Mystery Maniacs

🎙️ Episode: https://share.transistor.fm/s/614e1c7e
📓 Show Notes: https://midsomermaniacs.transistor.fm/episodes/mystery-maniacs-cold-cases-midsomer-season-05-binge

Show Notes
This cold case covers our podcasts for Season 5 of Midsomer Murders. 

Cold Cases
00:00 Intro
03:27 Episode 20 - "Market For Murder" - Plastic Letters, Sunbathing Gingers, and the Worst Book Club Ever!
1:19:46 Episode 21 - "A Worm In The Bud" - Dairy Farmers, Scuba Divers, Creepy Shrines and Sausages, Oh My! 
2:24:24 Episode 22 - "Ring Out Your Dead" - The Word Processor Killer!
3:37:53 Episode 23 - "Murder on St Malley's Day" - Spoonman, Yobs and Cross-county Wrestling

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.


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
  • September 2: Mystery Maniacs - Cold Cases - Midsomer Season 05 BINGE
  • September 2: September Newsletter
  • September 7: Mystery Maniacs - Clues and Reviews 09/07/26 
  • September 9:  Mystery Maniacs - Cold Cases - Midsomer Season 06 BINGE


------------------------------------
NEWSLETTER: Keep up with all things Mystery Maniac through our newsletter!

Signup here for free: https://midsomermaniacs.transistor.fm/

------------------------------------
Maniac Merch: https://midsomer-maniacs-podcast.myspreadshop.com/
------------------------------------
Connect with the Maniacs:
Rate us on Spotify and Apple!
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/MysteryManiacsPodcast
Twitter.com - https://twitter.com/mystery_maniacs
Sarah’s twitter -https://www.twitter.com/intellagirl
Mark’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/bell_typewriter
IG - https://www.instagram.com/mysterymaniacspodcast/
Email - mysterymaniacspodcast@gmail.com
Web - mysterymaniacspodcast.com


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.

Sarah:

Hey, Maniacs.

Mark:

Hey, Midsomer Maniacs.

Sarah:

Are you ready to binge?

Mark:

Are you ready to binge with Bookmobiles? Because this is the season of the Bookmobile.

Sarah:

It's Midsomer Murder season five.

Mark:

Cully gets a job running the bookmobile and is in every episode with the bookmobile and does not drive it. A large burly man drives the bookmobile.

Sarah:

She just stands in the back and holds on as they take the corners.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

So this season includes Market for Murder.

Mark:

Worm in the Blood. Worm in the Bud. Worm in the Bud. Sorry.

Sarah:

Ring Out Your Dead.

Mark:

Ring a ding ding. And the

Sarah:

Murder on St.

Mark:

Malley's Day. AKA Spoon. Spoonman. This season, we really came into our own because we started really watching the show. I mean,

Sarah:

we watched the background.

Mark:

I really, really went into a lot of signs and posters and things like that. This is the season that has the credit card receipt, which Tom Barnaby signs as Tom Barnaby, but it clearly reads the woman's name on it, and it's a A

Sarah:

PA from the show.

Mark:

PA from the show, her actual credit card.

Sarah:

This is also the season where we've seen a sign in one of the sets that says, this set is dressed, don't mess it up. Yes. That somebody forgot to remove before they started shooting. What's your face hurt episode of ours in this season?

Mark:

For me, the face hurt thing that we talk about is in the episode where we talk about the there's a big puddle or pool of manure, and there's a sign that says manure pool or something. And we just go off on that sign. And it's one of those episodes where it's farmers who own farms and own a whole bunch of cows, but they don't actually do anything.

Sarah:

This is also the season where two kids and their dog try to solve a mystery with some sausages. They try to become detectives. Yep. But my face hurting one. It's it's gotta be Murder on Saint Malley's Day because Spoon Man absolutely cracked me up.

Sarah:

The idea that that what is he? He's like a housemaster

Mark:

or And he stomps across the countryside carrying the spoon maze. A giant spoon,

Sarah:

and he's, like, plodding along, and he just gets closer. And then and then they and then they go to other things that are going on. And then the camera goes back to him, and he's closer. And then other people are doing things, and then he's close like like he's gonna walk through a wall like the Kool Aid man with that spoon, like nothing can stop And

Mark:

he's coming to kill a woman and she's like watching. Yes.

Sarah:

Oh no, the spoon man is coming.

Mark:

The spoon man is coming. He's unstoppable.

Sarah:

We also get to see Adrian Scarborough from the Chelsea detectives in this season. We're He's a bell ringer.

Mark:

Yeah. We watched the end of that the episodes in the last couple of weeks. Yeah. I thought it was fantastic. And they kinda opened the door to some new series, I think.

Sarah:

Yeah. I think so too.

Mark:

It's a yes.

Sarah:

All sorts of fun stuff. So enjoy season five, Spoon

Mark:

Man. Enjoy. That's that's someone should just have some guy behind him

Mark:

go blah blah blah blah blah

Mark:

But his wife is off to the book club.

Sarah:

Hey, Maniacs.

Mark:

Hey, Maniacs.

Sarah:

Welcome to Midsomer Maniacs episode 20. 20.

Mark:

Two zero. I feel like I could buy beer soon.

Sarah:

One more episode. Yep. Today, we're talking about Market for Murder season five episode two.

Mark:

And just as an intro to the show, Midsomer Maniacs is a podcast dedicated to ITV series Midsomer Murders. Each week, we dig into an episode of the show including the murders, the mayhem, the loonies, and everything else that we love.

Sarah:

And if you're listening with kids, if they're able to handle the craziness, the debauchery that is Midsomer Murders, they can probably handle the podcast.

Mark:

Exactly. This episode was filmed in September, October 2001, and the broadcast date was the 06/16/2002. It had 8,990,000 viewers on its first showing and is directed by Sarah Hellings, which I think is our second female director and written by Andrew Payne.

Sarah:

Before we start though, Mark, I have to tell you something.

Mark:

Okay. Lay it on me.

Sarah:

Pretty serious.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Remember about ten years ago, we saw John Stewart at the IU Auditorium?

Mark:

Yeah. I don't think it was ten years ago, but, yeah, we did.

Sarah:

He looked at me.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

And I could tell.

Mark:

And what did John say to you?

Sarah:

He wanted me to wait ten years and then kill some people to go be with him.

Mark:

Okay. I don't understand.

Sarah:

I don't understand why Sandra does either. The killer in this episode, that's exactly what she does.

Mark:

Yeah. She does. She waits ten years.

Sarah:

Yeah. For someone who did not express interest in her Yes. To somehow subliminally, imaginarily give her killing orders.

Mark:

Well, see she has this particular thing called I'm a loony.

Sarah:

Oh, is that a clinical thing?

Mark:

It's clinical I'm a loony.

Sarah:

Loony craziest.

Mark:

And on second watching of this, all the goofy things that the Lord does that are sound like stupid old man flirting now have this horrible creepiness to them.

Sarah:

Yeah. When you know how she's interpreting them.

Mark:

Yeah. She's taking him literally all the time.

Sarah:

Yeah. And we're not ruining anything for you. We assume that you've watched this episode at least once, maybe recently. If you follow us on the Twitter or the Instagram, you will have got a little reminder that you should watch Market for Murder. So you already know how Looney Tunes Sandra is.

Mark:

Absolutely crazy. Yes.

Sarah:

So let's get started. So our cold opening, Selwyn.

Mark:

Concentrate on the car. Yeah. It's a beautiful car.

Sarah:

It's a 1963 Alvis, which is worth about 40 k.

Mark:

Wow. It's a nice car.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's an old car. Somebody puts petrol on a rag and stuffs it in the wheel well and lights it, knowing that he is going to get in it soon.

Mark:

How does that person know?

Sarah:

Because they know that he's sleeping with Jenny Sharp.

Mark:

I guess. I don't like it. I like, how long did she wait outside the house?

Sarah:

Or maybe she didn't intend for him to get in the car at all. She just intended to destroy the car.

Mark:

I think it's completely by accident that someone gets in the car.

Sarah:

Yeah. Initially you think he gets in the car and he sees the flames and he has trouble with his seatbelt and you think, Oh no, they've jimmied his seatbelt and he's not going be able to get out. He's definitely going to die. I think he's just panicking.

Mark:

I think so. For a man who seems to think so much of himself, he sure panics pretty quickly.

Sarah:

I'm impressed that a 1963 car has shoulder belts.

Mark:

I'm impressed it has seat belts.

Sarah:

I think they're aftermarket. Now I had a 1965 Plymouth Fury two, and it had lap belts. Okay. But there were no shoulder belts. No.

Sarah:

It was just like strapping in in a roller coaster that had nothing to do with my driving.

Mark:

A couple of things about this car explosion. I think this is the first real staged explosion for Midsomer.

Sarah:

Yeah. And it's a big one. The car definitely goes up.

Mark:

They destroy a $40,000 car. Now it may not have been in the best shape because if you notice, doesn't move anywhere.

Sarah:

No. It may just be a shell of a car.

Mark:

But they have at least four cameras on this shot, which is impressive. Yeah. They did they did quite a like.

Sarah:

There's some slow mo too, isn't there?

Mark:

There's some slow mo and four shots, four camera shots, and clearly not Selwyn running away from the car.

Sarah:

I have to tell you though, in my long history of looking at dubious websites and research for this show, I looked pretty thoroughly about how to light a car on fire from the outside.

Mark:

Yes. And,

Sarah:

what they did would not work.

Mark:

I don't think so.

Sarah:

It wouldn't even melt the tire. No. It would have to get up to 400 degrees and to melt the tire. And probably what would have happened is a rag would have burned. It would have heated the tire, which might've popped it.

Sarah:

Yeah. And then it would have basically put itself out. If you really want to burn a car, you got to light it from the inside. That's where all the flammable stuff is.

Mark:

Or stuff something down the gas tank thing.

Sarah:

Bust a window, throw a Molotov cocktail inside.

Mark:

You go, No.

Sarah:

A flaming rag in a in the gas tank will not burn a car. There's not enough oxygen in there.

Mark:

That's true. That's true.

Sarah:

It will burn itself out.

Mark:

So some tips for Sandra. First

Sarah:

Well, hey, it worked for her.

Mark:

Ten years is a long time to wait for somebody. Yeah. Second of

Sarah:

all Who has no intention on you anyway.

Mark:

If you're gonna blow up a car, you need to bust a window and put a Molotov cocktail in there.

Sarah:

Or just open the door. But leaving the you'd have to leave the door open. It needs oxygen. I've researched this too much.

Mark:

I'm on

Sarah:

a list now, I'm sure.

Mark:

Speaking of the windows of the car, speaking of Midsomer Maniac stuff, the window is closed. Someone gets in the car. The window is closed. Mhmm. The fire goes off, and someone struggles with the seat belt.

Mark:

Right. Suddenly, the window is half open. Oh. I think what happened was there it was hot, and there were fumes, and the actor rolled down the window to be more comfortable.

Sarah:

Yeah. In between shots or something.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Do you think that the fire that's behind him in that shot is anywhere near the car?

Mark:

That's a controlled fire and nowhere near the car.

Sarah:

Yeah. That's what I thought. Like, it's It looks to be about 10 feet away. Yeah.

Mark:

Feet away. Right. Because he's like, that's talent.

Sarah:

You gotta be nice to the talent. You can't just insured and everything.

Mark:

Yeah. You can't, like, put them in danger or anything like that.

Sarah:

The actor who plays Solomon Proctor is Rupert Van Citart. He is quite the name. Van Citart.

Mark:

I would like one Van Citart. With whipped cream, please. Yes.

Sarah:

This is his first of three Midsommers.

Mark:

Oh, really? I didn't know he was in three.

Sarah:

He's also in the axe man cometh Nice. In which he plays an an uppity angry snob.

Mark:

Oh, okay.

Sarah:

And in the dog leg murders in which he plays an uppity angry snob.

Mark:

Interesting. And he's in game of thrones too. What does he play in that?

Sarah:

Lord John Royce, who is an uppity angry snob.

Mark:

This man has been typecast.

Sarah:

But there's evidence that he himself, distart god. Vaniss Vancitart.

Mark:

Vancitart. It's really hard to say. I would like one of Vancitart to please.

Sarah:

That he himself is is not an uppity stabby jerk.

Mark:

Well, that's good. Because he gets lots of work, so he must be easy to work with.

Sarah:

Yeah. And he he's in a big stage revival of arsenic and old lace.

Mark:

Oh, what part does he play in that?

Sarah:

Do you want to guess?

Mark:

Does he play the teddy part? Yes, he does. Oh, he must just eat up the scenery.

Sarah:

Off to Panama.

Mark:

Off to Panama.

Sarah:

It's a very Teddy Roosevelt look. Yep. He's got the mustache and the, Pith helmet and everything.

Mark:

I'm sure he has all sorts of fun. He plays such a scumbag so well that I'm sure he's genuine and nice and warm the rest of the time.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because he is certainly a scumbag here. His wife tams in the next morning. Right? So they I don't quite understand what happens here.

Sarah:

So the car is on fire. It's evening. Yes. Pre bedtime. Yes.

Sarah:

Though he's gone around and turned off all the lights on Tamsen.

Mark:

There is an explosion.

Sarah:

Yes. Which I don't I don't know if we know exactly what time it is, but let's say it's 09:00.

Mark:

Well, he's still going out for a booty call.

Sarah:

Yeah. But it's late. Yeah. Right? But the cops don't come until the morning?

Mark:

Well, you know, it's just an explosion.

Sarah:

Well, I would think that the fire department came in the meantime and put the car out. I would think cops are like, we'll wait till light.

Mark:

I think emergency service would call everybody.

Sarah:

Yeah. But I can understand why the detectives wouldn't be called out until the morning because what is there to look at at night, right?

Mark:

Oh, I don't know because Troy has other things on his mind. Oh, sorry. An other thing on his mind.

Sarah:

So Selwyn's wife, Tamsen, is there. She is played by Carolyn Harker.

Mark:

Mhmm.

Sarah:

And an interesting thing about her is that she's married to Anthony Caff who plays Steven Cavendish in Dead Man's 11.

Mark:

Oh, she's married to Steven. Yeah.

Sarah:

So they're they're a midsummer couple in real life. Selwyn is so bad about arranging things. He says, it's me. We're on. Usual place.

Mark:

Yeah. Like, that that is some dangerous sexy talk right there.

Sarah:

And he's calling Jenny Sharp. Yep. Right? Who is this independently wealthy, foxy lady, very smart. Yeah.

Sarah:

Why the hell would she sit around her house hoping that he would call?

Mark:

Well, maybe there's not enough ashtrays in in the pool that night.

Sarah:

You mean in the pool that she owns by the huge house that she owns?

Mark:

Yeah. I don't understand their relationship because it's like six different things all at once.

Sarah:

And in everything he is, he's an asshole.

Mark:

100% asshole.

Sarah:

I think she could do better.

Mark:

Absolutely she could do better.

Sarah:

So after I noted the Alvis, I kind of had cars on my mind. So I noticed that when we first see Tom and Troy, they're driving up to the scene of the inflagration. Yes. Conflagration. Conflagration.

Sarah:

They're driving a Rover 45.

Mark:

Which is a nice car.

Sarah:

You'd think so. See, that's what caught my eye. I thought, oh, it's got that cool little crest on it.

Mark:

It does.

Sarah:

What are they driving? It may be a nice car. It's kind of cool car. Yeah. No.

Sarah:

It's a a flop. Oh. It's a sedan put out by Land Rover that is now like even a 2,004, you can't sell them for a grand.

Mark:

A grand? Yeah. Was there something wrong with the car? They were

Sarah:

just jalopies apparently.

Mark:

Oh, well.

Sarah:

If you go to Google it and you put in Rover 45, like the first three predictions that Google will make

Mark:

are

Sarah:

problems, lemon, flop, or wreck or something like that. Like, they're just really bad cars apparently. Apparently.

Mark:

I had no idea.

Sarah:

Harry the painter, the pool man doesn't have one though.

Mark:

No. So Harry, painter, is that a name or a description?

Sarah:

No. Because he's a pool man.

Mark:

I know.

Sarah:

He's Harry the pool man.

Mark:

A joke that I have. He's Harry the pool man and Barnaby doesn't like him right away.

Sarah:

I think he recognizes him.

Mark:

I don't think so.

Sarah:

You don't? Maybe he's just got a little maybe he's got a the look of a convict.

Mark:

It gets Barnaby's radar. That's for sure.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because, of course, Troy's gone into the news agent that he's desperate to get into.

Mark:

I'm gonna tell you something about this episode. Okay? I took the most amount of notes for this episode than any episode before, and the reason is you all know I'm completely obsessed with printed material in this show, and there is a lot of printed material, especially in the beginning of this show. So bear with me.

