of the problems of the episode.

Sarah:

Yeah. But is there are they trying to establish some kind of cultural difference between Orville's travelers and the Smiths?

Mark:

I think they are, but I don't

Sarah:

think it comes through. Yeah. Orville's wagon is classy.

Mark:

He breaks up the kids. Yeah. And he has good kind words to say to everybody when He's teaching

Sarah:

them how to ride horses. And they seem to have that kind of traditional sort of traveler Yeah. Culture and And then the Smiths are more seen as like these kind of traveling kind of roustabouts.

Mark:

They're criminals.

Sarah:

Looking for little jobs here and there and like, yeah, committing small crimes. And they're clearly not supposed to be the kind of classy traveler that Marvel's gang is.

Mark:

Nope. They all figure out that they're gonna be here for something on Saturday.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

On the way back, Barnaby notices the flowers where he saw the man crying earlier. And then Troy, who is very full of himself at this point, says, we're on a wild goose chase.

Sarah:

One of us had to say it.

Mark:

And it's like, he's dropped another clanger. Like,

Sarah:

just But Tom's reaction is even kinda like, yeah. I knew when you weren't gonna let that go, obviously, you're gonna say that.

Mark:

So they go back to the station and they find out that somebody tried to run over Hector Bridges seven years ago. And he was found by his wife at that point in time, which is Muriel.

Sarah:

Mhmm. Who's now Will's wife?

Mark:

Will Saxby's wife was originally married to Hector, and Hector's wife was originally married to Will Saxby, making Fleur Will Saxby's daughter.

Sarah:

Yeah. And Jenny's daughter.

Mark:

They make wife swapping born. I don't know how they managed to do it, but they do.

Sarah:

I don't know why they would have ever swapped in the first place. I don't

Mark:

know why any of those people married each other in the first place.

Sarah:

Who would want to be married to Hector?

Mark:

Well, you know who I wanna be married to? I wanna be married to Troy because he cuts up the apples to make them look just like chips.

Sarah:

It's so convincing.

Mark:

Tilly Dinsdale calls again. Mhmm. Now, like, at this moment, I'm like, this is another sister figure who all she does is call the cops on people.

Sarah:

Yeah. And she's like the third wheel with her sister and her sister's boyfriend or spouse, and she's a nudge and a hassle.

Mark:

Which is what the lady from the cult was supposed to be. Yeah. But she's charming and interesting.

Sarah:

Yeah. And this lady is annoying. And the rambler sister.

Mark:

Yeah. The rambler sister.

Sarah:

Who cut the puzzle pieces up a couple episodes ago.

Mark:

So we find out Felicity, her sister. So Tilly and Felicity are sisters. Sisters. Mhmm. And she's Felicity is knocking boots with Peter Fairfax.

Sarah:

The grocer. Yep. Knocking boots and playing scrabble.

Mark:

Tilly's gonna It's not

Sarah:

Netflix and chill.

Mark:

Tilly's gonna call Hector and and Fairfax says, Peter says, Hector only makes things worse.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because Tilly's convinced that Hector's like this stand up guy who gets things done.

Mark:

It's just more soap opera. Yeah. It's just more soap opera.

Sarah:

Because he's all bluster.

Mark:

Yep. We're back to the Barnabas, more cabbage soup, and Barnaby goes to bed.

Sarah:

And wakes up with cabbage soup sweats

Mark:

when the phone rings in the middle of night. Like, what what did they do to him?

Sarah:

He's he's hangry and going through withdrawal for food, and Tom's got the cabbage soup sweats in the middle of the night. Poor man wakes up. Flor's on the phone pretending not to be Flor.

Mark:

But it's clearly Flor. Yeah. The travelers are going to get beat up by Hector and his bunch of boys.

Sarah:

So now not only do we have Didicois, we have Squatties.

Mark:

Squatties. Yep. And Fleur is calling and she's at the Saxby's.

Sarah:

Didicois, Squatties, wife swappers. Oh my. I can't even say that.

Mark:

So these are squatties. They're military people in military clothes.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

This is highly illegal. You can't just call out your squatty buddies to go beat up other people.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because though Hector is retired and and his friend who seems to be kind of organizing the rest of the guys looks to be of retirement age, the rest of them look rather young. So you could only guess that they're maybe active duty or maybe they're like

Mark:

I would assume they're active duty.

Sarah:

Reserves kind of.

Mark:

Something.

Sarah:

But they don't just have their old uniforms. They have access to military vehicles.

Mark:

Well, luckily, when their vehicles drive up, there's nice bright lights.

Sarah:

Yes. Hector's house is lit up. Those motion sensor lights are obnoxious.

Mark:

They're they're on. They're off. They it makes no sense at all. No. Troy goes, we need some backup because he's not ready to fight a bunch of squatties, and Barnaby has a plan for that.

Mark:

And he goes in, and this is this this is real Barnaby here. Yeah. Because he goes in and he says, we have some news about your goose, knowing full well what's going on.

Sarah:

It's like distraction distraction. Yeah. Okay. You're gonna make me put the hammer down? I'll put the hammer

Mark:

down. Here's the hammer. And Hector goes, isn't it time for you to turn a blind eye? And part of me says I don't do that.

Sarah:

No. And Hector has a bat.

Mark:

A rounders bat.

Sarah:

So what's the difference between rounders and baseball?

Mark:

Well, it's an ocean. That's the difference. I think there's different rules, but it sure looks like a baseball bat to me.

Sarah:

The bat is the same. Yeah. The game may not be the same. But Hector is like, ball bluster. And Tom's just like, don't make me call it arm response.

Sarah:

And he's like, we'll

Mark:

have armed response here in twenty minutes. And Troy's like, okay.