Sarah:

And some worth looking at to be fair to you.

Mark:

There is absolutely some very interesting things.

Sarah:

It's not just you looking at stupid stuff in minute type.

Mark:

Troy goes into the newsagents and comes out with a financial paper. The Investment Daily. It's orange. This paper does not exist. No.

Mark:

Okay. Also, this paper has some trouble. It is twenty five years of investment advice, so it's twenty five years in publication, right?

Sarah:

Okay.

Mark:

Okay. You would think that after twenty five years of publication, they would get the date right. Because the 09/05/2001, which is what's listed on the front cover, is not a Thursday. It's a Wednesday. In addition, the Hawk comes out on Monday as we all learn.

Mark:

So what was Troy doing until Thursday, which is actually a Wednesday?

Sarah:

Wait a minute. It comes out on Monday. Yes. And it could either be Wednesday or Thursday. Yes.

Sarah:

When the episode starts. Yes. So he's buying it two days late. Late. Which is why he's in a panic because he's afraid they won't have it.

Mark:

Maybe. There you go. There's a website URL on the front of Investment Daily. Doesn't work.

Sarah:

Well, it's a fake newspaper. Of course, it doesn't work.

Mark:

I thought somebody might have bought the URL. The dependable insurance inquiry is the first thing on the cover, and it's by Chris Penfold, who does not work for Investment Daily. He is a script editor for Midsomer Murders.

Sarah:

Aw. Maybe he wrote the paper.

Mark:

He I think he did all of the stuff on the paper.

Sarah:

He put his name on it. That's fun. Hope he got to keep it.

Mark:

Headlines include Halcyon Days return heralded by comms results. Learner survivor fit for future gains and more rate cuts looming.

Sarah:

Okay. Clearly written by somebody else who doesn't understand finance.

Mark:

Exactly.

Sarah:

Money things go up. Money things go up. Big day for money stuff.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Stock things or something.

Mark:

So they talked to Selwyn. He says, I turned on the key, and it just went on fire. Blah blah blah blah

Sarah:

blah blah.

Mark:

That's that Selwyn should just have some guy behind him go

Mark:

blah blah blah blah blah blah But

Mark:

his wife is off to the book club.

Sarah:

A lot of money to

Mark:

get The It Chatwood Estate is a bloody disaster. Tamsen is reading Tuscan Spring by Sebastian Woods. This is Fakity Fakebook and

Sarah:

Fake Town. Okay? I think it's a reference to Under the Tuscan Sun, which was released at about the same

Mark:

time. I would agree.

Sarah:

Obviously But it's a great big old book.

Mark:

It's a big old book, and we'll talk about who read it later on.

Sarah:

And these women are not smart about this, okay? Nope. They've had this book club for four years and they've had the same book for four years. That's dumb.

Mark:

Yeah, really, I couldn't talk about any book for four years.

Sarah:

If they really wanted to hide what they were doing, they would have got a new book every once in a while.

Mark:

I couldn't talk about the same television show for four years.

Sarah:

Well, it's not going to be quite four years. Okay.

Mark:

We go to the Chatwood Estate and it is it's a big old pile of crap.

Sarah:

Well, that's what those estates are like, right? They probably are broke because of estate tax. Yep. He inherited it, right?

Mark:

And James has taken his pulse because he's the biggest hypochondriac we've seen yet.

Sarah:

Surrounded by dripping buckets, even though it's not raining outside.

Mark:

He's off to see Doc Bradshaw.

Sarah:

Doc Bradshaw and his wife, Sandra.

Mark:

His name's Rupert. That's the only thing I don't like about Doc Bradshaw. He's a good guy. He's a very good guy.

Sarah:

It's also where we get to meet Vera Hopkins. Yes. Played by Dylis Lay.

Mark:

She's in charge of salads.

Sarah:

Lots to think about there.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

She was in four Carry On movies.

Mark:

Well, that's fantastic.

Sarah:

Dylis Lay was. She's best known for being a comedic actress. I would And she's very funny.

Mark:

I would assume so being in carry on movies. She's very funny. So Sandra's off to the book club also. So now we know that Tamison,

Sarah:

Lady Lavinia.

Mark:

Lavinia, who is Lady Chatwood, and Sandra are all in the book club. Mhmm. And she's upset because she hasn't received an invitation to Marjorie's garden party.

Sarah:

Speaking of Lavinia. Yep. Speaking of people married to people who have been in Midsomers. Lady Lavinia. Lavinia is such a great

Mark:

It's name.

Sarah:

The actress's name is Angela Thorne.

Mark:

Okay. That's a pretty good name too.

Sarah:

She's been in a million things, of course. Yeah. But she's married. She was married before he died to Peter Penry Jones, who played Peter in the Electric Vendetta.

Mark:

Who's Peter in the Electric Vendetta?

Sarah:

He's the brewery, the whiskey distillery owner.

Mark:

The only guy who

Sarah:

shows up in duel. Yeah. Who lost the duel at the very beginning.

Mark:

That's nice.

Sarah:

They're married to one.

Mark:

Yeah. The doctor says there's no invitation and all it is is warm Pimms and rubbery quiche. Pimms is a, basically the cheapest wine spritzory alcohol you can get.

Sarah:

Yeah. A mock not a mocktail, but it's like cheap cocktail pre Yeah. Premixed. Right? Yep.

Sarah:

Yep.

Mark:

It's not about fun. You have no social or professional drive.

Sarah:

It's about our status in society, village Okay. Society.

Mark:

Wait a minute, Loomy Toombs. He has a practice. The office is busy. He provides you a house that you set and arrange things in. How is he not professionally successful?

Sarah:

Well, her glasses are shaped like stop signs.

Mark:

Oh, stop! I'm a Looney Tunes!

Sarah:

But Doctor. Rupert is so nice! He is. Ginny Sharp is Mysteriously independently wealthy and receives a robe in the mail.

Mark:

She also doesn't believe in, what are they called? The top three buttons of her blouse ever.

Sarah:

Ever. That was a look then though. And that, every time I see a woman in the like early nineties, late eighties with that short hair. I just think that's a lady dye thing.

Mark:

I don't know.

Sarah:

After Diana, a lot of women cut their hair short and kept it short like that

Mark:

for I literally stopped paying attention to her and was like, don't let your boobs fall out. And then I was like, stop looking at her boobs fall out. And then I just felt pervy.

Sarah:

She doesn't really have much boobs to speak of, but

Mark:

I just got worried about it.

Sarah:

And we finally get to meet Marjorie.

Mark:

Well, hold on. There's paper in Ginny Sharp's house.

Sarah:

Oh, great paper.

Mark:

Ginny Sharp's address is the Lodge Midsomer Market, I think Mhmm. Costin. That's all that's on the envelope.

Sarah:

Well, she must be pretty well known.

Mark:

I guess so.

Sarah:

I have some brown paper with no return address.

Mark:

She's all upset about the package.

Sarah:

She should be.

Mark:

Then off to Marjorie's, who's waiting outside for her?

Sarah:

I think she's last to arrive, so she's like trying to look impatient.

Mark:

I just was like, oh, I dislike Marjorie already. Maybe she should fall down some stairs. Oh, wait a minute.

Sarah:

Gerald probably didn't like her either. No. I don't think Gerald liked her either. Dear dead Gerald. Yes.

Sarah:

Marjorie Empson. Yes. Impson. Yes. I want to say Epson every time.

Sarah:

Marjorie Empson. I did want to say Epson all the time. Played by Barbara Lee Hunt. Yep. She was in Frenzy.

Mark:

Really?

Sarah:

She was the psychiatrist that got killed in Frenzy. The Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Mark:

That already had people in it that we, that had

Sarah:

We've made reference to it before. You want to talk about corpse acting? Yeah. This woman did the best corpse acting in a Hitchcock movie right there.

Mark:

I forget what her dead body acting in it.

Sarah:

Oh, her tongue's out? Yeah. She's laying in the chair.

Mark:

Oh, that's right.

Sarah:

And she's there for a long time. That's There's like shot after shot of her body with her tongue out.

Mark:

So she's got a Sony Vial laptop. Man, I looked on about 20 different websites of Sony Vial webtop laptops to find this laptop, and I couldn't find it.

Sarah:

It's an oldie.

Mark:

It's an oldie. It's a '98 or '99 Sony Vile laptop and at that point in time they were the top

Sarah:

of the line.

Mark:

Absolutely top of the line. And she has the Reading Club Portfolio Summary, which includes the following stocks.

Sarah:

And her computer makes that awesome noise. Yeah,

Mark:

have a problem with that noise. Computers don't make noises like that.

Sarah:

Alright.

Mark:

The first stock they own is offshore Maven motels. How can a hotel be offshore and be a motel?

Sarah:

I don't know.

Mark:

I'll just

Sarah:

have to go with it.

Mark:

Then they have photovoltaic futures. Now futures is spelled with a p h.

Sarah:

Well, it's photo. Yes. Is that spelled with a p h? Yes. Okay.

Mark:

The Technic Mining Technology Company.

Sarah:

Okay.

Mark:

That's okay. And then my favorite, worldwide pizza parlors.

Sarah:

Well, they've diversified. Hotels, technology, and pizza. Yep. Motels. Motel.

Mark:

Motel. You could have your motel, have your pizza brought to your offshore Maven motel. What the hell is a Maven motel?

Sarah:

While you're working with your photovoltaic stuff.

Mark:

Futures? Futures. Futures. We should stop making fun of Marjorie because my darling Gerald would be upset with that.

Sarah:

Absolutely. Man, is she bureaucratic?

Mark:

She is.

Sarah:

I don't wanna belong to any club. I don't even care how much money they're making where everything is done by Roger's rules of order. Robert is it Robert? It's Robert's rules

Mark:

of order.

Sarah:

Robert's rules of order. Well, I don't know. If we wanna have cookies instead of these scones, we better take a vote all in favor. Oh, shut up.

Mark:

Yeah. And, like, majority rules is not actually the best thing, and, you know, sometimes you need consensus.

Sarah:

Well, Sandra really should get two votes because she's so good with numbers because her dad was a bookie. Wow. Like

Mark:

okay. Sandra is Looney Tunes. Mhmm. Okay? But Marjorie is the person, the kid at the zoo where the rabbit animal is poking it with a stick.

Sarah:

I know you're crazy and all, but your dad was a bookie.

Mark:

Two of them want to leave, and the other ones want to stay. Right? Everybody leaves except for Tamsen who wants out.

Sarah:

Because she wants to cash in to get some money. Yep. We find out later because of her son. Yep. And Sandra talks to Jenny out in the parking lot.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

To say, were you invited to the garden party?

Mark:

No. To say, did your boob swallow? Are you boob swallowing out? Oh my gosh. Another button is done.

Sarah:

Okay. I have a plot question. Okay. Stop. We know that they were in fact invited to the garden party because we see her husband tear up the invitation at the end of the episode.

Mark:

He hid it from her.

Sarah:

Okay. That was my question. Yeah. Was, does she just not know at that point that they've been invited? Did it get lost and they got it later?

Sarah:

No. Is he hiding it?

Mark:

I think he hid it.

Sarah:

So why is he hiding it? Because he doesn't want to go? It's because he knows And she's a

Mark:

I think I think he doesn't want to go because he hates it. And I think he also realizes it will upset her.

Sarah:

That it's not good for her.

Mark:

They don't have a good relationship. They haven't slept together in ten years.

Sarah:

Isn't it

Mark:

worse They're not together like single beds not together.

Sarah:

And they're not in the same room.

Mark:

They're not in the same room.

Sarah:

But isn't it worse for her to be obsessed about not being invited?

Mark:

I don't know. It's not explained.

Sarah:

Because he seems to care.

Mark:

Well, he kind of works out in the end, and we'll talk about that at the end of

Sarah:

That's the true. That's true.

Mark:

What we find is that Troy bought the paper to hide something. The Hawk. The Hawk, of course, is not a real comic. No. But it's a play on the eagle, which we saw earlier in the series, which has Dan Dare in.

Mark:

So the eagle was the magazine that Dan Dare was in, and it's printed in that same large format.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Right? The following things are on the cover of the Eagle of the Hawk. Sorry. Superhero adventure for boys. It's only for boys.

Mark:

07/18/2001, volume 56, number 12, every Monday, thirty five p.

Sarah:

Okay. Wait a minute. That's the July 18?

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

But we've already figured out that it's September.

Mark:

Yeah. Like, this is an old issue. There's some problems here. Why is

Sarah:

he in such a hurry to

Mark:

buy it? I don't know.

Sarah:

Maybe they didn't expect viewers to look so closely. I know.

Mark:

Crazy. They messed up here.

Sarah:

They didn't plan on you.

Mark:

Inside the Hawk includes the following commando stories, classic sports cars, adventure, excitement, competitions, plus more action.

Sarah:

Glad it comes with more action now.

Mark:

The Hawk private eye, the world is held at ransom. The story so far, let me tell you. Oh, gosh. The newly appointed government puppet turns out to be the evil doctor. That's all in capital letters.

Mark:

Stepping up his missile program then turning them on the Earth to gain world domination. Dot. Dot. Dot. But can the Hawk stop him in time?

Mark:

No question mark. And included is this is some dialogue. Look out, Hawk. The missiles are headed to Earth. And in big large type, impact one minute.

Sarah:

Just because you can read it doesn't mean you have to.

Mark:

It's fascinating.

Sarah:

Do you?

Mark:

I have wanted Midsomer props. I have. I have. I've looked online for Midsomer props. I want the Badger's Drift map that's in the killings of Badger's Drift.

Mark:

I want all sorts of things.

Sarah:

Close Encounters of the Midsomer kind.

Mark:

Of Midsomer This is the holy grail that I want. I want the hawk desperately.

Sarah:

Well, you can't because Troy's selling them.

Mark:

Yep. He's selling them all. He pets the comic.

Sarah:

Oh, when he sees the one on lord Chuckwood's bed?

Mark:

He also pets He caresses it. He caresses it there. For sure. The hawk's powers include night vision, and he can fly when he's a hawk.

Sarah:

Yeah. He's a flying detective.

Mark:

Yep. Exactly. We get Joyce talking to Barnaby about dependable insurance. Yeah. Whatever.

Mark:

It's complete throwaway scene. Right? Except for the story in the newspaper, which has a whole bunch of text that I'm going to go over. Right? I'm going skip over it.

Mark:

The two important things are city regulators to investigate pensions. So this is Barnaby's pension plan.

Sarah:

This is an ongoing backstory thread thing.

Mark:

In the story it says the head of the pension plan's name is Sir Headley Feline. And then it goes on to quote Sir Headley about how secure the pensions are, and how secure the company is, and how nobody has anything to worry about. And then it says, from his headquarters in Belize.

Sarah:

So Barnaby's pension is headquartered in Belize.

Mark:

Yeah. Tom is being taken for a ride here.

Sarah:

Tom's in trouble.

Mark:

Killer cam at Marjorie's.

Sarah:

Oh, Cheryl, the world is just full of such mean people. You are the weakest. Oops. I'm at the bottom of the stairs.

Mark:

And we hear her falling down the stairs. We don't see her falling

Sarah:

down the Yeah. You see her start to fall.

Mark:

And then you have this weird thing. Okay? This is at night, right? She's we know later on that Ginny has come over, they've had a row, and then she went upstairs, got changed, and was sad. That's what happened, expecting to go to bed.

Mark:

Mhmm. Now, after she falls down the stairs, the next immediate shot is of a computer screen with stocks on

Sarah:

it. Mhmm.

Mark:

With sound of a television playing stock reports.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

That pans over everything to her bloody body Mhmm. Even and the blood is fresh. Mhmm. So we're assuming this is happening It's

Sarah:

the same night.

Mark:

Do you usually go to bed with the TV on and your computer going? No. Yeah. It's weird. It's like, we'll put these things in because they're at Marjorie's house.

Sarah:

But but Sanders is also crazy. So she may have killed her and then sat down at her computer to sell the stocks and turned on the TV to see what they were selling at.

Mark:

She could have.

Mark:

I gotta admit that.

Sarah:

But wouldn't she need the Internet to do that?

Mark:

She's weird. So

Sarah:

Wouldn't she need the Internet to sell the stocks?

Mark:

She should use the Internet to sell the stocks. There are a number of actual stock problems with this.

Sarah:

Would Marjorie have Internet? Was there Internet yet?

Mark:

It's 2,000. So, yeah, people would have Internet.

Sarah:

But it'd be like,

Mark:

weak. No.

Mark:

You know? People were starting to get high speed Internet by then.

Sarah:

But not Marjorie.

Mark:

Not not Marjorie.

Sarah:

She's not going on the web.

Mark:

But when I was there

Sarah:

in '93, they had inter tubes. So Surfing the cyberspace. Yep. Marjorie. Cyberspace.

Mark:

Virtual Marjorie. After surgery, the next morning, there's a bunch of people who never show up again, and I kinda regret writing them all down.

Sarah:

Well, we get to see Vera again, who in my notes is always salads Vera. Yes. Lord Chatwood arrives and moves right to the front of the line. Because he's a crazy hypochondriac. But she loves you.

Sarah:

He's titled, so he has to get help right away even though Rupert's like, why can't he make an appointment like everybody else?

Mark:

Lord Chatwood complains about pressure behind his eyes and that the cops are everywhere and he's lost his Elvis, so Rupert suggests PTSD.

Sarah:

And the doctor, Rupert's so awesome. He takes his blood pressure with no stethoscope. No. Now he might be palpating. He might be feeling his pulse instead of listening to it, which is something you do if you're in a loud place and you need to take somebody's blood pressure.

Sarah:

But this is not a loud place.

Mark:

I think he's just

Sarah:

Going through the motions.

Mark:

Going through the motions. Yeah. Tamsen's upset because she has

Sarah:

a little boy's picture. But the pool man is fishing plastic letters out of the pool.

Mark:

And he gets a vowel. I'd like to solve the puzzle. No, Joyce does that later.

Sarah:

Because Tom is sitting there looking at the plastic letters. I love that scene.

Mark:

I want to talk to you people in England. Okay? Do you all have your doors wide open all the time?

Sarah:

You get to bleep that? Yeah. Okay. Because sweet Jesus. Well, did you know there are no bugs in England?

Mark:

No bugs at all.

Sarah:

So you can leave your doors open and no badgers or mosquitoes or, you know, other kind of crazy animals ever wander into your very expensive house.

Mark:

And then she says this thing really quickly to the pool man. She goes, I wanna talk to you about the reading club. And Harry makes a joke. He's like, oh, I'll stay here. And I think she's serious.

Sarah:

Well, she's talked to him about it before.

Mark:

Yeah. She gets a call from Jenny that she has to go to Jenny's house.

Sarah:

Because Marjorie's dead.

Mark:

Yep. Scene of the crime. George, there's blood on a stick.

Sarah:

By the way, Ginny Sharp is played by Serena Gordon. Okay. She was in Golden Eye.

Mark:

Yes. She was. She was indeed.

Sarah:

That's about the only interesting thing.

Mark:

I wonder if she did the voice for that character in the video game.

Sarah:

I don't know. If she did, she wouldn't be the only Midsomer actor to voice Bond characters in a video game.

Mark:

So as you can tell, I've completely lost the plot of this episode. So now in this scene, I'm obsessed with George's clipboard.

Sarah:

Oh my gosh. I'm sorry. Listeners, dear listeners, I'm sorry.

Mark:

It's a magical clipboard because he doesn't have it, and then suddenly he has it. And I wanna know what is on that clipboard because I can't read it, and there's lines and boxes and squares, and I wanna read every single part

Sarah:

of it. It's a fake form that says, is the body dead? Yes or no?

Mark:

Was her husband named Gerald? Yes or no?

Sarah:

Her house is ransacked. Yep. She was beaten with her own stick. Yep. The dining room is a wreck.

Sarah:

Her silver is stolen, and the safe is open.

Mark:

Yeah. It looks robbery ish. Ish. Yeah. And there's a meeting at Jenny's nice pad.

Mark:

Why did they go to Marjorie's? Why not be at Jenny's? It's a nicer place. Because Marjorie's in charge.

Sarah:

I guess so. And she's got that great big laptop. She couldn't possibly carry it to Jenny's.

Mark:

I don't know if there's a car big enough for that laptop.

Sarah:

Top of the line. So now that Marjorie's dead, they the ladies realized they're gonna have to come clean about what the reading club actually did.

Mark:

Yes. And then there's a kind of montage of them telling their husbands.

Sarah:

The ones who have them. Lavinia,

Mark:

Lord Chetwood's like, hey, we got money now.

Sarah:

Sick, it's for the roof.

Mark:

Sandra is like Rupert is completely surprised by what Sandra says, and he's like, it seemed like a long time to be reading the same book. She was like, no one would ever want to read that book. And he's like, I did.

Sarah:

I thought it would give us something to talk about.

Mark:

You can hear Rupert's heart breaking, like,

Sarah:

at that exact moment. Re breaking because

Mark:

Yeah. It's been broken lots of times. Yeah. Well, Selwyn takes this completely intelligently and logically. He's calm.

Mark:

Yes. He calls her a thick head.

Sarah:

And screams at her.

Mark:

Is this about babies again?

Sarah:

Because I'm talking about babies. You imagine him with a baby? Can you imagine a baby Selwyn? That would be the most hideous, horrible baby. It'd be a baby, but with his head, and it would just go instead of cooing or crying.

Mark:

Ginny explains that men suck. Yeah. And that she had stayed in last night and had a good book and some wine.

Sarah:

Thanks. Or maybe she was at a hotel, you know. Maybe. Having sex with Solomon. No.

Sarah:

Who knows?

Mark:

No. Well, we know what she is. It comes out later. Back to the manor and my final digression, I think in the first part of this.

Sarah:

Your first your last digression in the first part.

Mark:

Yes. Okay. Aspen Tow Roofing Services. Now there's a phone number on there. They do new roofs, repairs, storm damage.

Mark:

And then they, at the bottom it says lead work.

Sarah:

You're talking about the truck that's in front of the Chetlands? Yes. The roofers. Yeah, they do lead work, lead roofs.

Mark:

And then I thought about roofers in England. Mhmm. And how, oh my god, it must be so difficult to be a roofer in England. You've got thatch houses, you've got lead houses, you've got shingles, you got all sorts of the regular stuff. It it just must be a nightmare to be a roofer there.

Sarah:

Well, it's the same guy doesn't do all that. The guys who do thatching only do thatching. They don't do asphalt shingles.

Mark:

On the house, it has a lot on the van, it has a lot of things.

Sarah:

Well, they're not doing thatch. I'll tell you that. I've watched enough demolition reconstruction fixer upper guy, British show, that George guy. Those thatchers are serious.

Mark:

Maybe we should give this number a call and ask if they do thatch.

Sarah:

It's all they do if they do thatch.

Mark:

Troy's not impressed with Lord, Chetwood's

Sarah:

Wallpapering job. To be honest, I'm not impressed with Lord Chetwood's wallpapering job.

Mark:

Or his clothing job.

Sarah:

Like, he's practically licking the back of the wallpaper and trying to stick it back on the wall. He's totally water damaged.

Mark:

He totally is like hobo.

Sarah:

It's it's it's hobo chic. Yep. But How many ascots can you wear?

Mark:

And Troy asked where Lady Chatwood is, and he tells him, and then he realized that was Lord Chatwood.

Sarah:

Dope. Dope. He does get that dope face on too.

Mark:

I know we're maniacs, and I know we're continuity people, but at no point in the series up until this point, we're in episode 20, has Troy ever had fear of heights.

Sarah:

And he has been in a few situations where if he was, we would know.

Mark:

Yes. I don't like this. It's like, oh, let's put fear of heights in Troy.

Sarah:

It is kind of funny.

Mark:

It is. But

Sarah:

And it gives them a reason to shoot the roof a little bit more. I also think the reason why he's afraid of heights is because it offsets the fact that Lavinia is absolutely comfortable on the roof because she has to be up there so many so often because it has such problems.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

That she's like, what? We're on the roof. There's lots of space up here. What's the big deal? And he's like, oh, I'm so afraid.

Sarah:

And she's like, yeah, whatever. We can talk right here.

Mark:

But if somebody told me that, okay, I'm up on the roof, which is strange already, and I'm talking to somebody and they say I'm afraid of being on the roof, I would go, okay, well, let's move inside.

Sarah:

She's got serious reasons to be up there. The roofers are there.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

To get a quote at least talk about the Selwyn. They're pricing out the roof for Selwyn. Yeah. Not even for her. Selwyn.

Sarah:

What does Jenny see in him? I don't understand.

Mark:

Do not understand.

Sarah:

What I have written down is, I'm an independently wealthy, smart, pretty woman. What do I want? I know an overbearing, sexist, rude, heavy brow, tightwad.

Mark:

Baby man. Swoon. Back at the Proctors, they go and talk to Tamison, and she almost says something about her husband, but doesn't.

Sarah:

Well, she knows she needs to be really careful Yeah. Because he is something in finance.

Mark:

But I don't know. Like, if he's a stockbroker, what insider trading is gonna happen?

Sarah:

Well, assuming that they had a normal relationship, he would come home and go, well, you know, that worldwide pizza is gonna get really big soon. And she'd go, I'll tell the reading club.

Mark:

I guess it's a stretch.

Sarah:

What she really does is tell Harry Painter. Yep. And he goes off

Mark:

the news and money. Description. It's a name.

Sarah:

He's not a Harry painter. It's not a Harry pant painter. It's just hairy painter.

Mark:

At lunch, they discuss the case until they go talk to Harry Painter, who was at the pub for the quiz, by the way.

Sarah:

The night before. Yeah. Yeah. He was at the quiz. Know to have a pub that has a quiz night.

Sarah:

Oh. Wouldn't that be nice?

Mark:

It would be. But Harry knows everything about dependable.

Sarah:

He knows that Tom's pension is down the toilet.

Mark:

Yeah. Absolutely. So then we go from Lord Chatwood being bumbling old homogeny Hypochondriac hobo. Being creepy.

Sarah:

There's not much redeemable about him. I know Lavinia loves him and they seem kind of sweet together, but he talks about her nasty behind her back. And then he goes peeping on Jenny Sharp at her pool.

Mark:

And he spends all her money.

Sarah:

I mean, he just there's not a whole lot redeemable about him except kind of being a bumbling idiot.

Mark:

Yeah. He's he's no mister toad.

Sarah:

No. No. There's nothing redeemable.

Mark:

Someone arrives. Luckily, they have twenty three minutes.

Sarah:

Where does he need to be?

Mark:

There's just so much wrong with this.

Sarah:

He's so far away from anywhere where stocks are traded, it's not even funny.

Mark:

They appear to be completely in love in this scene, and yet in every other scene she talks about him as if he's abusive and she wants to run away from him immediately. Tamsen looks like he's abusive and wants to run away immediately. She looks like she's into his twenty three minute party time.

Sarah:

Hey, twenty three minutes with you, Selwyn? Awesome.

Mark:

Lord Chatwood finds the silver.

Sarah:

In a trash bag by Jenny's wall, right? Because somebody's trying to frame her in the dumbest way possible because that's what she'd do. Go kill Marjorie, put the silver in a trash bag and drop it over her wall where nobody will find

Mark:

it. Ever.

Sarah:

What I want to know though, if Sandra put the silver there, did she also know that Lord Chatwood spied on Jenny from that spot?

Mark:

Yes, because she listened in to him because he told her husband. Oh, that's right.

Sarah:

That's right.

Mark:

So he was expected to find it.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

We go to the autopsy and I don't care what happens in this scene because the last line creeps me out.

Sarah:

I do. Because when we talk about best corpse acting, I don't think that's even Marjorie on the table. It's

Mark:

not Marjorie on the table.

Sarah:

It's the only time we ever see them cover a corpse's face. Yeah. It's not Marjorie. Like it's an arm of a woman who's kind of built like Marjorie.

Mark:

Yeah. It's not Marjorie. She wasn't there that day. The last line of the scene is coffee. And I'm immediately freaked out because I'm like, do they have food in the morgue?

Mark:

Because ew.

Sarah:

I think you can have coffee in the morgue if you have a lid on it and you keep it far away from the body.

Mark:

I don't know. You got your dead body in my coffee. You

Sarah:

got your chocolate in my peanut butter. You got your corpse in my coffee.

Mark:

Troy and the doctor are talking and he says he's on the golf committee and then Lord Chetwood bursts in to to find Troy because he's found the silver.

Sarah:

Right. And it's big deal. Barnaby is off talking to Sandra. Now wait a minute. Yeah.

Sarah:

Perfect house. Before James comes in to say that he found the silver. Yeah. Tom's talking to Sandra. Yes.

Sarah:

And she says that Marjorie didn't like Jenny.

Mark:

Because they are not PLU. People like us. You're not like her because Marjorie was disagreeable and argumentative and regimented. But not Looney. Looney.

Sarah:

I looked up PLU because I wondered if that was actual kind of uppity slang. Or whether it was just kind of made up for the show. It is real, people do say that. But luckily, now the PLU and people like us more dominantly prefers to the leading gay rights movement in Singapore. Nice.

Sarah:

They are people, PLU people like us.

Mark:

Go gay rights in Singapore.

Sarah:

That's right.

Mark:

Absolutely. So

Sarah:

maybe Sandra was saying she's not a gay rights activist in Singapore like us.

Mark:

Yes. I'll tell you one thing that Sandra does do is project. She is just all about all those other people are just so awful.

Sarah:

Because she thinks that she's somehow somebody different than who she actually is because she denies all reality.

Mark:

There's a $150,000 in stock in the club. Mhmm. That'll come back later.

Sarah:

That's a good amount of money. Then maybe the most exciting scene in this entire episode happens.

Mark:

Lay it on me.

Sarah:

The high-tech lab. Police technician. Why do we never see this lab? They've got a car up on a lift. They've got black lights.

Sarah:

They've got motorcycles. They've got lasers. Oh, I'm waiting for Q to come out.

Mark:

Q should be there.

Sarah:

Well we reversed the polarity on this thing and we found this time traveling loop and that's how Sandra killed him. Know like

Mark:

And also a towel from the feathers.

Sarah:

Yes. That's what we use with the fire cloth. Now the feathers is interesting. Yes. Because the building that's used for the feathers.

Sarah:

Yes. Which we only see very briefly from the outside is the very same country house that was used as Melissa Melissa and Archie Townsend's home in Tainted Fruit.

Mark:

Oh, I didn't know that. They do that. They use the same location in multiple episodes, one after each other.

Sarah:

One after another. Yeah. So now we know that basically Jenny and Selman were slipping off to have sex at Melissa's house.

Mark:

Ew.

Sarah:

Are you gagging just a little bit?

Mark:

Just a little bit. Ew. Speaking of gagging, Lavinia is meeting someone at the feathers. Ugh.

Sarah:

He's so reprehensible. Just it's bad enough that he treats his wife very poorly. It's bad enough It's abusive

Mark:

physically with her later on.

Sarah:

That he's a grumplepuss. It's bad enough he's having an affair, but turns out he will sleep with anybody who is willing.

Mark:

I'm gonna tell you, listen to me, men. I know a lot of men don't want to listen to our show. Right? I've seen the numbers.

Sarah:

If you're a man and you're listening though, listen up.

Mark:

Okay. This is not the way to impress a woman.

Sarah:

Well, doesn't hurt to ask. I always do. You'd be surprised how often it works. No. It wouldn't.

Sarah:

I'd be surprised if it ever worked. Yeah. Do you wanna go, you know, no? Ew. Not Vinia, to her credit, doesn't gag a little bit when he says it.

Mark:

She does. She's like not into it at all. Back at the scene of the crime, there's a discussion of stuff and shares and shares and stuff.

Sarah:

Because they think they seem to think that there should be like paper shares.

Mark:

So the piece of paper that Barnaby has, this is the second half of the paper obsession by the way.

Sarah:

Well, I'm glad we had that little break between the first part of it.

Mark:

The piece of paper that Barnaby has that has the name of the companies on it does in fact have the right name of the companies it. Okay.

Sarah:

Okay. Oh, you're talking about the piece of notepaper from his notepad.

Mark:

Now it's only on one side.

Sarah:

Because he he has it at Mystery's and hands it to Troy. Right? And it's written on one side.

Mark:

Yes. It'll come back later.

Sarah:

I know because when Harry's holding it, it's written on both sides.

Mark:

Yes. I they got they must have got more stocks in the meantime. Speaking of Harry, he's got form. Embezzlement. He worked in the city and he embezzled money.

Mark:

And this is the point, and this show is really good at this, because at this point Harry becomes likable.

Sarah:

He

Mark:

was on the fence before, but from this point out Harry's likable.

Sarah:

Yeah, initially we're kind of suspicious of him. He's a little back chatty with Tom and Troy. And so you think, Oh, well, you know, he's a hardened criminal. He's got attitude.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

And he's the pool guy, right? So it's the stereotypical pool guy that the board housewife is going to have an affair with and he talks to Tamsen and so you're kind of suspicious of him or whatever. But he is a genuinely likable person who sticks up for people and shares information when he has it. When they ask him for help, he gives them help.

Mark:

He is the hero of the episode.

Sarah:

Yeah. I agree.

Mark:

Absolutely. And he gives up the letters to Troy.