Sarah:

Yeah. And he's like, I guess we gotta call it off then. Don't have an armed response unit. Wouldn't Troy know that?

Mark:

I would think Troy would know that.

Sarah:

Because there have been some times when they could have used an armed response unit. Anna Massey with that big knife.

Mark:

Yeah. No. No. We have constables with pokey sticks, but no armed response unit.

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

Another thing, and this is green land here, but when they leave, it is clearly daytime.

Sarah:

Yeah. When they're packing when the Squadys are packing up.

Mark:

They just have a blue filter over everything to make it look like night. And Hector is standing in front of the window, and there's a morning sunrise that you could clearly see.

Sarah:

So now Tom has not eaten real food for over twenty four hours

Mark:

And not slept well.

Sarah:

He's been woken up in the middle of the night to go deal with a pompous ass.

Mark:

Who likes Barnaby. His wife likes Barnaby.

Sarah:

And it's only gonna get worse.

Mark:

Yep. So right in the middle of an argument between Hector and

Sarah:

Jenny.

Mark:

Jenny, she goes, you want some tea? And he goes, yes, please.

Sarah:

But I really think we should get divorced. I mean, really

Mark:

that's Like in the middle of divorce, oh.

Sarah:

And his ultimatum is, you know, I used to have my friends around a lot and then and then I didn't anymore. If I can't have my friends around, I just think that we, you know, this just isn't working. She's like, okay. Yeah. Like what kind of ultimatum is that?

Mark:

It's just poorly written and poorly acted.

Sarah:

No, he's an asshole. That's what the problem is. I mean, his ultimatum isn't, you know, I don't feel like we connect anymore. We don't do enough together. He does say we used to laugh.

Sarah:

Yeah. But we don't do enough together. And if we're not interested in spending time with one another, maybe we shouldn't be married to each other. That's one thing. That's not what he says.

Mark:

No. If I can't have my friends over anymore, I think we should split up. I think so.

Sarah:

When we say stuff like that, I just know that you're going to extract that little bit of funny voice, and you're going to put that right at the beginning of the podcast.

Mark:

Yes. That's what we're going to do. I know you do.

Sarah:

And if you're listening, if you don't listen to the very end of our episodes, Mark always puts a little Easter egg at the end of the music at the end of the episode. So if you're not listening to that, you're missing out.

Mark:

There's some gems back there.

Sarah:

Then Troy says the didicoids have gone berserk. No.

Mark:

No. Before the didicoids have gone berserk, you have probably the best filmed, most useless scene in the entire show. You have Fleur and Orville who get to eat sausage, who doesn't get to eat sausage. Yeah. Burnaby doesn't get to eat sausage.

Mark:

Never. Oroville's got extras, but he doesn't get one. No. The content is irrelevant. It's filmed in this very moving camera way in which there's slow pans from right to left.

Sarah:

You got the campfire kinda crackling. A little bit of smoke coming up.

Mark:

And it moves in from mediums to close ups. You're supposed to feel that there is some emotional connection going on here.

Sarah:

Flora is supposed to be learning a life lesson from Orville.

Mark:

And until the very last line, there's no life lesson there. No. The last line is we're going nowhere. We're not going anywhere, but you should be.

Sarah:

Have a sausage.

Mark:

Have a sausage.

Sarah:

Then it's Saturday.

Mark:

And the Barnabas are going to Blenheim Palace.

Sarah:

No. They're

Mark:

not. No. Because the didicois have gone berserk.

Sarah:

And it's just as well they didn't go because if they had gone to the Butterfly House at Blenheim Palace, Tom may have tried to eat them.

Mark:

Nom nom

Sarah:

nom nom. They're like chips.

Mark:

Because he's just completely out of control.

Sarah:

Yeah. Obviously, that's why they have to regiment his food so tightly Because he has no self discipline.

Mark:

On the way to the horse race, Troy runs off the road and they just leave the car there. It makes no sense.

Sarah:

As three of the chariots go across the road, it's like, wow, I guess the event must be somewhere around here. Let's just park here.

Mark:

No. No. No. They did not park. Troy ran off the road.

Mark:

He's in the ditch, and they just leave the car there.

Sarah:

It's because Tom is so grumpy. He's like, god. Just give up. I just So maybe if I can get Troy out of the car by leaving it in this ditch, I can get back in and get my candy bar.

Mark:

We have the chariot race, which is like a fate. Yeah. And somebody online corrected us today that it's not fed, it's fate. And they're right. It's a fate.

Mark:

But it's all illegal stuff. There's like Betting,

Sarah:

booze, and hooch, and All sorts

Mark:

of crazy thing and Morris dancers in blackface and feathers. We

Sarah:

looked it up.

Mark:

They're not in blackface sorta, but with the tradition, with the reputation the show gets later on, this is not good.

Sarah:

My favorite So I looked at several articles and I know you did too, trying to find out the origin of this blackface for these Morris dancers because the other Morris dancers we've seen didn't have that on.

Mark:

Lace white shirts and everything.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well, and all these Morris dancers seem to have on sunglasses too. Yes. Which I don't remember seeing before. And there's, you know, there's kind of a back and forth about the origin of this face paint and whether it's a racial thing or not a racial thing, whether it's just hiding one's identity for the dance and that, you know, it has a different meaning.

Sarah:

But my favorite was an interview with one lady who wears the black paint, but only across like her nose and her cheekbones, like a stripe across her face. And she says she only wears it on part of her face because her daughter-in-law American and she doesn't want to insult her.

Mark:

I'll give you an easy way to not insult her. Don't put black on your face.

Sarah:

Yeah, there is that.

Mark:

That's just a simple little rule.