Sarah:

Think that he he would have tried to spell something out with him.

Mark:

Well, you know, letters are not his thing. Numbers.

Sarah:

That's true.

Mark:

I mean, his dad was a bookie too.

Sarah:

Poor Tom sitting at the kitchen table with those letters in front of him trying to rearrange them. And Joyce, who's got lots of free time to play scrabble, apparently.

Mark:

I'd like to solve the puzzle.

Sarah:

They still need another vowel. It's coming.

Mark:

They need another e so they go see Tamsen because the letters are not from the kids next door.

Sarah:

Right, because they moved out. Yeah. So did Sandra steal those letters from the kids' toys in the waiting room and dump them in Tamsen's pool one at a time?

Mark:

I bet she did.

Sarah:

She is loony. I just I wondered if she did that or if she actually went out and bought a set of plastic letters until she had enough Es to spell Maureen. Either way, Looney. Yep.

Mark:

She says that Maureen is me. I got pregnant. I put the baby up for adoption. Her husband gives her no money and she thought that the reading club could be a way she could get her baby back.

Sarah:

And then we have two of the most unrealistic scenes in all of Midsomer.

Mark:

Lay it on us.

Sarah:

A ginger sunbathing. You just don't do

Mark:

We had the the Ginny sunbathing?

Sarah:

She's already sunbathed once and then she does it again when they come to visit her. She's laying out by her pool again. That's right. If you are fair and red haired No. You do not voluntarily lay out in the sun.

Sarah:

No. You don't. I'm sorry.

Mark:

Even when you're waiting for your twenty three minute man.

Sarah:

No. She confesses about the bathrobe and about meeting Marjorie at her place that night, but she didn't kill her. And then we have the second unrealistic thing

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Which is they go to Marjorie's house to look for the shirt that Jenny says she tore. Yep. And Marjorie, the most fastidious person in all of Midsomer, has hung a dirty torn shirt back up in her wardrobe.

Mark:

Well, don't you do that after a fight?

Sarah:

No. It's dirty and it's torn. Don't put it back on a

Mark:

hanger in the wardrobe. That fight is interesting because we learned about Gerald in that fight.

Sarah:

Oh, Gerald was not the paragon that Mystery thought he was.

Mark:

No. It's it's come home to roost

Sarah:

because It sure does hurt her feelings when she's confronted with it. She knows all of that about Gerald. Yeah.

Mark:

Does. Well, Jenny's mean.

Sarah:

Well, yeah. She is mean.

Mark:

James at the manor is reading Hawk.

Sarah:

Because he's wasting away in bed. Oh, I'm gonna die. Oh.

Mark:

And Lady Chatwood says that someone wants to buy the house. And he just breaks down.

Sarah:

Because he's a weak, lily livered baby.

Mark:

Well, maybe some eggy bread would

Sarah:

help. He's pathetic.

Mark:

Yeah. He is.

Sarah:

He's really pathetic.

Mark:

So they interview Jenny Sharp at the at the nick, and Jenny Sharp's lawyer has no lines and no credit.

Sarah:

No. The lawyers never do in Midsomer. They just sit there quietly. Sometimes they put their hand on somebody's arm to kind of symbolically restrain them and say, think about what you're about

Mark:

to say.

Sarah:

Something. But that's about it. Jenny has a gigantic house Yep. With a beautiful pool.

Mark:

It's beautiful.

Sarah:

A convertible.

Mark:

I would love that pool.

Sarah:

And the most amazing folly in her backyard. That brick turret thing. It's so awesome. Yep. How does she have so much money?

Mark:

I don't

Sarah:

know. She doesn't seem to have a job.

Mark:

What draws her out of the house to the pool?

Sarah:

Light. Sound.

Mark:

Those lights would be on all the time. They're part of

Sarah:

the pool. Maybe she hears the splashes of the ashtrays hitting the water.

Mark:

There's no folly of that.

Sarah:

Special senses? Bat senses?

Mark:

Jenny senses.

Sarah:

There's a disturbance in my very nice pool.

Mark:

So she goes out to the pool and sees that there are ashtrays from the feathers in the pool. Mhmm. First time underwater cam on Midsomer.

Sarah:

Yeah. We've had an explosion. Now we have underwater cam.

Mark:

Yep. It's an expensive episode. And it's nighttime underwater cam, so they gotta light that place up.

Sarah:

I tell you, we learned something about Jenny right here, right now.

Mark:

What did we learn?

Sarah:

She can't dodge.

Mark:

Nope. She can't.

Sarah:

Sand Sandra stands there by the pool, makes a joke, and it's just so funny Dunk. That she laughs so hard that she doesn't notice Sandra lifting an ashtray above her head to come down and whack her.

Mark:

Now, we have seen some good dead body acting in this show.

Sarah:

But never floating dead body.

Mark:

Never floating dead body at night. It's like almost thirty seconds. Ginny is the star of the dead body acting.

Sarah:

Not as good as it could be though because in reality she'd be floating face down.

Mark:

I realize that. And she should be facing down when they find her in the morning. Yeah. And she also should be a little bloated but I don't think that would be nice.

Sarah:

Though when they look at her on the ground after they pull her out, she's very blue. She is very blue. Very blue and pale.

Mark:

You did some makeup there.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's okay.

Mark:

Tamsen also gets a package from the feathers.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

And we learned that, George can make a joke.

Sarah:

You'd You think when they're at the feathers and they're talking to the barman about the stolen ashtrays, that at some point somebody would say, Oh, there's this lady who keeps coming here to

Mark:

buy robes. You don't think that. It's all done over the phone.

Sarah:

They don't ask about the robes. No, they don't. They go to the bar. They meet they see someone there. And the guy says, well, yeah, these are new ashtrays.

Sarah:

The old ones kept getting stolen.

Mark:

And then Burnaby says something about towels and robes too. That's true.

Sarah:

Yep. I guess hotels like, you know, Melissa's house might sell their robes in the gift shop and the barman wouldn't know anything about it.

Mark:

Maybe. I guess. George asks if this is an anti smoking murder. Which is the worst joke

Sarah:

It's a bad joke.

Mark:

Because immediately I thought, does Jenny smoke?

Sarah:

And when they tell Sullen that Jenny's dead, he doesn't even seem to care. No. So there's no it's not like this romance that we just don't understand. Yeah. He's just using her like everybody else.

Sarah:

And he's not good looking to just be like, well, I just sleep with all the hot ladies in the county. And maybe because he's rich and powerful or something. I don't know. Lavinia asks the doc to go see James at home because he's so upset because she told him about selling and wanting to buy the house. They can't even get out of bed.

Mark:

She loves him. She knows that James is a hypochondriac, but please can you help it?

Sarah:

Because seeing the doctor does seem to make him feel better.

Mark:

Exactly.

Sarah:

Meanwhile, Sandra's listening in

Mark:

And we got killer cam up on the roof.

Sarah:

It's a good mannequin they throw off the roof.

Mark:

Lavinia goes off the roof with a bunch of stones first, then she clearly is not the thing that falls of course there's there's an actor that falls a little bit obviously onto a big bag and then there's a mannequin that hits the ground yeah But what Lavinia does do a good job at is she does a good sort of oof because she's moving Yeah. When it cuts to her, the actress.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's like that feeling when you're in when you're in bed and you're asleep and you you dream that you're falling, and when you wake up, you feel like you hit the bed.

Mark:

And that's exactly what that is, and and it sells it.

Sarah:

Yeah. It does.

Mark:

Sells the whole thing.

Sarah:

And the rubble. James is just he's just gonna fall apart.

Mark:

Absolutely. You know? Proctor will destroy me.

Sarah:

He'll destroy himself. He's got nothing going for him.

Mark:

The issue of the hawk that James is reading is not the same issue as what

Sarah:

Oh, good god, man.

Mark:

What Troy is reading. So just a little notice there.

Sarah:

What I was impressed by, speaking of the roof, is that the set dressers clearly wanted that house, which is actually a very nice estate Yeah. To look more run down. And so they added some exposed faux brick Yeah. To the outside.

Mark:

Wondered how they did that.

Sarah:

It's probably painted on canvas, heavy canvas that's like adhered to the outside of the stone. Yeah. That would be the easiest way to do it. I guess so. It's convincing.

Sarah:

Makes it look a little bit shoddy.

Mark:

We have to find the shares.

Sarah:

The shares that are just online.

Mark:

So they take Harry to Marjorie's, and Harry is great because he's like, Is that blood

Sarah:

over there? Yeah.

Mark:

And he sets them up straight. He's like, You're looking for the wrong stuff.

Sarah:

Yeah. You're not it's an in nominee account, you're not going to find pieces of paper anywhere.

Mark:

Though he does give up on the computer awfully quickly.

Sarah:

I'm impressed with Harry when Tamsen confronts Selwyn about the robe. Yes. Luckily, their pool needs to be cleaned constantly. He's always there. He gets abusive and Selwyn gets abusive Yeah.

Sarah:

And Harry stands up for Tamsen and protects her.

Mark:

You know, can't fire me, I already quit.

Sarah:

And then says, thanks for the stock tips and throws money at Selwyn's face. Who absolutely deserves it. He deserves more than money in his face.

Mark:

Meanwhile, Troy is at the doctor's office figuring everything out. Yeah. He sees the feathers ashtray, he hears from the headset, he figures out that the wife knows everything.

Sarah:

Rupert's a little dumb here. Yep. He sits with that comm on his desk with the wires clearly pulled out and taped together underneath it, not even stuffed back inside of it. Yeah. And doesn't notice.

Sarah:

Yeah. You'd think it would kind of wibble wobble because it's got those wires underneath it all exposed.

Mark:

Human thing. But now we step into crazy land.

Sarah:

Let's talk about crazy land.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Okay. I want to know how did Sandra and James meet ten years ago and did Rupert and Sandra move to the village because she met him, or did she meet him after they moved there?

Mark:

I believe she met him after they moved there. He said something completely innocent, and she fell immediately in love with him because she's lonely.

Sarah:

I'm not so sure of that.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Because when Rupert says they've been sleeping in separate beds for ten years, I got I I have got to go back and watch it again, I guess, to be sure. But I got the impression that they had slept separately since they moved there. Okay.

Mark:

So maybe she met Lord Chatwood before that?

Sarah:

Maybe at a garden party or something.

Mark:

Something. And salads.

Sarah:

There's lots to think about there.

Mark:

Lots to think about there.

Sarah:

Somehow or another, she got in her head that he wanted to be with her. Why did she wait ten years?

Mark:

Ten years?

Sarah:

I don't understand that.

Mark:

Ten years.

Sarah:

What's the instigating thing?

Mark:

I don't know. I don't know.

Sarah:

I don't know either. This is another case of it's like the the episode with the guy who's infatuated with his mother.

Mark:

Yeah. Why does she suddenly become into a become a homicidal maniac?

Sarah:

Yeah. What's the trigger?

Mark:

Yeah. Anyway, she arrives.

Sarah:

I can only assume the trigger is that she hasn't been invited to the garden party this year.

Mark:

Well, she says that, and she says that triggers her with Marjorie. And then once she gets going

Sarah:

So all this is Rupert's fault?

Mark:

This is all Rupert's fault.

Sarah:

He hid the invitation Yeah. And she started killing.

Mark:

Yeah. It is. And I think he knows that at the end, but doesn't care.

Sarah:

He's such a nice man, and he causes his wife to become homicidal.

Mark:

She lets down her hair.

Sarah:

And takes her stop sunglasses off. James. So, of course, now she's beautiful.

Mark:

Not No. James, are your dogs on the bed? James immediately figures her out and is like, I'm out of here.

Sarah:

He's so pathetic though. He's hanging out in his boyhood bedroom.

Mark:

I noticed that.

Sarah:

With his toys and his comics.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

It's just

Mark:

It's a little Lloyd. It's a little bit Lloyd now.

Sarah:

It's sad.

Mark:

Yeah. We get a weird Dutch angle because clearly Sandra is crazy.

Sarah:

You have to Dutch angles when the camera is cocked at an angle so things aren't square anymore, right? Yeah. It's all askew. His beautiful dogs give him away.

Mark:

Dogs are like, oh, he's over here.

Sarah:

Yeah. He's under this sheet. He's right here.

Mark:

The cops arrive, and she's like,

Sarah:

are you here to see Lord Chatwood? She just lost it. Just lost it.

Mark:

So we see Rupert with the invite and he tears it up, and we realize how sad his life has been for the last ten years.

Sarah:

Ten years wasted. That's what you get when you marry a bookie's daughter.

Mark:

That's exactly.

Sarah:

He should have known when he was getting into.

Mark:

Sandra, what are you doing here?

Sarah:

So Harry

Mark:

I did all the donkey work.

Sarah:

Harry and Tamsen get to take off together in his trailer.

Mark:

Well, hold on. We have the interrogation where she goes through everything.

Sarah:

Well, yeah, because she's loony, so she's gonna give it up.

Mark:

And they do an interesting thing where when Lavinia dies, they drop the camera from the height. Yep. And, you know, some cameraman held his breath the entire time they shat.

Sarah:

Hoping that that thing wasn't gonna get smashed.

Mark:

Yeah. Harry's moving on with Tamsen or Maureen as she's known now.

Sarah:

Sorry to hear about your pension.

Mark:

We're gonna get our boy back. He Harry is the hero of the episode.

Sarah:

He's a good guy. Yep. And Troy's gonna get to sell his Hawk collection to a comic collector for a whole bunch of money.

Mark:

Go on. Have a guess.

Sarah:

Too bad.

Mark:

Barnaby's got no pension. Yeah. Because it's off in Belize.

Sarah:

So we got three corpses, Marjorie, Jenner, Jenny and Lavinia. Yep. And you think Jenny's the best?

Mark:

I'm voting Jenny.

Sarah:

I'm going with you on that one. Let's talk about after the credits.

Mark:

Okay. Poor Rupert.

Sarah:

Sandra's gonna go to jail. Yep. Done. Doctor. Bradshaw's all alone.

Mark:

Yes. Poor Rupert.

Sarah:

James Chatwood is all alone.

Mark:

James is all alone. But they have something to keep them happy. As far as I can tell, the following people receive money from the reading club. Okay. Tamsen gets $50,000.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

James gets $50,000. Yes. And Rupert gets $50,000. Pounds. All pounds.

Mark:

True.

Sarah:

Did Marjorie and Gerald have kids? I didn't get the sense that they did.

Mark:

I didn't get the sense they did. So the 150,000 gets divided between three of them.

Sarah:

So who gets Jenny's house and who gets Marjorie's house?

Mark:

I don't know, but some lucky person.

Sarah:

Some third cousin once removed

Mark:

Probably.

Sarah:

Is gonna get all of Jenny's awesome stuff, her pool or convertible or awesome house.

Mark:

Yep. Sandra's in jail. Harry and Tamsen are off. And guess what? Vera has done all this work, and I doubt there's gonna be a garden party now.

Sarah:

Poor Vera. She found the body. She doesn't have any place to take her salads. Nope. Lots to think about there.

Sarah:

That's my line

Mark:

from the episode. Because

Sarah:

it just makes me think what is there to think about salads.

Mark:

There's lots to think about there.

Sarah:

Jell O salads or tossed salads or individual salads? Fruit salads. Fruit salads. I didn't even thought about fruit salads.

Mark:

You could list the kinds of salad that you might think at the garden party on our social media.

Sarah:

Antipasto salad? Yes.

Mark:

Which includes at Midsommar Maniacs on Instagram or Twitter. Caprese salads. Excellent. We're also on the Facebook group for Midsomer Murders and the Facebook group for Acorn TV.

Sarah:

Chef Salads. Excellent. Bread Salads.

Mark:

Also, our email is MidsommarManiacs@Gmail.com.

Sarah:

Now There's also that kennel kind of salad, kale stuff. Yeah.

Mark:

Now, we're this is gonna be releasing on the December 1, which is the new episodes of Midsomer will also be dropping. So you may find something else in your feed, a little, special treat from us about the new Midsommers as well.

Sarah:

I'm still thinking about fruit salads.

Mark:

I I know you're still thinking about fruit salads, but it's time to say, bye, Maniacs.

Sarah:

Bye, Maniacs. Dead ends of love,

Mark:

and Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah:

Yeah. The son of the guy who gets killed at the end. Yes. He gets killed too.

Mark:

Yeah. He's he has the girlfriend who's the child. Right. No. He doesn't get killed.

Mark:

We went over this.

Sarah:

Oh, that's right.

Mark:

He doesn't. He doesn't get killed. Doing it. For some reason, you wanna kill little Stevie Cavendish.

Sarah:

Because I have this idea that his wife is alone at the end.

Mark:

No. She's not. That's a cute little bus though. I was like, I wonder if I could get a bus like that and drive around and pick up kids.

Sarah:

Okay. That's creepy. Hey. It's Midsomer Maniacs.

Mark:

Hey, Maniacs.

Sarah:

Hey, Maniacs.

Mark:

How are you doing?

Sarah:

I hope everybody's doing great because it's December, and the holidays are coming.

Mark:

It is. The holidays are coming for sure. But this is episode 21 of the podcast, A Worm in the Butt.

Sarah:

Which is season five episode two. Three. Three?

Mark:

Yep. Season five.

Sarah:

That's right because of the controversy.

Mark:

Yes. Season five episode three. Midsomer Maniacs is a podcast dedicated to the ITV series Midsomer Murders. Each week, dig into an episode of the show, include the murders, the ma'am, the loonies, and everything else we like to maniac out on.

Sarah:

And as is usual, if your kids can handle the craziness of Midsomer murders, they can handle the craziness of Midsomer Maniacs.

Mark:

This is a pretty tame episode actually when you think about it. You know, there's a little goings on, but not a lot of there's no dominatrixes or anything.

Sarah:

Or incest or beheadings. Nope, nope, none of those things. Which are typical to an episode. Yes. This is the exception.

Sarah:

It's kinda tame.

Mark:

So it was filmed in September, October 2001. Broadcast date was the 06/23/2002, right near my birthday, actually, and 9,520,000 viewers. Awesome. Directed by David Tucker and written by Michael Russell.

Sarah:

Anything else at the top before we dive in?

Mark:

Nope. I think we can dive right into the episode.

Sarah:

So the cold opening shows somebody telling a field. This is James Harrington, right, telling a field? Yes. Whenever I see a British field being telled, I'm just waiting for Team to show up. It's just one of those things like, oh, know, the farmers, they keep turning up these Romans to things, you know, and I just like, that's the first thing that comes to my mind.

Mark:

So if you haven't watched Time Team,

Sarah:

it's I'm so broken.

Mark:

It's a British television show in which you know, it's Britain. So you go to a field and you'll turn over a rock and there's Roman pottery. Yeah. You know? It's sitting there.

Mark:

It has fantastic, interesting people in it, and you should watch it.

Sarah:

It's hosted by Tony Robinson Yes. Who was in Blackadder Yep. Amongst other things, and he's so great. They always have three days to do an entire dig, which would take a regular archaeologist like three seasons to dig.

Mark:

And you become fans of these archaeologists.

Sarah:

Yeah. I didn't think I would be a fan of an archaeologist.

Mark:

And Julie and her brother, Sean, are in the forest and she's being mean to him.

Sarah:

Well, she's just being an older sister, an older sibling.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Telling them scary stories.

Mark:

Older sisters are mean.

Sarah:

They're in Wood. I love you both. They listen. Please. This is something their little brother's doing.

Sarah:

They're never gonna listen. No. Absolutely not. So they are wandering around in Set Set Whale Wood, which is kind of the centerpiece of the entire episode.

Mark:

People wandering around in a wood at the start of a Midsomer episode. Guess what they find?

Sarah:

Well, at least neither of them is killed, which could which is the other, you know, possibility in A Midsomer.

Mark:

Yeah. I don't think we I can't remember off the top of my head any dead children in the episode in any episode.

Sarah:

I don't think so. That's that's a bridge too far.

Mark:

Yeah. Think can

Sarah:

sleep with our siblings and bed people, but we can't kill a kid. No. It's just right out.

Mark:

No. They've threatened lots of kids Oh, yeah. But but they haven't actually done it.

Sarah:

So they're goofing around talking about scary bears chasing them and stuff, and they come across a body laying face down in the bushes.

Mark:

And Snowy scares them off. Snowy? Snowy from Tintin.

Sarah:

Oh, he's a Jack Russell.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Now this is set in Midsomer Worthy, which apparently is the village of Jack Russells.

Mark:

Absolutely. There are a million Jack Russells.

Sarah:

There's at least a dozen Yep. Because that's how many Julie draws in her notebook. In her detective notebook. Yes. We quickly cut away to a courtroom Yes.

Sarah:

In which a judge is handing down a decision that on a case between Simon Bartlett and James Harrington. James Harrington owns Setwell Wood as part of his farm and wants to level it. He wants to cut down all the trees.

Mark:

I'm assuming putting in housing estates or something.

Sarah:

Something like that. And Simon wants to stop him, but the judge rules in James' favor.

Mark:

And Bernard Bernadette Sullivan is Simon's lawyer. And just by the way the camera lingers on her, you know that she's up to no good too.

Sarah:

Bernadette is played by Emily Joyce. She's also in A Christmas Haunting, is a twenty thirteen episode of Midsomer.

Mark:

I don't remember her in that episode.

Sarah:

Here's something interesting about Emily Joyce, though. Okay. Before she decided to become an actor full time, she was in a band.

Mark:

What band was she in?

Sarah:

It's called In spite of all that.

Mark:

Okay. It's a British band from the eighties. I've never heard of.

Sarah:

And I could not find anything, but she's one of two people in this episode who are also in in bands.

Mark:

Tom and Troy are also in the courtroom, but it's a different courtroom.

Sarah:

They're in the courthouse in a different courtroom.

Mark:

Yes. Yes. And they're testifying against a burglar. You know what my first thought was when I heard about this? Because he says he's a young man, and he burgled the houses all over the county.

Mark:

I think this is the butcher's son's trial.

Sarah:

Well, it's not Orlando Bloom's. Right? Because he's good and dead.

Mark:

Nope. He's good and dead.

Sarah:

But he could be his partner in crimes trial.

Mark:

And he gives him a second chance. The judge gives him a second chance.

Sarah:

Boy, that's quite a window that he's been in jail awaiting trial, though.

Mark:

Well, you know, he's routing on remand.

Sarah:

Yeah. So James and Simon come out of the courthouse and immediately get into a fight, because James is selling the wood and Simon's unhappy about it. Now, James Harrington, one of our key characters here is played by Adam Kotz, K O T Z. He's also in another episode of Midsomer called The Dagger Club, which is a twenty fifteen episode. He's the other person who's in a band.

Mark:

What band was he in?

Sarah:

He's in a band that just broke up this year. Called Case Hardin,

Mark:

h a r d I n. Another British band I've never heard of.

Sarah:

Well, there's a reason why you might not have heard of them because they're not your typical British band. They are a UK Alt Americana country band. Wow. They put out five albums.

Mark:

This is James Harrington's in this band.

Sarah:

Yes. He plays mandolin, guitar, banjo, and does some vocals.

Mark:

Wow. Yeah. It's British people singing country. Yeah. Oh, this gotta be interesting.

Sarah:

Americana. Whatever that is. Right?

Mark:

In the middle of this altercation, James goes, nice day for it, rector. The rector is absolutely glued on here again in this.

Sarah:

Yeah. But he needs to be there because British law is so complicated and goes back centuries and centuries. You know, there's all this complex history associated with it, especially with local common law. And the fact that the wood is associated with the church in some way means he's gotta be there.

Mark:

It it's a different kind of law than what we're used to hear in the in the colonies.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well, it just means that it can get complicated. Yes. But Bernadette is banking on that because according to the documentation, when the wood was given to the village or given sold from the rectory that if it was ever sold again, half of it would go, half of those proceeds would go back to the rectory. And so the church has a stake in this.

Mark:

It's just another underdeveloped director.

Sarah:

It is. But he's scared.

Mark:

Yeah. He does scared well. Now they're outside the courthouse, and they're getting wet. Why would they be getting wet?

Sarah:

You and the rain. It's raining. Guys, I can't tell you how many times he paused this episode just to go rain? No rain. Rain?

Sarah:

Oh, look. The The car's not wet. The ground's not wet. Oh, now it's raining again.

Mark:

It's actually raining. It it's just this first day, and the time is way off on this first day.

Sarah:

Oh my gosh. It's crazy time.

Mark:

So the time and the rain get all screwed up because James goes to a playground. And when he goes to a playground to see his kids

Sarah:

It's daytime and it's not raining.

Mark:

It's it's it's bone dry.

Sarah:

He goes to see his wife Caroline, and it's bone dry. It's not raining. The sun's still up. Then we have this window of time that we're not quite sure how long it takes. Right?

Mark:

In that tiny little bit of sunshine, we find out that James has been screwing Simon's wife. So this whole wood thing is deeper than just land management.

Sarah:

Yes. So James has been having an affair with Susan, who is Simon's wife. Simon is his opposition in this case.

Mark:

Susan and Simon.

Sarah:

Yes. Now while we have this window of time where James goes pub hopping

Mark:

to get drunk He's drunk.

Sarah:

Simon goes to Bernadette's because he's having a fling with her.

Mark:

Well, he he goes back to Bernadette's because we learned earlier

Sarah:

He was there

Mark:

all night, the day before.

Sarah:

But we also know

Mark:

that Worst farmer ever.

Sarah:

Earlier in the day before James left for court, Susan came to see him.

Mark:

Yes. Right? At around eleven.

Sarah:

But that's not even the crazy part. Okay. The crazy part of the day is once it gets dark.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

James is good and drunk and driving around.

Mark:

Yep. Splashing people.

Sarah:

And Simon is telling Bernadette he needs to get home even though she says his wife is a cow and he also has cows and none of them care when he gets home. He needs to cover up his tiny tuft of chest hair. Yes. Meanwhile, Denise and Sam Fielding, who are the parents of Julie and Sean, the kids in the wood Okay. Are feeding their kids dinner.

Sarah:

Okay?

Mark:

When you eat dinner in England?

Sarah:

They might eat a little bit later than us.

Mark:

Maybe.

Sarah:

But I think kids still go to bed at a decent time

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Which I would say is 09:00

Mark:

Which

Sarah:

for kids who are under 10.

Mark:

If we're going by the clues in the rest of the show, it's ten or 10:30.

Sarah:

We know that Simon needs to be home by 10:30. Yep. So he's leaving, so it's gotta be around ten, and he later confirms that it was about ten or 10:30. Yep. So this means that the Fieldings are they're feeding their kids dinner at 10:30.

Sarah:

No wonder their mom whips their plates off the table before they're done and sends them to bed. Yeah. But then Julie says, but it's not my bedtime. When does this kid go to bed? Midnight?

Mark:

I don't know. The first day has all sorts of problems.

Sarah:

They just have a lot to accomplish, and so they just ignore chronology.

Mark:

I keep in my notes at least two times on this page alone. I have in all capital letters. What time is it? Yeah.

Sarah:

Meanwhile, during this torrential downpour with lightning and thunder going on, somebody is dragging a body in the woods.

Mark:

And I don't understand why the killer knocks out this person with Valerian. Okay? It's Susan. Susan. And then puts her in the water.

Mark:

Why not just leave her where she is?

Sarah:

Because she's not gonna die.

Mark:

That's right. That's right. I said it, and then I figured it out.

Sarah:

Right? So Susan's been poisoned with Valerian. So she's unconscious face down in the wood, but she's not dead.

Mark:

That's right.

Sarah:

The real question is why Victoria, who's the killer, okay, we don't worry about spoilers here. We assume everybody's watched it.

Mark:

Nope. This is a spoiler full full episode.

Sarah:

Did she drug Susan and then lose her? And she went into the woods and passed out and she couldn't find her for twenty four hours?

Mark:

I guess. And then, like, Jonah found her because he had the dog.

Sarah:

His dog goes where he wants to.

Mark:

But no, there's a person there that finds

Sarah:

the dog is wandering around in the woods with Victoria. Oh. Jonah's dog hangs out with Victoria and Hannah more than it hangs out with Jonah. Because that dog goes where he wants to go. Remember?

Sarah:

And they've been out they The three of them

Mark:

have been friends. The

Sarah:

three of them have been friends for a long time. And so the dog is comfortable with them and that's why his dog is in the wood.

Mark:

Well, it it takes a lot of effort to get this body in the pond, which is much bigger than I realized when they show it later.

Sarah:

When the body is being drug into it, it looks just like a low lying area that's filling with rain. Yeah. Because the killer is not even up to his or her knees in the water. We know it's her her knees in the water. And yet later, we've got scuba divers.

Mark:

Yep. Oh, boy. Do we have scuba divers?

Sarah:

So it must have got real deep real fast.

Mark:

I and it it looks like it's like maybe a quarter mile across.

Sarah:

If that Yeah. Later on. It looks like a big puddle when we're putting the body in it,

Mark:

but later But it looks like a small lake.

Sarah:

Later, it's a full on pond. Anyway.

Mark:

We also have a creepy shrine shown. The creepy shrine checklist includes candles Check. Old pictures

Sarah:

Check.

Mark:

Weird music Check. And shadows. Check.

Sarah:

Okay. Don't forget old bible.

Mark:

Old bible. Yes. Check.

Sarah:

And dead flowers.

Mark:

Dead flowers. Check. Okay. We've got the shrine going.

Sarah:

The shrine is set, and it belongs to somebody. It belongs to Jonah. We just don't know it at the time.

Mark:

Okay. Next day, cows. We know it's the next day. It's morning. They do a good job of telling us the sun is out now.

Sarah:

Yes. Simon has a dairy farm. Yes. And James plants something.

Mark:

Okay. So we don't know if James has livestock, but we know he's planting.

Sarah:

Yes. Okay. And we know Simon doesn't do that.

Mark:

No, Simon doesn't do that. And I'll get into what Simon does and doesn't do in a little while. But one thing James is doing here that you might not have figured out because you're not a farmer what he's doing. So after you till the soil, with the plow, But we did wonder, and I need to go back and check to see if it's the same plow that poor what's his name? Fell on.

Mark:

I

Sarah:

don't even wanna think about that, dad. I'm bad.

Mark:

So James is doing a thing called spreading manure, and this is not a euphemism.

Sarah:

And it's not so much spreading as flinging.

Mark:

Yeah. So a manure spreader, you take a bunch of manure from where your cows so he must have cows somewhere because he's

Sarah:

he gets it from another farm.

Mark:

No. Because later on, he's in a a pond of animal excrement.

Sarah:

Again, it could have been trucked in.

Mark:

It could have been.

Sarah:

He could have been. He could be buying his shit somewhere and having it delivered.

Mark:

I have to tell you, people would come and do that. I know. So you then put a bunch of manure on this tilled field so that the nutrients from what the animals ate act as fertilizer. Right. Now he has what is called a horizontal manure spreader.

Mark:

Right? So it flings the crap. That's what it's doing.

Sarah:

Right. And it's distributing it in a spray behind the tractor.

Mark:

Yes. Right? And he has his window open, which you would never have your window open because you have to realize that this when you do this in the farm, it showers everything with shit.

Sarah:

Well, and his window is covered in it.

Mark:

It it it is indeed. But what's more interesting, a tiny digression here is there is vertical.

Sarah:

There's a vertical model? There is a vertical model. Why would you wanna spray crap up?

Mark:

So this manure spreader has a a chain that pulls the manure towards the thing that flings it.

Sarah:

That spins and flips it out.

Mark:

Yes.

Mark:

Right?

Mark:

The traditional original the the horizontal ones are new. The vertical ones are the original ones, and they would fling manure into the air. And I'm talking fifty, sixty feet in the air.

Sarah:

Is this like a I imagine like the wheel of a paddle boat going around and

Mark:

And it goes around really fast.

Sarah:

So doesn't it all end up on the tractor, or it flings it the other direction? It flings it away from

Mark:

the tractor. Flings it out the back towards the field. Now I remember as a kid watching this.

Sarah:

I was gonna say, the reason why you're even remotely interested in this is that you have childhood flashbacks of manure spiders.

Mark:

In addition, I had a Massey Ferguson toy tractor and a Massey Ferguson toy manure spreader.

Sarah:

Your parents really loved you. Here's son. Here's a shit flinger for Christmas. Enjoy.

Mark:

It's one of those things that, you know, when people have this bucolic view of farming, I'm always like, are you ready to throw shit around? Cause that's one of the things you have to do. You

Sarah:

have to collect it, you gotta load it up, and then you gotta drive around and fling it everywhere.

Mark:

Oh, I asked my brothers and sisters about manure sprayers and they just shutter.

Sarah:

And thus ends Mark's little farming trauma episode period of the show.

Mark:

Oh, it'll come back. Simon has a quad bike. Yes. And you noticed something about this quad bike.

Sarah:

Well, the quad bike has a rack on the front of it, which most of them do, especially when you use them on farms. And you put, like, a a box or, like, a bin on the front of it. You can carry stuff. There's one on the back too. Yep.

Sarah:

And the one on the front of his changes color. It What? Sometimes it's black, sometimes it's orange.

Mark:

Oh, well, it's nice that it changes color.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's not a big deal. Hannah and Victoria are doing the flowers of the church. And this is a thing, right? That the women of the village volunteer to decorate the church with flowers.