Sarah:

So if somebody else out there has a more definitive answer for why some Morris dancers wear the dark pain on their face, we'd love to hear it because everywhere I looked, for every argument, there was a counterargument somewhere else that disagreed with it. I couldn't find a definitive source anywhere.

Mark:

So Troy does a little dance with the with the dancers. Yeah. There are all these people from the village there, more than travelers. Yeah. Right?

Mark:

So this is like a party that everybody knew about. Now I'm Hector, and I'm grumpy. My wife has just suggested that our marriage is probably over, and I bet I'm not getting that tea. Okay? So I'm upset.

Mark:

So what am I gonna do? Let's go to the travelers race.

Sarah:

So where is this being held? Is it being held on Will and Muriel's pasture? It's I not

Mark:

think this is at the church.

Sarah:

As we'll establish. They're on top of each other.

Mark:

Yeah. The church, Muriel's, hectares, and the saxophies all live on top of

Sarah:

each other.

Mark:

Literally in one case.

Sarah:

Yeah. They're and Tilly Tilly and Felicity, they're all very, very close to each other. Okay.

Mark:

The stick in the mud club is there with Hector and Mrs. Tillsbury or whatever. Felicity?

Sarah:

Yes. She's got her gloves on.

Mark:

And why did they even come just to yell at Barnaby?

Sarah:

Well, I think Felicity Dinsdale would have enjoyed it.

Mark:

Oh, I think she came because Peter's there.

Sarah:

Right. But Tilly, her sister, yes, she's there to be a grump and to complain. And Hector's and Hector's there to be a grump and complain.

Mark:

Stick in the mud club.

Sarah:

I have to tell you something about Felicity Dinsdale.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

She's played by Philida. Philida. Philida Law is her name. She's Emma Thompson's mom.

Mark:

Oh, that's nice.

Sarah:

And she's been in everything.

Mark:

Well, of course she has.

Sarah:

And she's had the same hairdo.

Mark:

Of course she

Sarah:

has. Always. I love her in Kingdom.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

If you haven't watched Kingdom, it's Stephen Fry. It he plays a lawyer in this little coastal town.

Mark:

It's not a mystery show.

Sarah:

No. It's so good. It's just like a nice warm day Yep. Peaceful show. Yep.

Sarah:

Kinda northern exposure y.

Mark:

Yeah. I would say exactly the same.

Sarah:

She plays his aunt on that show. And fill it a lot. She's just she's just a great actress, but but she always has that. It must be in her writer that she has the same hairdo. Yep.

Sarah:

She's gotta have that big bun.

Mark:

Hector goes home. He's upset. And I have a note here, thirty one minutes and no bloody murder. He goes home and fingers his guns. I don't understand why he puts his gun.

Mark:

Like, why he gets his gun out and loads it.

Sarah:

Because he's a bully. He's like, well, I ought to go down there with my shotgun. Well But he knows that's patently illegal. He's not gonna do it. So he puts it down and he starts drinking instead.

Mark:

And Orville shows up and says

Sarah:

The letter.

Mark:

John Lampson's letter, read it. Read it. And we find out that Orville was in the army with Hector.

Sarah:

They were in The Falklands together.

Mark:

So the race is on.

Sarah:

Tom even places a bet.

Mark:

$5. He's happy

Sarah:

to turn a blind eye to And

Mark:

the gun goes off. Burnby loses his bet. No.

Sarah:

Tilly hears the gunshot. Muriel hears the gunshot.

Mark:

Yep. Hector's dead. Without his belt on.

Sarah:

Yes. Muriel found him.

Mark:

George is back, but he doesn't do much in this episode.

Sarah:

No. Except get to the crime scene incredibly fast

Mark:

with his whole crew. They don't know how to ride George either.

Sarah:

He's been dead less than an hour, and the whole crew is there and Tom is just showing up even though Tom was just right there.

Mark:

Thirty four minutes into this episode before death. I gotta say it's a disappointment.

Sarah:

Yep. And the killer stole a wine cooler.

Mark:

A wine cooler with 40 k.

Sarah:

It's silver. Yep. It's old. It's fancy. It looks more like a punch bowl.

Mark:

How could we find a punch bowl?

Sarah:

Let's poke the grass with sticks.

Mark:

Constables with poking grass sticks.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

Because you don't know.

Sarah:

Maybe it's tiny. Maybe

Mark:

it's no. Maybe they buried it. Maybe.

Sarah:

I don't know. With the shepherd's pie?

Mark:

And why are they all clumped together?

Sarah:

They're very close together. If you're doing a fingertip search for a tiny piece of evidence, that makes sense. But I don't they didn't really have any reason to think that there was any evidence in the grass. No. But they had those extras.

Sarah:

They were already in uniform and they'd already given them sticks.

Mark:

Sure have those sticks.

Sarah:

Extras. Somewhere there's some blind people wishing they had those sticks. Okay.

Mark:

I got to cut that chunk.

Sarah:

Maybe all those constables are blind and they're not looking for anything. They're just walking across the grass, and you're making fun of them. You're cold.

Mark:

I am. I'm cold. Muriel heard

Sarah:

the shot. You're gonna cut that joke.

Mark:

Is that an insensitive joke? I I don't know. Muriel heard the shot and saw a man leaving that she describes as he has hair and is of a height.

Sarah:

You got you gotta give her credit though. Okay? So Elizabeth, Garvey, who plays Muriel, you gotta give her credit because she's acting like someone who is a bad liar.

Mark:

That's true.

Sarah:

And that can't be easy to do. Yep. Because it's so clear that she's making it up as she goes along.

Mark:

And like, okay. Forty minutes into this episode, Barnaby does a show off here Yeah. Where he's like, I figured this out. You used to

Sarah:

be married to you, and

Mark:

you used to a man Dead. And you used to be a goose.