Mark:

Yes. Couple of things about the church. One, they're trying to raise 50 k for a roof appeal. They're not even close. They only have 15 k.

Mark:

It's it's a it's a long way off.

Sarah:

Is there a church in England that doesn't need a new roof? I wanna

Mark:

know. I don't believe so.

Sarah:

It looks a lot like the church in Badger's Drift.

Mark:

It does.

Sarah:

But I know that there's common architecture in

Mark:

churches Possibly. Same

Sarah:

age. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Hannah and Victoria are there, putting together the flower arrangements for the rector.

Sarah:

So Victoria Bartlett, she's Simon's mom.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Right? And Hannah is James' mom. Yes. So their mothers are friends even though they are enemies. Yes.

Sarah:

Now Victoria is played by Wendy Craig.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

And a couple interesting things about Wendy. She's had an incredibly long career. She's been in stuff years and years and years, right? I mean, she's an older lady, so, she's been in lots of stuff. She has two sons and just a few years ago, even though her sons are grown men, I'd love to know how this got out.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

In some way, it was revealed that her second son is not her husband's. Oh. And her husband has died, but that instead, her second son whose name is Ross Yeah. Is the result of an affair that she had with John Mortimer, whose name probably doesn't ring a bell to you. He's famous because he wrote Rumpel of the Bailey.

Mark:

Oh, that's where I know that name from.

Sarah:

Yeah. So there's that. Yeah. Which is kind of interesting. But what I found even more interesting was a movie that she was in.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

In 1965,

Mark:

she was in a movie. 1965 British movie. Yeah. There's a good chance I've seen this movie.

Sarah:

It's a hammer movie.

Mark:

Oh, it's a hammer movie.

Sarah:

It's got Betty Davis in it.

Mark:

Betty Davis in a hammer movie?

Sarah:

Yes. Okay. It's called nanny.

Mark:

Oh, Nanny Epstein. Yes.

Sarah:

She plays in Wendy Craig plays the mother

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

In Nanny. Okay. Woah. What a plot this movie has.

Mark:

So lay it on us.

Sarah:

So a little boy is released from a special school that he's been sent to because he is somehow bad. Bad. And it's not really clear why he's bad, but when his dad comes to get him from the special school, he's just played a joke on all the teachers by pretending to hang himself. Oh. He's that kind of kid.

Mark:

That that is special. Right? Yeah. Bad.

Sarah:

But so they bring him home. They're gonna love him, he's gonna be normal again. Right? They're gonna help him out.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

And they've brought in a nanny Yes. Who's Betty Davis. Nice. Nothing's going to go wrong.

Mark:

No. No. It's not good.

Sarah:

And so the whole movie is he said, she said. He's saying to his parents, nanny's evil and she's trying to kill me. And nanny's like, of course not, I would never do that. And they're like, well, the kid is kind of broken and he's kind of crazy, so maybe we shouldn't believe him. And she's nanny's like, of course you shouldn't believe him.

Sarah:

I'm not homicidal. Meanwhile, she's trying to kill him left, right, and center. Absolutely. Has killed other people

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

All over the place.

Mark:

Killer nanny.

Sarah:

But it ends with her, with him, underwater in a bathtub, holding him down, about to kill him, and then she just changes her mind.

Mark:

Well, you know,

Sarah:

The end. That

Mark:

Tada.

Sarah:

But Wendy Craig plays this great she's so good as the mother because she's absolutely she's neurotic and her son's a little loopy. Her daughter was killed somehow. You don't know exactly how. And we think that maybe her son is the one who killed the daughter and that's why they send him to the special place. Right?

Sarah:

And so she's just falling apart for two hours Oh. Basically.

Mark:

Well, she's right at home in the Midsomer.

Sarah:

Until the end when Betty Davis doesn't kill her son, and then he's like, oh, I love you, mommy. And she's like, I love you too, and everything's gonna be okay.

Mark:

Oh, okay. What have we learned from this? Don't hire Betty Davis as your nanny.

Sarah:

No. Good God. But Wendy Craig was in a few movies in that era that were kind of of that ilk. You look through her IMDB history, there's some fun ones in there.

Mark:

Yeah, I'm sure.

Sarah:

She was in another movie with Oliver Reed where he plays an ad agent who's going nuts and

Mark:

Oh, I think I've seen that. Yeah. I can't remember the title, but I had the that Oliver Reed thing in high school. There's super as many Oliver Reed movies as we could. So Yeah.

Sarah:

Sam is out in Setwell Wood. Yep. And he's exercising the hounds that belong to the Midsomer hunt.

Mark:

And he took Julie with him.

Sarah:

Is this hunt pack the same hunt pack from the episode

Mark:

With the hunt.

Sarah:

With the hunt. Is that the Midsomer Hunt pack as well?

Mark:

It may be, but remember that had a different hunt master.

Sarah:

Maybe he's maybe though they've changed.

Mark:

Maybe he's the new hunt master.

Sarah:

Yeah. I don't know. I didn't review it. I should have reviewed it. Yeah.

Sarah:

Because Sam and his wife Denise think that, you know, Julie and Sean are just making up stories. Right? Yeah. So he wants to take Julie out, show her that there's nobody, and then they'll be done with it, and that'll be the end of it.

Mark:

It's gonna shock her basically.

Sarah:

But no, I think he's not

Mark:

It's a shocker.

Sarah:

It's like when you say there's a boogeyman in the closet, you open the closet and you show the kid there's nobody in the closet and then that's the end of it. Right? So we're gonna go to the wood, there's not gonna be a body and you're gonna stop talking about it. But instead, there

Mark:

is this a with Julie, not Sean. Why?

Sarah:

Because Sean's not going on about it.

Mark:

Okay. Well, you know

Sarah:

And if Julie doesn't think it happened, then then Sean won't either. But of course, then they find Susan in the pond.

Mark:

Yes. Very good dead body acting here. Yeah. Like in the water, face down,

Sarah:

no movement. Seemingly face down.

Mark:

I don't think her face is actually in the water. No. I don't think so. I think she's up on her knee on her elbows.

Sarah:

Yeah. Or laying on a box

Mark:

or something. Something.

Sarah:

Because this is not deep water.

Mark:

No. No. No. No. But he turns her over and she she does a pretty good wet dead body.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

The both well, a number of dead bodies in this episode are covered with stuff. Crap, literally, in some cases. And, yeah, they do a very good job.

Sarah:

She's lucky she's only has to be covered in water.

Mark:

So two things about this scene caught my attention because, oh, well, dead body. Right? Scene of the crime comes, and Tom pulls up in a police van. Do they come and get him in that van?

Sarah:

Yeah. I don't know why he I mean, it's typical for Troy to be there first. He's a sergeant. That's kind of his job. Yeah.

Sarah:

So maybe he was driving the car.

Mark:

Checks it out, and then he calls Barnaby. Right?

Sarah:

He goes, yeah. This is This is where

Mark:

he's at. Yeah.

Sarah:

We need to look at this.

Mark:

Yeah. And then the second part of the scene, the crime scene is a guy two guys in wet suits in the background.

Sarah:

I don't know why they're there. We already know the water is not even waist deep. Why do you need a scuba suit?

Mark:

Well, they don't do much back there, but look uncomfortable.

Sarah:

Stand around half dressed in scuba suits talking to each other at a distance. They're not looking for a gun or anything in the water.

Mark:

Don't know

Sarah:

what the point is. I I don't know. No. Right. I don't know.

Sarah:

Every time I see James, because James and Simon were in a fight outside the courthouse and Simon punched him in the mouth. James's lip gets busted. Yeah. And so he's got this, like a scab on his lip. Yes.

Sarah:

But every time I see him after that, I think he's got a lip ring.

Mark:

Yes. Because like a lip ring. Perfectly up and down straight.

Sarah:

It's just a line on his bottom lip. I'm like, oh, he's a punky farmer

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Wearing his lip ring. Not so busted.

Mark:

So he's upset with the with the director because

Sarah:

He thinks they're in cahoots.

Mark:

Yeah. And the woods is all blocked off to James now.

Sarah:

Yeah. Which he assumes is Bernadette's doing. Right? Yeah. To stop him from felling any trees, but in reality it's because there's a body in there.

Mark:

Yeah. So now we go to Simon's farm and I have some problems. Okay. So he has, as far as I can tell from roughly looking at it, probably around 60 to a 100 head of cattle.

Sarah:

Welcome to another episode of Mark's Farm Trauma.

Mark:

So having 60 to a 100 head of cattle means a couple of things. Most farmers, most dairy farmers either milk their cows twice a day Mhmm. Which means they're on a twelve hour rotation Mhmm. Or three times a day, which means they're on an eight hour rotation.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Okay. To And they do it by machine

Sarah:

Yes. Right now. With

Mark:

roughly 10 to 12 milking machines, which they don't have. Okay?

Sarah:

Well, there is that big UFO looking rack of machines Yeah. With the glowing green neon.

Mark:

That's four milking machines.

Sarah:

Oh, so they can milk four cows at a time?

Mark:

Yes. So if you can milk 10 cows at a time, you will take four hours a day to milk all those cows Each time? No, no,

Sarah:

So each time it takes two hours?

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

And that's with 10 machines.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

So it's gonna take them three times that roughly.

Mark:

Yes. So so now we're into twelve hours of milking.

Sarah:

A day.

Mark:

Which really means by the time he's finished, needs to milk them again. And this is where Jonah Blocks and master milker comes in. Because he is the greatest farmhand ever.

Sarah:

He does everything.

Mark:

Now no human being can run 10 milking machines at one time.

Sarah:

Well, they only have four, so that's good.

Mark:

There's just too many cows and not enough milking machines.

Sarah:

Never mind that the milk that comes out of those machines has to go into big

Mark:

Big vats. Big vats.

Sarah:

That have to be, like, been Refrigerated and tested and cut sterile.

Mark:

Truck that comes every day and all all there's they leave the farm quickly because I think the director is like, I don't understand how farms work, so let's get into the farm's office, which is absolutely okay. Yeah. Because a farm needs an office.

Sarah:

So I have to say, as a kid who did not grow up on a farm, I've always been highly amused by the fact that they call the barn where the milking happens, the milking parlor.

Mark:

The parlor.

Sarah:

It's always made me think of, like, Elsie the cow sitting on a wingback chair with some doilies being milked. Welcome to the milking parlor. We have tea and our teeth pulled.

Mark:

So two more things about this scene. First of all, he mentions AI, and that's not artificial intelligence. No. No. Those cows are being set up for artificial insemination.

Sarah:

Oh. Yes. That's a different AI. Well, that movie would have been different. And

Mark:

Jonas says that machine or that thing doesn't understand when the cows are ready for AI.

Sarah:

I'm sorry. I'm just thinking of that little kid in that Spielberg movie coming around to artificially inseminate people.

Mark:

Oh, that's gross. It's Haley Jones Osman as in inseminator.

Sarah:

He's so scary.

Mark:

Oh. Oh, but that's different role of Jude Law in that movie. That's for sure.

Sarah:

That's okay because Simon has software to manage all that. Right?

Mark:

Yes. He has the daily herd report. Okay. So this is a Windows 2,000 computer, and daily herd report, not a real program. They absolutely made this program thing.

Sarah:

That's impressive.

Mark:

The herd number is O8Dash67587Dash01, Grange Farm Bartlett. It's a herd management app. Oh. Yes. They may that it looks pretty realistic.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

They also use an email app, and this is the first time for Windows 2,000, the first time for email on Midsomer, and there's a mention of the web later on.

Sarah:

Yeah. This is

Mark:

a very tech episode. So the application they use for email is called Office Talk, which is not a real application.

Sarah:

Well, they couldn't show a

Mark:

real one. No. They couldn't show a real one. And there's an email from Susan Bartlett which says, I have to face the truth now. No more pretending.

Mark:

I'd rather be dead than live with it. At least you can start again. Which I immediately said it should be at least comma. You can start again.

Sarah:

Well, you know what I thought?

Mark:

What?

Sarah:

I thought Office Talk was well ahead of its time because it can, send and receive emails from dead people.

Mark:

Yes. It's it's amazing. Should be

Sarah:

called ghost mail.

Mark:

Ghost mail. Ghost mail.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because she she would have had to send that email after she was at least unconscious in the wood, but probably dead.

Mark:

So Simon goes a little berserk, which he would if, you know, I think Simon loved his wife, but I don't think he actually liked her.

Sarah:

Well, speaking about artificial insemination Yeah. They'd been going through a whole bunch of fertility treatments, and I think that it kinda taken over their lives and they weren't successful, so it had driven them apart. So they weren't talking as much as they used to, they didn't spend any time together and it's easy to think that maybe he didn't care about her, but he did love her. Yeah. They just hadn't had a good relationship recently.

Mark:

Yeah. I think I think so. So Troy almost kills him.

Sarah:

Yes. They play chicken.

Mark:

This is almost the exact same scene as the the Freddy scene from the last episode except for this person is actually upset for a valid reason.

Sarah:

And Tom doesn't seem upset as they're careening towards Simon and his Land Rover. No. Tom's not like, stop, slow down, whatever. You know? He's like, keep going.

Mark:

Yep. Hit him. Hit him.

Sarah:

We're gonna stop this guy. Because for all they know, it's Simon making a run for it. Right? Because he killed his wife.

Mark:

Yeah. So they gotta Yeah. Stop

Sarah:

In reality, I think he would have just off roaded and driven around them. He's mean

Mark:

to Tom. I don't

Sarah:

like that. He's mean to Tom because he doesn't know who he is.

Mark:

And he's upset.

Sarah:

He's not as mean to Tom as his mom is to him. Boy, when Victoria shows up, she's got some tough words for Simon. Absolutely. But she's a mom. She's gonna have tough words.

Mark:

So they go in and talk to Simon about what's going on and farmers keep unsociable hours and blah blah blah blah blah. Right? Meanwhile, I'm obsessed with the bulletin board cause there's pictures of her and a brochure for the spring at Harmony Hall, where they're doing a session called learning to listen.

Sarah:

Well, she's got all kinds of like natural remedy Yeah. Holistic stuff. Right? Because she's trying to get pregnant and just, you know, learning anything that she can. So she's gonna go to the learn to listen session?

Mark:

Yes. Yeah. And Troy talks to Bloxham in the barn because he's got nothing to do. I I don't understand how Bloxham has any time to do anything in this episode.

Sarah:

Well, he can milk 60 cows in like fifteen minutes because the cows are gone now. Right? Yep. He spends all of his time eavesdropping and hosing things off.

Mark:

Yep. And telling Troy that he saw Susan at James' farm.

Sarah:

Jonah Blocks'em is played by Ian Hogg, who's been in a gazillion things.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Right? A gazillion things.

Mark:

He's that familiar face guy.

Sarah:

The most intriguing thing though that I found in his long list of roles was a TV show or it might have been a miniseries from '87 called Boogie Outlaws.

Mark:

Oh, that's not the only boogie that we'll get to in this

Sarah:

It's about a disco band on the run. Boogie Outlaws. From the law. Wow. I couldn't find a clip of it.

Mark:

That sounds exciting.

Sarah:

Yeah. Boogie Outlaws.

Mark:

Boogie Outlaws. Boogie Boogie Outlaws. So

Sarah:

Tom and Troy are gonna go talk to James now.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Right? Because Jonas said, we saw Susan, he saw Susan, at James's house and they don't yet know that James and Susan had a thing. Right?

Mark:

Is kind of they don't. How they James tells them. Yeah. Before that though, we have a little more scenes with Julie and Sean. Right?

Mark:

Because essentially, they're on the lookout for a Jack Russell.

Sarah:

Which Tom is kind of dismissed, like, yeah. Yeah. Whatever.

Mark:

Yeah. And Tom says you could should keep this as a secret and, you know, things like that. And while they're talking to the kids, I'm immediately thinking, wait a minute, how old are these children now? So the Julie is played by Clarissa Holt who is actually 27 now. And Charlie Hicks who is Sean, I couldn't get an age on him.

Mark:

Clarissa Holt is the sister of Nicholas Holt, who you might know is, all over the place in films now. He, was a Nikola Tesla in the current war. He's the beast in the new x men series of movies. And Charlie was in a movie called fungus the boogeyman.

Sarah:

Yes. It's a straight to VHS movie.

Mark:

Yes. It's an animated movie.

Sarah:

It's animated. It's kind of a Shrek Yeah. Look alike.

Mark:

But, I thought Fungus the Boogeyman was Yeah. Now now I wonder if because it's British. I wonder if it's Fungus the Boogeyman or Fungus the Boogeyman.

Sarah:

Well, I can tell you that, Ian Hogg's TV show was not bogey outlaws because I would be different. They're on the run for picking their noses. Boogey outlaws. James's house is interesting to me.