Sarah:

And how did you know all that? How

Mark:

because I have a brain.

Sarah:

I'm just showing off. I'm just showing off.

Mark:

Travelers can't leave. They gotta stay on. Yep. And they search Ormol's caravan. No gun.

Mark:

No wine cooler.

Sarah:

Don't forget, Muriel was also there to report when Hector got run over by the car. Yes. What a convenient.

Mark:

There's no recreation of that crime. I'm so distracted by that crime. I would

Sarah:

have liked to have seen Hector almost get run over. He that would have been nice.

Mark:

I

Sarah:

don't know. He deserves everything he gets.

Mark:

But Barnaby has a plan. You, Troy, search the rest of, I'll search the rest of these vans. Troy, you go see the Smiths.

Sarah:

Without a warrant.

Mark:

Because then I can enjoy my Mars bar.

Sarah:

Yeah. And then they go and confront well, they he goes home and then Cully, you know, who's She's just the hint, the clue dropper.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Oh, by the way, dad, while I was auditioning for my tissue commercial, that's not a tissue commercial. I thought I would tell you that Stephen Miller or Stephen Miller who works at the grocery store.

Mark:

He's a good guy.

Sarah:

He's a good guy, but he swore he would kill Hector no matter what. Red Harry. Yeah.

Mark:

She just like That's what they should be feeding Barnaby.

Sarah:

He should be on fish.

Mark:

He should be on red herring because there's lots of it in this episode.

Sarah:

When they go confront Peter in the grocery store, Tom is epic hangry.

Mark:

He is. And he smacks his hand down on these magazines, and it's made clear that he's smacking magazines. And I still don't know why.

Sarah:

There's a close-up of his hand. Yeah. And I just thought, he kinda needs to trim his nails.

Mark:

There's that whole scene

Sarah:

And there's that

Mark:

tries to be funny.

Sarah:

Dome mirror Yeah. So they can see them coming in the store. Ugh. What happened? When we find out that Stefan did three months in jail for stealing a motorbike, and Hector, who was a magistrate, like a local judge, sentenced him to three months in jail, which is a pretty extreme sentence for a young kid, first crime.

Mark:

He also sentenced him to a red herring. Yeah. Because that's what he is.

Sarah:

Yeah. So they're like, but you're Peter and you're the grocer, so you must know everything. He's like, I don't know anything.

Mark:

So we're gonna go to Stefan's house. And we head over to Stefan's house, which is the darkest house in the world. Stefan is a poor kid. He can't afford electricity.

Sarah:

No. He doesn't have any lights in his cottage.

Mark:

There were there were times in this episode in this cottage, I was like, I have no idea what's going on.

Sarah:

Who is that? Who's fighting?

Mark:

Who's punching What is going on? It's so dark. Where's Rachel? She's in the bedroom because this entire part is a soap opera. Yeah.

Mark:

But you work for the family business, tarmac ing paths.

Sarah:

Yeah. That little scrawny girl, she's the muscle of the operation apparently. Keep away from Rachel.

Mark:

What like, there's too many characters, too many interactions, and too much soap opera.

Sarah:

And so Rachel and Stephen are like Romeo and Juliet, you know, the forbidden love that just started the day before when he asked her to the movies. Yep. And now And now she's cannot be separated.

Mark:

And can't be separated.

Sarah:

Yeah. She'll she'll alienate her entire family. And she's known nothing but them, but Stefan, the grocer's boy.

Mark:

So Peter and Felicity are playing scrabble. Tilly

Sarah:

comes so in. Happy together.

Mark:

Tilly comes in and Peter asks Felicity about Tilly and Hector. And there's a nice scene here where she's listening to them talk about her and about how

Sarah:

She had a thing for Hector when they were younger, but Hector liked Felicity.

Mark:

Felicity would have never let her get anywhere near Hector. And she accuses Barnaby, which is the best joke in the whole episode.

Sarah:

Yeah. I know who killed Hector. I bet you it was that Barnaby. Hardy, hardy,

Mark:

Well, Tilly goes to bed, but she is awoken by the dark pig wrestlers. The pig wrestlers. Pig wrestling.

Sarah:

And they they that may be the best scene. I know you like the scene of of Fleur and Orville at the campfire, but that silhouette Yeah. Of the rustlers at the top of

Mark:

the hill. Rustlers.

Sarah:

It's all backlit.

Mark:

It's a nice scene.

Sarah:

Nice shot. Maybe that backlight is from Hector's safety light. Maybe. Maybe. Because his bright But

Mark:

the piggy looks great.

Sarah:

But it's like a Three Stooges scene up there. And then Peter shoots one of them. He's like, I got that one.

Mark:

Barnaby arrives the next day because he's called over and says that shooting thieves is illegal. It's clearly not a story in America. And then plays around with the scrabble letters. And the second time we watched this, I was like, okay, I'm so discertened by this episode. I'm like, you didn't put your Scrabble board away from the night before?

Sarah:

What are you, children? Meanwhile, I'm like obsessed with that giant pipe on the wall in Felicity's kitchen. Every time they cut to it, that big wide pipe with that big pipe strap on it. I'm like, what's in the corner? Does it lead to like a furnace or is there a fireplace?

Sarah:

Or is that a heating element over there? Like what needs an exhaust pipe in the kitchen? Why would they put it at that angle and on the wall instead of in the wall? At the same time Wow. This scene is boring.

Mark:

Barnaby moves the the tiles on the scrabble saddle, whatever it's called.

Sarah:

Mhmm. On the rack.

Mark:

I love NT, which I immediately thought, like Windows NT? Because I'm an IT nerd. Too violent. Barnaby would never do that. Why not?