Mark:

Oh, it's so interesting.

Sarah:

His wife has been gone for a year, this is about Year

Mark:

or two?

Sarah:

Yeah, so it's kind of a mess. He's a farmer, he's kind of dirty and the house is kind of dirty, but I'm sort of confused by his kitchen. He's got an aga, right? And my understanding of these stoves is that they're basically cast iron stoves and they serve not only as a thing to cook on, but they also are kind of the furnace of the house at the same time. Sometimes.

Sarah:

They stay hot internally all the time and create heat.

Mark:

And the idea is that that both of these farms are well owned by the family five hundred years in the

Sarah:

case They of go way back. And so you would expect that they would be pretty well equipped Yeah. After all that time. But Troy leans against the stove with his backside in both of his hands. Yeah.

Sarah:

And I thought they were hot on top sort of. I thought they were warm.

Mark:

I worry about Troy touching anything.

Sarah:

But above the stove is the nastiest rag I've ever seen. Just hanging there. It's just gross.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

Right above the stove.

Mark:

I I don't think James is that great of a cook.

Sarah:

No. I don't think so either. But that's just the first of two kitchen mysteries. We'll get to another one later. So Susan drowned six hours after Julie and Sean saw her in the woods.

Sarah:

So we now know for sure that the person we've seen dragging a body in the rain the night before is somebody dragging Susan into the pond. That's sure. And we know and we're gonna find out as Victoria dragging her into the pond.

Mark:

And Bartleby and Troy are discussing this at the police station and Bartleby goes off into weirdness territory.

Sarah:

Is this where he does the I saw the man upon the stairs thing?

Mark:

I saw the man upon the stairs thing.

Sarah:

Again, I've mentioned it before. I have a PhD in literature. Yep. I have two master's degrees in English. Yes.

Sarah:

And for some reason, every time I hear that poem, I think it's Emily Dickinson.

Mark:

It's not.

Sarah:

And I don't know why.

Mark:

The poem is called Antigonish. It's by Hughes Mairns.

Sarah:

From Nova Scotia. It's a Canadian poem. Yep. I looked and looked and looked to see whether my confusion about that was common. Like, did Emily Dickinson have a poem similar?

Sarah:

And that's why I think that it that it was her.

Mark:

It's a common trope, meeting a man on the stairs with no name.

Sarah:

Yeah. But I I I think it's a Berenstain Bear thing. I think in in another dimension, she wrote it, and I got it in my head. I don't know.

Mark:

The poem is originally about a ghost. Mhmm. Because he read a report that there was this house in Antigonish, Nova Scotia that had a ghost that was on the stairs.

Sarah:

And that part that Barnaby recites is only a small part of the poem.

Mark:

Yeah. It's not very it's not a huge poem, but it's only part of

Sarah:

it. Yeah.

Mark:

And it's been referenced in a whole bunch of other things.

Sarah:

Bernadette is an extremely successful barrister.

Mark:

Why why would you say that?

Sarah:

Because she has a flat in London, which most normal people can't afford to begin with.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

And a really beautiful Georgian house.

Mark:

Where she always puts stuff on the mantle. Did you notice that? Yep. She's always putting stuff on the mantle.

Sarah:

I mean, it's a beautiful house. It's got big French windows with leaded glass. It's got high ceilings. It's got beautiful moldings. Beautiful.

Sarah:

It's a gorgeous home. And that's her occasional place.

Mark:

Yeah. The one that she leaves, you know, when she's bonking Simon.

Sarah:

Yeah. You know, to go to London.

Mark:

The Simon bonking house.

Sarah:

It's just nice. I'm glad to see single women doing well for themselves.

Mark:

Yep. She didn't make up the spare bed. I love that line. That night also something weird happens. And so this is a thing with me in Midsomer.

Mark:

I'm always like, what is the episode where they make the dead body thing out of flowers?

Sarah:

This is This one.

Mark:

This is the episode. So somebody cuts the the tops of flowers and makes a extremely proportionate, well defined dead body kinda chalk drawing out of the flowers.

Sarah:

In the dark.

Mark:

In the dark.

Sarah:

And it's James.

Mark:

Yeah. I'm worried about this because first of all, do we see James not drunk other than in court?

Sarah:

Well, even if he's if he's drunk, he still does a really good job. What concerns me is that he's even cut the flowers off of her climbing vines.

Mark:

Yes. So he climbed up the house.

Sarah:

To cut the flowers off. Still, he does a really good job.

Mark:

He does. He's got a, like, a career

Sarah:

here that he doesn't

Mark:

know about. He he does. He he should be doing flower arrangement.

Sarah:

Or chalk outlines of

Mark:

body. Something. And Hannah discovers this Yeah. With her hair.

Sarah:

You don't like Hannah's bob. I don't

Mark:

know we got against her bobb. I don't like her fringe bothers me.

Sarah:

Tom and Troy go and search Simon's house, find the laptop, find out that the email was sent after Susan died, so somebody access this laptop. Simon says he's never touched it. James says he's never touched

Mark:

it. And he freaks out about the search, which of course is completely understandable.

Sarah:

Yeah. Somebody's digging around in your house.

Mark:

But then they do a purposely different scene where James is like, oh, you can look whatever around my house. I don't care. And then

Sarah:

I hide. And, yeah, Susan used to, like, bang on about the web all

Mark:

the time. She was on and on about gynecological sites. Are you sure that's where she was going? And tarot card sites.

Sarah:

She was trying to get pregnant. But she's desperate.

Mark:

Don't know if that stuff was on the web at 2,000. Message boards. Yep. Sausages.

Sarah:

So here's the second of three kitchen mysteries. So the first one was, can you lean on an algae without getting burnt? The second one is Julie goes into the Fielding family kitchen and gets sausages out of the fridge that they're gonna lure dogs with. So they

Mark:

can Sausages.

Sarah:

Check out all of the Jack Russells. I do not understand how British families survive with a basically dorm fridge.

Mark:

Yeah. We have two full sized fridges. Now we have a big family, but

Sarah:

We've only got one or two more kids than they do.

Mark:

I have a fridge that big in my office, in my room at school.

Sarah:

Yeah. And yet, not only do British families survive with small refrigerators, they survive with a washer, but no dryer.

Mark:

Well, wear small clothes and eat small meals.

Sarah:

Or they go to the store every day.

Mark:

Maybe that's why they have the distance thing.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because they're all wee. They're tiny people, and that's why things seem so far apart.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

But she steals some big old sausages. Yep. And then they feed them all to one dog. That little Jack Russell should explode. And then Troy gets all techy.

Sarah:

He's got a camera. He does. He goes to take pictures of the body outline and the gonna wanna see this. And he's like turning it sideways.

Mark:

Never do we see fancy. Barnaby looking at it.

Sarah:

No. I guess we can assume that he did, but this is before digital cameras.

Mark:

Right? He meets them at the Golden Ball, which is the pub for this episode, which has fine l's and stouts, home cooked food, morning coffees, and afternoon teas, and by the way, children welcome.

Sarah:

I'd like to go there. Yes. I wish we had

Mark:

a pub. I wish we had a pub.

Sarah:

Simon and Bernadette get into it because she's all well, now that your wife's dead, you can be with me and I can give you everything you want and we can get the wood back and blah blah blah blah blah blah. And of course, he's like, she's not even buried yet. And then Bernadette drops this awesome line. What's the decent period for abstaining from your mistress when your wife has died?

Mark:

So I I wonder this question.

Sarah:

I did too. Did you Google it?

Mark:

No. Of all the strange searches we do because of this show, I really didn't wanna do that one.

Sarah:

Most of what I found was how do you respond when your husband's mistress dies and he's upset?

Mark:

Oh, well, that that happened in the last episode. That happens in dark harvest.

Sarah:

Yeah. There's a lot about that. But according to the Catholic church

Mark:

The Catholic church.

Sarah:

Now it's not specifically a rule about when you can sleep with your mistress after your spouse dies. Okay. But the mourning period for the death of a spouse is one year and one day.

Mark:

One year and one day.

Sarah:

It's very specific.

Mark:

Bernadette's not gonna wait that long.

Sarah:

I don't think so. She's She's a fast lady.

Mark:

She she wants

Sarah:

big city lady.

Mark:

She wants some Simon sausage before that. And

Sarah:

again, now I'm thinking of what's his name? Haley Joe Osmond or whatever his name is. Okay. Just feel like walking in like all robot y going,

Mark:

I'm here.

Sarah:

I'm AI. I'm so wrong. I'm so broken.

Mark:

And they follow a bunch of puppies, including to the Midsomer worthy stores and post office where they see Buster. Buster's a little scared to be on camera. Mhmm. He's a little terrified. He's cute.

Sarah:

I just wonder if there is a dog wrangler who brought, like, six Jack Russells to town to to film. Yeah. Because they're definitely not all the same dog because some of them have are, like, kind of longer, wiry haired terriers and some of them are short, smooth terriers. Yeah. There's so many.

Sarah:

Hannah and Victoria are hanging out and they talked to Tom and they've been friends since they were little. Wee. Since they are wee? Wee. These are two women who both have raised sons that they don't like.

Mark:

Yeah. The sort of thread that runs through this episode, two of two threads. One is children that you raise that you don't like as adults.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Because they don't like their kids. No. And second is absentee fathers. Yeah. Both fathers are never even mentioned.

Sarah:

We just assume that they died. Because Victoria does say when your dad died.

Mark:

Oh, that's

Sarah:

So we know Simon's fathers died. Yeah. And then sausage gets turned into a verb.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Julie's, sausage it, Sean. Sausage it. Because Jonah's dog is is, like, gonna rip their faces off.

Mark:

These are He comes out with a knife. He's a scary old man

Sarah:

at And this I don't know what he says.

Mark:

He says some line. So the

Sarah:

The subtitles for this episode, at least on Acorn, are not that great. There's a lot of errors in them, right? So you can't rely on them when you're not sure what somebody said.

Mark:

They really have trouble with the fieldings.

Sarah:

But when Jonah chases Julie and Sean away from his cottage with the knife, I swear

Mark:

It's weird what he says.

Sarah:

What he says is you will know the wiped ass of a wrath of God. I swear that's what he said.

Mark:

It sure sounds like that.

Sarah:

If it's not, if somebody else hears it differently, please tell me what it is Please he

Mark:

tell us what it Because I

Sarah:

swear, he says, you'll know the wiped us of a wrath of God as he chases them with

Mark:

a big knife. It's very weird. Very strange. So they come home, and first of all, they talk it to the dad, and Sean is playing Disney's Aladdin in Missouri's Revenge, a PS one game

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Which I spent, like, ten minutes looking up that game to find out what it was. And then Sean just completely gives her up. Oh, yeah. We were pretending to be detectives.

Sarah:

Yeah. She's Julie wants it to be a secret. Their poor mother, Denise, Sam's wife, all she does is laundry and cook Yep. And chase these kids around and

Mark:

Well, tries to teach them how to garden and certainly Sean is not the best at it.

Sarah:

Denise is played by Rosie Cavallero. Yep. She's also in A Vintage Murder in 2015, Midsomer. The role that she has had in the past that Rosie Cavallero has played in the past that I think is most fun is she plays Peggy Hodgson in, the Enfield Haunting movie. She's the mother of the daughter who's got this poltergeist, and Rosie Cavallaro plays the mother in the in the movie version

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Of the Enfield Haunting. And I can imagine her doing a super good job Oh. At that that role because she's certainly a harried mother in this episode of Midsomer.

Mark:

Yes. Kids go to bed, and I'm obsessed with Sean's

Sarah:

sheets. That sounds kind of weird.

Mark:

So the first time they show Sean in bed, I'm like, does that look like a Kansas City Chiefs logo? Now the Kansas City Chiefs are an NFL football team Yeah. Which is American football. Mhmm. And I was like, no.

Mark:

It can't possibly be a Kansas City Chiefs logo because you know what kid in Britain is gonna have NFL blankets? Guess what? Sean is the kid in in Britain with NFL blankets. So he you could clearly see the Philadelphia Eagles logo. You could clearly see the Green Bay Packers logo.

Mark:

It says Vikings in the Vikings font. Like, I'm not a football fan, but that's an NFL blanket.

Sarah:

That's a it's an interesting, scene setting decision on their part.

Mark:

Yeah. Like, why would a kid in England have that? Maybe he likes American football. But they would have had to get that special like

Sarah:

Yeah. Even weirder than that is that Barnaby puts his home address in the back of his business cards.

Mark:

Yeah. That's weird too.

Sarah:

Why would he do that?

Mark:

I don't know. Like, so that Julie could find him.

Sarah:

His home number? Maybe.

Mark:

Maybe.

Sarah:

His cell number? Maybe. But not his home address.

Mark:

That's weird.

Sarah:

But, you know, if if he didn't, Joyce wouldn't be in this episode.

Mark:

Yes. So at the golden ball, they have a kind of wake for Susan and James makes an ass of himself because that's what he does.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

He annoys his mom and his ex wife and we know that something is up. Right? Because Simon stops by James' house before this, and we know that there's a dog barking there.

Sarah:

He's got an Australian shepherd.

Mark:

Yeah. A very pretty dog. Yeah.

Sarah:

And so does Simon.

Mark:

George dog's name George?

Sarah:

No. George is the Russell Terrier.

Mark:

Okay. And James passes out, and then somebody shows up.

Sarah:

To first swap the bottle that he's been drinking from to remove the

Mark:

acid. Dog first.

Sarah:

Right. Poisons the dog with Valerian and a piece of meat, then swaps out the bottle to take away the poisoned bottle

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

And leave an empty bottle of regular old booze. Yes. Rolls him off the couch. He's so passed out. He doesn't even wake up when he's rolled off the couch.

Mark:

It's like a dead body.

Sarah:

But then the killer wheels in a dolly. How do you load a passed out floppy body on a dolly?

Mark:

I don't know. I spent a good five minutes trying to figure it out and I can't figure it out.

Sarah:

I mean, you laid the dolly flat on the ground, you could sort of roll them over onto the back of the dolly.

Mark:

Especially if you're Victoria. I don't think she can carry a a deadweight James.

Sarah:

I don't think so either. A wheelbarrow wouldn't be much easier.

Mark:

No. There's a flaw. There's a reason why they cut.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well, and then I'm thinking, so he's unconscious, drunk and drugged, and now she's gonna put him on a dolly, wheel him out in the rain and the mud, and dump him in this manure pool.

Mark:

Manure By the way, if you see a sign for the manure pool, don't go in it.

Sarah:

Turn the other way. And dump him into it, which wouldn't have been easy either without getting in.

Mark:

Oh, she would have been covered with manure. And plus it was raining again.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well, maybe that's why she got it rinsed off.

Mark:

Maybe.

Sarah:

Because she wears not just Wellies. She wears waders.

Mark:

Yeah. She wears waders and a long coat.

Sarah:

Yeah. So those are like rubber pants, not just boots. They have to get them out of the manure pool with a forklift.

Mark:

It's a tiny thing, but I was like, okay. So she gets them on the thing and then she gets them towards the manure pool. And then I'm like, I'm a farm kid because I'm like, she's left a gate open somewhere. Cows are gonna get out.

Sarah:

But we don't even know if he has livestock.

Mark:

Well, he's got manure, and that's not home produced.

Sarah:

No. But like I said earlier, he could get it delivered from

Mark:

another farm.

Mark:

He could get it. Maybe sign him and sell some manure. Yeah. Because that's one thing dairy farmers do do do do.

Sarah:

They sell their do do? That's what they do. They sell their do do. So the next day, Julie and Sean go on their big adventure.

Mark:

With the with the the the bus driver who's like, shouldn't you be in school? And they're like, nope. Big adventure. He's like, okay.

Sarah:

No. Julie says we're doing something important.

Mark:

Yeah. And he's like, okay.

Sarah:

He doesn't have time to be bothered with that.

Mark:

That's a cute little bus, though. I was like, I wonder if I could get a bus like that and drive around and pick up kids.

Sarah:

Okay. That's creepy. They they go to Tom's house, and, of course, he's not home because he's at work.

Mark:

Joyce. So Joyce is there. And Like, an hour into the episode before we see Joyce. Yeah.

Sarah:

And they're hungry. And so Joyce gives them cake. And Sean actually likes the cake, which to me means it's store bought.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

It must be store bought because they like it. Though Joyce says, I'll take that as a compliment. Yeah. So maybe she's actually able to make edible cake, but nothing else.

Mark:

Maybe we go back to the farm, and James is being pulled out of the pool.

Sarah:

With a forklift.

Mark:

And boy, he is covered in something. I don't know what it is. It sure looks like wet manure. It's all over his face and his body. You know, the first dead body was good acting, but I think James takes the cake here.