Sarah:

Because he he In his hangry state, he is not himself.

Mark:

It's no excuse.

Sarah:

Okay. If you fed me nothing but cabbage and raw vegetables for three days, I would be the one

Mark:

resting the day chewing on them. We go off to Costin Woods to find

Sarah:

Saxby. Well, don't forget. This is when Felicity tells Barnaby there's something of the knight of Hector.

Mark:

Oh, yes. Something of the knight. Children of the knight. Children of the

Sarah:

knight. So, like, Hector was a vampire. That would mean it good.

Mark:

That would mean it more interesting. He's not

Sarah:

really dead. He wakes up in George's in George's morgue. Yeah. That would have been a better episode. It would

Mark:

have been a much better episode. They go off to Cottonwood, and Troy trashes the car yet again. They're all looking at you, Troy. And laughing.

Sarah:

It's like this clear flat kind of pasture. And Troy manages to find the one, like, one by one foot sinkhole for the tire of the car.

Mark:

You cannot keep the car on the road. You cannot do it.

Sarah:

And so this is this is supposed to be so Will is a, a forester. Right? And so he's at work. This is him at work. Yeah.

Sarah:

In the forest.

Mark:

And by the way

Sarah:

Not

Mark:

really. Hector was a brazing floor. Yeah. Like, he just drops it like it was nothing.

Sarah:

Yeah. Why wouldn't somebody said something before? Anyway and then Muriel just appears. Like she psychically knows when people visit her husband at work.

Mark:

I got, I got to, I got to agree.

Sarah:

Do you have that power? I do. Are you going to appear at my workplace one day?

Mark:

If the cops show up, yes.

Sarah:

You just flip up here. Up here. In your Range Rover.

Mark:

Yep. Let's go see Fleur. Burnaby goes, Hector never touched you. Like, like, did they? Not not?

Mark:

Ugh. I don't know.

Sarah:

Me so sorry about that later.

Mark:

Saxby and Jenny realized that something's on, and suddenly Muriel's like, at least Hester should be fun. What what fun could Hector be? Son.

Sarah:

So we know that Hector abused Floor. We find out later that he he beat her.

Mark:

Right? We know that Jenny, Muriel, Will, Orville are all in on something.

Sarah:

Yes. But why does Jenny stay married to him?

Mark:

I do not understand.

Sarah:

When she knows that he's abusive, because he must beat her too. Yeah. And he he admits that he hit Muriel for a lot less than this. Right?

Mark:

So and then Muriel's sticking up for him and not in

Sarah:

a Why would she even

Mark:

unabused wife.

Sarah:

Yeah. She's like, oh, but he used to be fun. Like, what? Just ugh. We saw nothing redeemable about Hector.

Sarah:

Nothing.

Mark:

No. No. No. But they have an idea. Yeah.

Mark:

We run into Fairfax at the church. Hector killed his wife while

Sarah:

his This is the second time that we've seen Peter in the graveyard. The first time we just kind of pan across him and there's just a gray haired guy sitting on the bench. Yep. And now we know it's Peter. He's looking at some lily of the valley.

Sarah:

Yeah. He's planted over his girlfriend's ashes.

Mark:

And he has a this is a good scene in the sense that he says, I didn't kill him because I found a new love in my life. Yeah. He has felicity now.

Sarah:

Yeah. So he doesn't have to be angry anymore. Yep. Aw.

Mark:

Back to the travelers camp, old man Smith has taken a knock to the head.

Sarah:

Yep. John Smith is dead in his trailer.

Mark:

John George, are you put Tom, are you putting on weight?

Sarah:

It's just so heavy handed. Like, who would say that? And Troy yeah. At a murder scene. The body's still warm.

Sarah:

He hasn't been dead an hour. Are you getting fat, Tom? No. We're in a tiny trailer, George.

Mark:

Oh, look. What's in this box? Red herrings. Hair jewelry. Oh, look.

Mark:

What's in this cupboard? Red herrings. Wine cooler.

Sarah:

I had so I was curious about this. So I knew that so he opens the box. We see this this really fine delicate jewelry made of human hair. And of course, that's why John Smith said that Troy was kinky. He was talking about his hair.

Sarah:

His hair is not kinky. Maybe he's got a little bit of a wave. Maybe. I've got kinky hair.

Mark:

I have kinky hair.

Sarah:

Anyway, so we know that John Smith makes this very fine jewelry from human hair.

Mark:

It's gorgeous.

Sarah:

Now this is not a new thing, right? No. It's been around for a long time. The Victorians were well known for making hair, mostly from dead relatives. It was a way it was a memento of somebody dead.

Sarah:

And that made me curious because I thought, wow, these people are supposed to be at least part Romani, so they're Eastern European. And I I didn't know if that tradition existed in that part of the world too. Yes. And so I started the Googling, you know, and looking it up and everything.

Mark:

We're so gonna get in trouble with our Googling for show. Making jewelry from human hair.

Sarah:

No, it's not really that weird. You'd be surprised how many people do it now. And of course, so big in the Victorian era. Yep. A huge deal.

Sarah:

And so the first interesting thing I found was instruction books on how to make things out of human hair, but they used to sell kits Oh. In the Victorian era. Everything you need except the hair.

Mark:

Oh. Ain't that nice? Nice of them.

Sarah:

Yeah. So you just gotta go, you know, pluck some from your sister or whatever.

Mark:

There's sis.

Sarah:

But there still exists in England, this Victorian hair workers society.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Though I have to tell you, I don't think their website's been updated since 1997.

Mark:

They have a website.

Sarah:

That's what it says at the bottom.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

Apparently now

Mark:

I have to link to that in the show notes.

Sarah:

It's a great website.

Mark:

Apparently Why are we getting all these hits?

Sarah:

Hair work is suddenly becoming a really big thing. But the people who run it, not only support, the preservation of Victorian hair jewelry and Memento Mori, that kind of thing, but they also sell horsehair for the making of this jewelry. So you can now make, which I think is just cheaty because a horse's tail, the hair in a horse's tail is so much bigger than a human hair. It's just, just, it's like knitting with like great big heavyweight yarn.

Mark:

But that fact alone is more interesting than anything in this episode.

Sarah:

I don't know. There's blood spatter coming up.

Mark:

Oh yeah.

Sarah:

It's not Mrs. Bundy level blood spatter, but it's there.

Mark:

Okay. They go off to see Steven and there's a big fight. Stefan, there's a huge fight in the dark again.

Sarah:

Yeah. Michael's like, what are doing with my sister? Got

Mark:

You killed my grandfather.

Sarah:

And then grumpy Barnaby's gotta break it up stop

Mark:

stop stop stop

Sarah:

stop stop I'm so hangry I'm gonna chew on one of you if you don't stop fighting

Mark:

and they figure out that there's a different time for the shot than what Muriel's telling them.

Sarah:

Yeah. They go She claims it was at 03:15, but Tilly's like, oh, I really I maybe I could have done something if I'd only when I heard the shot at 03:00 during the race.

Mark:

Right after the race started. Yeah. So they go over to the Saxby's and go, you have a day to figure out your alibi. What cop would do that?

Sarah:

You know that question that you can't answer now because you don't remember? But you I'll give you some time to

Mark:

think about it.

Sarah:

You better remember by later. Thanks, cop. No problem.

Mark:

They call Ted Wells old army buddy and talk to his wife.

Sarah:

Yeah. Okay. No. You gotta hold on a second because so the Ministry of Defense has not been helpful. Right?

Mark:

Which I don't understand why the Ministry of Defense would not be helpful. I'm I understand that the falcons war might not have been a very positive or

Sarah:

And maybe they would be helpful, but not on the three or four day investigation timetable of Midsomer Murder. Nope. Right? Where things happen rather fast.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

So, but they do have a list of the people who were in the unit that Orville and Hector were both in. And Barnaby says, I don't care. Just pick one. Just call anybody. Call any of them.

Sarah:

And Troy just happens to choose Lampson.

Mark:

Just happens.

Sarah:

And then he's looking at the map, trying to figure out which of them they should visit. And he says, everybody I know lives on the edge of a page. Yeah. Again, this kind of weird.

Mark:

It's just strange.

Sarah:

And Tom says, well, that guy lives just far enough away. We ought to call before Yeah. We But we ought to call before we go. Yep. And they get his widow instead.

Sarah:

Yeah. And that's when they find out the key to the entire relationship between Orville and Hector, which again, red herring. Right. But

Mark:

Was that the name of their unit in Argentina?

Sarah:

But if Troy had picked anybody else

Mark:

It would have been a different story.

Sarah:

They wouldn't have known what was up between the two of them.

Mark:

Yep. So they go confront Orville, and he tells the whole sad story without a flashback. Nope. Would have been interesting if there was a flashback.

Sarah:

They would have had to get what's her name from cult to pretend to be a military officer in The Falklands.

Mark:

Some something. Just Here I am in our Well we can't do that because it would require too many people and too many other things. Like every other scene in this Horses

Sarah:

and stuff.

Mark:

Travelers are off, but not Orville. He's staying around because maybe he's a daisy. Where did you even get any indication of that, Troy?

Sarah:

Troy's just making stuff up. Just

Mark:

insert silly Troy statement here. It doesn't. Like, is smarter than that.

Sarah:

So Barnaby uses the last bit of his energy from not eating real food to climb all the way up to the top of the church tower.

Mark:

And set Troy up there.

Sarah:

Yep. Troy steals his candy bar.

Mark:

But here's the second part that I say is not Troy and Barnaby. In the glove compartment where the Mars bar is supposed to be, there is clearly the enlarged bosom of a young lady Nipple. From page three including a nipple. Yeah. That's not Barnaby and Troy.

Sarah:

Folded to that page. Yeah. Folded open to that page.

Mark:

That is not Barnaby and Troy. No.

Sarah:

They wouldn't have that in their

Mark:

fucking apartment. They're not those kind of guys. No. Remember, Troy gets the comic book and pets it.

Sarah:

Yeah. They're not page three.

Mark:

X file. It's it's no. Just They're not page three guys. It just I hated that part. And plus, Barnaby should go Bill Bixby at that point.

Mark:

Give me my Mars bar.

Sarah:

Well and and Peter's grocery store is right there. You could just go in there and get something

Mark:

Just get something.

Sarah:

Whenever he wants. But instead, he goes to Felicity's farm and gets the gateau.

Mark:

Oh, he gets the good stuff. We find out that Hector was abusive after some drinks, and Troy is a psychic phone man phone person Mhmm. Because he knows Barnaby's eating. He can tell. And Barry says banana and hangs up.

Mark:

That was that's Barnaby.

Sarah:

That was a good line. So why do you think Felicity is, like, touching Tom's hand? I don't know.

Mark:

It's so weird that both Jenny and Felicity have this crush on Barnaby. It's weird.

Sarah:

Maybe he just comes across as as needing to be taken care of.

Mark:

Maybe because he's so weak with hunger.

Sarah:

He's so hungry. His clothes are now falling off of him. The scene where he goes and gets in the car after leaving Troy and Church Tower.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

His suit looks like they've put a suit on and it's like two sizes too big.

Mark:

It it stopped making sense. He's in the big suit.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. That's a talking heads reference, right? Yes. Okay.

Sarah:

So some of us wouldn't know the name of the document. The talking heads in the giant suits. Yes. Yes. He's in his giant suit.

Sarah:

But she's Felicity's touching Tom's hand and he's like, I don't care, lady. You can stroke my hand as long as I get this cake. Yep. Do whatever you want. Gatto.

Sarah:

Just get away from my gatto.

Mark:

Give me my gatto. They pull in Fleur and the Bixby's to

Sarah:

Police station.

Mark:

Police station only so that Jenny and and Orville are left alone.

Sarah:

I didn't really wanna talk to you anyway.

Mark:

Then why didn't you watch a five minute scene of it?

Sarah:

Can you imagine if the police pulled you into the station with your spouse and your child and grilled you and then at the end went, I didn't really wanna talk to you anyway. No. I just wanted to get you out of there. Now Jenny has a giant house all to herself. It's an estate.

Sarah:

It's a man's.

Mark:

With many rooms. Huge. Big bedrooms with beds.

Sarah:

But she goes to Orville's little wagon to do Yeah. The The shagging wagon to do the rumpy puppy. Like, I don't know. Maybe she associates the house with Hector or maybe it's just a little, you know, badness doing it in the wagon.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

But if I was given the choice, I think I would choose the giant house over the little wagon.

Mark:

I would think so. And we we forgot something because it's completely irrelevant. The whole Michael and Rachel and Stefan ending thing.

Sarah:

Yeah. That John said to Stefan instead of confronting him said, I don't want Rachel to live this life. I want her to have a better life. Are you gonna take care of her? And then when the Smiths leave the village,

Mark:

Oh, save me shopkeeper boy.

Sarah:

Michael stops and Rachel lives Get out of

Mark:

them for twenty four hours?

Sarah:

With no bags, no luggage, no belongings. Nothing.

Mark:

They're travelers. They don't need bags.

Sarah:

Then why do they have a big caravan full of stuff? I don't know. She's gonna stay with Stefan. Bye. Bye.

Sarah:

They wave.

Mark:

They put Jenny in the cell overnight.

Sarah:

But Troy's face, when he pulls back the little curtain of Orville's wagon, it's like, they're at it. I got you. Like, wouldn't he have known from, like, 30 feet away if the wagon was rocking a little bit? Like, did you really have to pull the curtain back and be like, I see you.

Mark:

Yeah. So it ends up that Kelly wasn't selling Kleenex. She's selling co chocolate cake.

Sarah:

It's not good. It doesn't taste good.

Mark:

And Burnaby's like, I beg to differ.

Sarah:

And that commercial is so bad. It's so bad. I'm having a dinner party, and I got all this food from this great place that does carry out. And here's it food, and here's the food, and here's the food. But what he doesn't sell is dessert.

Mark:

No chocolate ghetto. No. And then she just sticks her finger her her fork in the cake.

Sarah:

Bad hostess. Bad hostess. Bad hostess.

Mark:

Orville and Jenny are in the interrogation room, and she falsely confesses to killing Hector. Yeah. I was obsessed with the sign behind them. It says a couple of drinks never stopped him driving. The dead girl will.

Sarah:

Bum bum bum. But that's the kind of drunk driving posters they had in the nineties.

Mark:

Yep. Jenny heard Rowe take the slag and run. Troy has arrested the wrong person because

Sarah:

Yeah. Because Hector has never been a grocer bully than he was in the scene that we didn't see until now. Yeah. The way he talks to Orville about Jenny and Fleur.

Mark:

And they top they stop Fleur from getting on the plane.

Sarah:

She's going to

Mark:

Milan. She's going to Milan. And we see the reenactment and blood all over Fleurs shirt. Yep. The blood from the last episode where there was no blood.

Mark:

We now have blood everywhere.

Sarah:

I don't know why I have a hard time wrapping my brain around this that Hector can physically abuse Fleur. She's not a child. Yep. And one would presume Ginny doesn't have a job. No.

Sarah:

Right? So she's home. Why would she have never stopped him from beating her daughter with a belt? Yeah. And why would Flor have ever let him?

Sarah:

She's 18. She's over 18. She could have left. She could have gone to live with her dad. Who's like what?

Sarah:

Two feet away in his house. Why she didn't get out of there? I mean, I'm not trying to like blame blame a victim, but she seems gutsy enough to not put up with it.

Mark:

And to be when

Sarah:

she gets a gun at

Mark:

her end, she ends it.

Sarah:

Yeah. And she and she has options. She's not like beholden to him unless she's really just money grubbing to try to get her ticket to America and she's willing to put up with it. But that's not worth it.

Mark:

It makes no sense at all.

Sarah:

No. Why Jenny would have put up with it, why Fleur would have put up with it, why Muriel doesn't say don't marry him. He's an evil abuser.

Mark:

Yep. And we find out that John Smith was killed on accident by Will Saxby who was planting evidence. Yeah. Oh, well. Whatever.

Sarah:

Does Barnaby look like a red trouser man

Mark:

to you? And then they ply him with food, and then thank god the episode is over.

Sarah:

Coco Van and bread pudding. And Tom is like, yes, please. Can I have some more food, please?

Mark:

So to sum up, probably best episode ever. So

Sarah:

who who's the better corpse? Hector or John Smith?

Mark:

I'd say John Smith.

Sarah:

I'd say so too.

Mark:

Just because I hate Hector.

Sarah:

Yeah. I don't want to give Hector anything. And Hector didn't even really get blood on him. He was shot in his vest. Yeah.

Sarah:

But Hector, but John had to pretend to have a big head wound. Yeah. And all those people had to step over

Mark:

There and was some makeup going on there.

Sarah:

They at least had to like smoosh his head with some fake blood. Yep. And he had to lay there while George like straddled him and Tom was fat.

Mark:

I know it's sad that Fleur was being abused, but she committed murder Mhmm. Even in self defense. Okay?

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Will Saxby killed another man, planning evidence.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Muriel knew everything. Yeah. Jenny knew everything. Yeah. And Muriel lied to the police.

Sarah:

Orville knew everything.

Mark:

Orville knew. All of those people should go to jail. Yeah. Every last one of them, jaily jail jail jail.

Sarah:

Yeah. And then maybe the writer.

Mark:

Maybe. For

Sarah:

this horrible episode.

Mark:

Yep. They didn't learn anything from the last episode in which they had waited years to get revenge.

Sarah:

That shopkeeper holds up the red pants, and Tom should just grab them and just chew on them. I'm so hungry.

Mark:

And and this is such a letdown after, like, this second season has some great episodes in it. It's got Death's Shadow Mhmm. Strangler's Woods, and Dead Man's 11. Like, that is a great lineup heading into your last episode, and you get this episode.

Sarah:

That's why it was only 9,990,000 people who watched it.

Mark:

I I think maybe nine total people should have watched this episode.

Sarah:

What's the first episode of the next season? Give me something to look forward

Mark:

It's Death of a Stranger is our next episode. And that's the one where Barnaby goes on vacation and the other guy takes over this the case. Yes. And he's so frustrating.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

And Barnaby's like

Sarah:

That's a good one, though.

Mark:

Yep. It's got it's got horses. It's got tramps, and it's got fox hunts.

Sarah:

Yep. Oh, and the fake fox.

Mark:

Yep. No. No. This is not the one with the fake fox.

Sarah:

No. No. No. That's right. That's right.

Sarah:

So Yeah. It's great. This is the hunt.

Mark:

We have that one next season.

Sarah:

But but wait but wait. The little old lady who lives in the woods in the next episode, I think she lives in Orville's wagon.

Mark:

Yes. I think so. In the next then we have blue herrings, which is the the great episode with the old ladies.

Sarah:

So if you listen to this episode of our podcast and you got really tired of us saying, oh, this episode of Midsomer sure did suck. It was so horrible. Tune in for the next one because it does get better. It does. And we won't just whine about how bad

Mark:

it still, you know, so much better than so many other shows.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Mark:

But it's a low point. It's not the worst episode yet. Well, it's the worst episode yet, but it's not the worst episode ever, I don't think.

Sarah:

So here's another kind of controversial thing, and I'm gonna throw this out because I'm I'm eager to hear what our audience thinks about this. So one of the notes I have is that Kevin McNally, who played Orville Tudway in this, he plays Jap in the, ABC murder Poirot with John Malkovich playing Poirot.

Mark:

Yes, he does.

Sarah:

Which I think is a kind of controversial Poirot. Yes. Far as

Mark:

I'm concerned. I

Sarah:

know it's not a Midsomer, but I wonder He rewrites Poirot's backstory. Yeah. A lot. So if this Midsomer wasn't so good, I'm I'm curious about what people think about John Malkovich as Poirot and Yep. About, Kevin McNally as as Jap.

Mark:

I liked him as Jap. Not as good as Jap, the real Jap.

Sarah:

With the David Souche Jap.

Mark:

The David Souche Jap. Yeah. That's the real Jap. But

Sarah:

But it's, it's interesting. And and we get Kevin McNally again in, noble art in another Midsomer in 2010. Art? I can't give you the summary of

Mark:

the plot. What noble art is.

Sarah:

But I think it's a better episode than this one. So we we get another chance

Mark:

have You've forgotten noble art. Because I think noble art's the piano teacher.

Sarah:

We'll see.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

So Toby Jones, which who who was our coroner when George was away. Yeah. He's the son of Freddie Jones who was also in A Midsomer. Yeah. Right?

Sarah:

So they were our first father and son who were both in Midsommar. It's not the same episodes, but different, but they were both in the series. Yep. And now we've got honeysuckle weeks whose sister is in another episode later.

Mark:

What's her sister's name?

Sarah:

I didn't write it down. Okay. I think it's like Felicity weeks. Okay. She's she's not like Room of Sharon.

Sarah:

Petunia or anything. No. Honeysuckle's got the got the only plant name. But her sister is in an episode later. And if you saw them next to each other, you'd say, oh, yeah.

Sarah:

Those two are yeah.

Mark:

Okay, Maniacs. Our Twitter handle is at Midsomer Maniacs. Our Instagram handle is at Midsommer Maniacs. We're all over the Facebook. We're all over the Twitters.

Mark:

Please keep coming back with all sorts of reviews and input. We love every last minute of it.

Sarah:

If there's something redeeming about Blood Will Out that you saw that we didn't see, tell us.

Mark:

Yes, please.

Sarah:

If there's something you disliked about it as much as we did, tell us.

Mark:

Please. And, you know, again, just thank you so much for listening. And, next week, we will have, Death of a Stranger.

Sarah:

Yeah. Season three episode one.

Mark:

Halfway through Troy's tenure.

Sarah:

Booyah. Alright, Maniacs. Bye, Maniacs. I thought that lady in the background of the, the Rome, what they're not, they're not roamers or meanders. What do they call?

Sarah:

Wanderers. No. Travelers. No. The walkers.

Sarah:

The people who like to walk. Oh, ramblers. Ramblers. Thank you. Gosh.

Mark:

Thanks for joining us on the Mystery Maniacs podcast. If you enjoyed our crazy podcast today, don't miss out on future episodes. Follow us on social media for updates, beyond the scenes content, and exclusive sneak peeks. Subscribe, like, and share to spread the word. Bye, Maniacs.