Sarah:

We don't actually see him floating in the pool. No, but The first time we see him he's already on the forklift but he's clearly been coated in something gross. Even the most inoffensive thing it could be is still gross.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

It's kind of wiped off his face.

Mark:

Well, know, it's not as gross as what what, Troy has to do. I

Sarah:

love that. Because the dog's been poisoned too, but he's largely vomited it up, right? Yeah. But they don't know what was used to poison him, what was used to drug him.

Mark:

Well, there's a way to find out what was used to drug him.

Sarah:

Can test the vomit, right? Which means somebody's gotta collect the vomit.

Mark:

Barnaby says there sure is a lot of dog vomit in there.

Sarah:

Get as much as you can.

Mark:

I know my first question is, where is Saco? Because they would be cleaning that up.

Sarah:

They're kind of in the background. And if Troy's smart, he's gonna turn around and say, can one of you

Mark:

Yep. Collect that? Because Troy we have to remember Troy is second in command at this scene in the crime. Mhmm. Right?

Mark:

Like, all the uniform guys would answer to Troy.

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

So Simon is freaking out with Bernadette because he's got no alibi. He's he went to James' farm, and she's like, oh, well, I'll just create an alibi for you.

Sarah:

And you can tell she's calculating.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

She I know that he suggests that maybe she's creating an alibi for herself, really. But what she's truly doing, and she admits it later, is preparing to be able to blackmail him. Yeah. To say you're gonna be with me whether you like it or not because if you leave me, I'm gonna tell.

Mark:

Yep. She's

Sarah:

Which is not what a good lawyer does.

Mark:

She's she's not a very nice person. No. May we see some detecting, please? No. May we turn the lights on in the car?

Mark:

Nope. Simon's rather messy at this point though because he just rifles through his own drawers to find that photograph album of badly photoshopped pictures.

Sarah:

To remind himself of how much he loved his wife. Yeah. Is now dead.

Mark:

I guess so. Jonah is the best farmhand ever. Okay. He milks all the cows. He washes the ATV.

Sarah:

Mows the grass.

Mark:

He mows the no. This is how much is he getting paid? Really, he's running the farm because we know that Simon was away for over a day the day before.

Sarah:

Well, I think he Jonah feels like it's his farm.

Mark:

I I think so. I think Jonah feels like it's his farm.

Sarah:

Yeah. But he's got this shrine, right, with the photos of the girls.

Mark:

Strange noises, candles, We dead get

Sarah:

to what I think is the most disappointing element of this episode.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Which is the dog bite.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Tom goes to see Jonah and his dog Charlie, who's been sausaged, is apparently still hungry

Mark:

for Tom Sean sausage it.

Sarah:

For Tom meat and supposedly bites his hand. I don't expect them to show a dog actually biting Tom. Nope. But the way Tom complains about it, you'd think the bite would have at least broken the skin.

Mark:

Or half his hand would be off.

Sarah:

But Tom never has a bandage. Nope. He just continually complains.

Mark:

He's got nature's remedy though.

Sarah:

With his palm facing him so that we can't see the injury. Yep. And Jonah gives him a concoction, which I assumed you would apply to the wound.

Mark:

Well, it's a miracle concoction. It's clears it up immediately.

Sarah:

No. Because his hand's still hurting at the end of the episode.

Mark:

Well, it hurts, but it it gets rid of the

Sarah:

It heals it?

Mark:

It heals it like it would be in a 1950s Gladiator movie.

Sarah:

They could have at least put a band aid on his hand.

Mark:

Yeah. I would think so.

Sarah:

To make it look as if he had an injury. It's such an important thing that they keep referencing and yet they don't bother. I mean, as far as we know, it's just a bruise. Yeah. And what's the big deal about that?

Mark:

Yeah. We do find out that the shrine is Jonas though.

Sarah:

Yes, for sure. And it's there are pictures of Victoria and Hannah as little girls because the three of them used to play together.

Mark:

No. Victoria completely ignores him at the farm. I'm like, Victoria's son isn't very nice, but Victoria's not very nice. Well, she's a killer.

Sarah:

She's not very nice.

Mark:

Next, we see George in the largest morgue ever.

Sarah:

We've seen that morgue before.

Mark:

It's it's a huge set.

Sarah:

It's the fancy morgue. It's got the big light.

Mark:

It's a Valerian in concentrated form, which is what they used to call set well. Mhmm. And then we find out that James wife had a bunch of insurance on him.

Sarah:

Yeah. Caroline had life insurance on James that she continued to maintain even after they separated.

Mark:

Oh, what insurance company did they use?

Sarah:

Hopefully not the same one that had Tom's retirement.

Mark:

No, they use red herring insurance companies because that's what it is.

Sarah:

Well, speaking of red herrings, Jonah is planting evidence to frame Simon. He plants the liquor bottle with the Valerian in it. He takes hair off of Susan's hairbrush and puts it on the ATV because you know, you just randomly have a clump of hair just sitting there.

Mark:

Especially after you've washed it, which like when he put it on the first time I was watching it, I'm like, did you wash that before? Which is what Tom says later on.

Sarah:

I can only imagine though that the, so the reality of this is that you're taking a clump of hair from a baggie that he's put it in, going to the ATV, which is outside, planting the hair on the logical place where her hair would have been if he had thrown her body on there to drive it out to the woods. And then he must have stood around and went, God, I hope the wind doesn't blow.

Mark:

Don't let the wind blow.

Sarah:

Don't let the wind blow. You know, don't let Simon come out and try to ride it around.

Mark:

Yeah. But the frame up works. It works. And they send him off to the pokey.

Sarah:

Yep. Simon gets taken away because Jonah's fine with that because he doesn't want Simon to sell the farm because then he would have to leave the farm. So he's fine for Simon to go to prison.

Mark:

So in the back of in the neck, there's a sign on the wall, which sent me on a whole thing.

Sarah:

What's this sign?

Mark:

It says, do traveling costs put prison visits out of reach? And then I was like, that's an intricate security safety net system in which you're paying families of convicts money so that they can travel to see their convicts. Mhmm. And it is a level of respect and really understanding of convicts that I don't think happens in this country.

Sarah:

No, don't think that I mean there might be some charities who support families.

Mark:

You imagine if the government gave money to families?

Sarah:

To help them travel.

Mark:

To help them travel.

Sarah:

No. That would never happen

Mark:

to Nope. Nope. Nope. You're in the pokey. You're in the pokey.

Sarah:

Yep. And they can move you to a prison halfway across the country.

Mark:

Yeah. If you're a federal crime.

Sarah:

It doesn't matter. Yep. Before they take Simon away in the car, they're in his kitchen and this is the third kitchen mystery. So can you lean on an Aaga? How do British people operate with just a tiny refrigerator?

Sarah:

And what is the damn thing in Simon's kitchen? So there's a counter that has a low spot in the counter and then it goes back up again. Above it on the wall is a grill. It's a salamander. I know what that is.

Sarah:

That's where you make cheese on toast. Yep. I know what that is. But below that in this kind of lowered part of the counter, there's

Mark:

Like a metal cover?

Sarah:

Like a metal cover and he's got booze bottles sitting on it.

Mark:

Yeah, it's weird. Maybe it's over a sink.

Sarah:

No, because the sink is underneath the window.

Mark:

That's right.

Sarah:

But I don't think it's the cooktop either because we see that on a different wall and you wouldn't put alcohol bottles on top of a cooktop.

Mark:

I don't know.

Sarah:

You thought maybe it was like a freezer.

Mark:

Maybe.

Sarah:

But it's built into the cabinet, So whatever it if somebody can figure it out, let us know.

Mark:

Maybe he took something out of it and put it in Jonah's hole.

Sarah:

Jonah's putting everything else in his hole.

Mark:

Not the paraffin heater, though.

Sarah:

The still

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

That he uses for the Valerian route and bottles Yep. And all kinds of random equipment.

Mark:

He's just throwing it into the ground.

Sarah:

And then I think he builds a fire pit on top of it to burn stuff, to kind of cover it up. He does a better job. Jonah does a better job with his hole than than Joan did

Mark:

in the Yeah. Last So he's reading his bible, and then he has a visitor who conks him on the head with a wrench. Wow.

Sarah:

That would hurt really bad.

Mark:

So let's just cover this. Victoria has drowned a woman.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Has thrown another her best friend's son into a manure pond. Mhmm. And now hits poor Jonah with a wrench.

Sarah:

Jonah who was her friend Yeah. Then she looked up to Tries to

Mark:

burn his house down. Yeah. Because he knows about the Valyrian.

Sarah:

Right. They say that it's called devil's herb and that and Hannah lets them know that there was a witch in sixteen sixteen fifty two who was she was accused of being a witch because she was making potions or whatever, and that was one of Jonah's family, one of his ancestors. I looked into Valerian to see if there was anything interesting about it, and they mostly cover what's interesting about it Yeah. Except two little things.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

One, it's a cat attractant.

Mark:

Oh, not a Jack Russell attractant?

Sarah:

Like catnip. Okay. Cats cats like it. Okay. But I didn't know that the technical term for that was cat attractant.

Mark:

Cat attractant.

Sarah:

And it's one of only a few flowers that are handed, which means that they're asymmetrical. Like there are left handed flowers and right handed flowers.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

They don't follow they're not symmetrical and they don't follow the the Fibonacci spiral.

Mark:

Oh, okay.

Sarah:

Which there there are just not many plants that do that.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

So that's interesting about But it's it's ability to put you to sleep and all that stuff is not really clinically proven.

Mark:

At the scene of the crime, they realized that blocks him alive, but he's touch and go so he can't go, it was Victoria.

Sarah:

Yeah. And we think his dog that that the dog's gonna be okay.

Mark:

Barnaby finds all the pictures and actually the burnt pictures and the spots for the pictures. And I gotta say that set dressing here does a good job at being not only the shrine but the remnants of the shrine afterwards.

Sarah:

Yeah. They do a good job fading the wallpaper and stuff like that. Yeah.

Mark:

Yep. And then Hannah goes to see her friend, and she has a gun.

Sarah:

Yeah. She sticks her shot.

Mark:

Escalates really quickly there.

Sarah:

She's just had

Mark:

it. Because Hannah's figured everything out.

Sarah:

Because Sam says that the, that James' dog was poisoned with Valerian. Yeah. And that just clicks everything in Hannah's mind. Now she knows who did it. Yeah.

Sarah:

Because apparently Victoria was a bad kid.

Mark:

Yeah. Like serial killer kid. Yeah. Well Used to poison Well, yeah, that's true.

Sarah:

She killed three people. She kind of is a serial

Mark:

killer. She

Sarah:

falls right into that stereotype of, you know, your kid might be a serial killer if they're killing animals as a child.

Mark:

Yeah. Like, not killing. They were torturing animals.

Sarah:

They were drugging them to see how much Valerian they could give them before they would die.

Mark:

Yeah. Not good. Julie sees all this, of course, because she's detecting.

Sarah:

She's sitting in her window being nosy.

Mark:

And she's like, okay, mom, you're not gonna believe me. But Yeah. She's the little girl who cried shotgun.

Sarah:

They follow Victoria Tom and Troy follow Victoria and Hannah out into the woods to the cottage where they used to play as kids.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

And I remember, and it still shocked me even as I rewatched it. I remember the first time I watched it though, I was absolutely shocked that Hannah shoots Victoria.

Mark:

Like with no, like basically

Sarah:

They think that they've kind of lowered the tension in the situation. And she just took And then it's clear that Victoria thinks she's gonna get away with it. Oh, take me home. Oh. And she's like, no, you're not I'm not having that.

Sarah:

You're not getting away with this.

Mark:

Yeah. I don't think she's my friend anymore. Bang.

Sarah:

Yeah. I wouldn't let a dog of mine suffer like that.

Mark:

And then she's all happy.

Sarah:

Well, she's resigned herself to what what all that means.

Mark:

Yeah. And they take Hannah off to jail as they explain everything.

Sarah:

Would Victoria's injury be worse than it is if she was shot with a shotgun that close?

Mark:

Like, okay. It depends if it's what kind of shotgun

Sarah:

it is. If it's if it's, shot or cartridge?

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Okay. Because the wound looks to be about maybe the size of a hand. And that's pretty big. I think if it was shot, the farther you way away you are from the gun, the more spread out it would be, So the fact that they're close together, so if it is buckshot and she was using that same gun to kill pheasants earlier.

Mark:

So it's probably it has to be buckshot.

Sarah:

Yeah. So that's probably right. You think?

Mark:

Yeah. I wouldn't wanna be shot in the chest that close with a shotgun. I think it's probably gonna deal you. Plus, I I think I wouldn't

Sarah:

wanna be shot with a shotgun at any distance.

Mark:

Well, know, farm kids. But I think it also probably hit her neck and stuff like that. There would be a lot more blood than there was. Well, yeah. Because she'd have 50 little wounds.

Sarah:

Yeah. So So we've got three corpses. Yep. Susan Bartlett floating in the pond. Yep.

Sarah:

James Harrington floating in a different kind of pond. And Victoria Bartlett,

Mark:

shotgun frame. We barely see Victoria.

Sarah:

Yeah. So who's who's your favorite corpse?

Mark:

I gotta say James because he's covered in all that stuff. He he's a trooper. He's an actor.

Sarah:

I agree. Yeah. Yeah. And he he has to ride on a forklift.

Mark:

He's covered in crap, literally.

Sarah:

Yeah. So let's talk after the credits.

Mark:

Wow. We got an interesting list here. Hannah's going to jail.

Sarah:

Yep. We don't know if Jonah's gonna live.

Mark:

Hannah's going to jail. I think Hannah's gonna do fine in jail.

Sarah:

I think so too.

Mark:

She'll be like a matron in jail.

Sarah:

I think she's resigned herself to it.

Mark:

Yep. Simon sells the farm because he says he's gonna sell the farm. And now that his mother's a homicidal maniac, Simon's gonna sell the farm.

Sarah:

His mom's dead. Yeah. So he probably really wants to get away from that. Yep. All the more reason to get out of it.

Mark:

James's wife gets the form, gets the farm, the insurance money, and the deal with the forestry guys.

Sarah:

Yeah. She cleans up. Caroline is gonna be okay.

Mark:

Bernadette keeps practicing law. I don't think Simon's gonna have anything to do with her anymore.

Sarah:

Me either. I think she'll find somebody else to grab on to.

Mark:

Julie joins the police force.

Sarah:

You think we're gonna see her as WPC later?

Mark:

Maybe. And then her little brother is still playing Aladdin Yeah. With his NFL sheets.

Sarah:

Sean moves to America. Yeah. I think

Mark:

he wants to.

Sarah:

He clearly likes American culture.

Mark:

Right? Absolutely.

Sarah:

Oh, it's quite the episode.

Mark:

Just to recap, this episode is gonna release on the December 16. So you if you're listening to it either on the sixteenth or soon after. And we will have a mini episode coming out the week before and then this week also, so the week of the sixteenth.

Sarah:

We're not going to take a week off from the mini non spoiler episodes.

Mark:

But we are taking a week off from the main episode so where you would normally get an episode on the December 23 we're going to take a week off and as you should too you should spend some time with your families.

Sarah:

Instead of listening to Maniacs?

Mark:

But we'll have a mini episode that week.

Sarah:

Yes. And

Mark:

then we will return with episode, it would be '22. Yeah. Which will be on the thirtieth and that's the bell ringer episode.

Sarah:

That's one of my favorite. Jerry. So, if you haven't been listening to the mini episodes, they're for season twenty one, the brand new episode.

Mark:

They're spoiler free.

Sarah:

We promise you they give nothing away. But we think you'll have a lot of fun if you listen to them before you watch, because we're going to teach you how to watch Midsomer like a Maniac. So maybe that's something you should do in that week when we're not going to release another episode. If you haven't watched the new episodes yet, and you haven't listened to those many episodes, that'd a good time

Mark:

to I'm still pretty stunned that we've only watched half of them.

Sarah:

I know.

Mark:

We've been very good.

Sarah:

Well, we've been really busy.

Mark:

Yeah. It's insane in December 1.

Sarah:

Kept us from, sitting down and just gorging on all of them.

Mark:

Yes. So we are at Midsomer Maniacs on Instagram and Twitter, and we're MidsomerManiacs@Gmail.com is our email address, and we're on the Acorn Facebook group and the Midsomer Murders Facebook group, and also the Reddit subreddit Yeah. For Midsomer Murders.

Sarah:

Subreddit for Midsomer.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

So since we won't have another episode next week, we're taking the week off. Yes. We hope that you and your families have a wonderful holiday and that you get a little time to take a break and get cozy on the couch and watch some murder.

Mark:

Yep. And we've absolutely gotten so much awesome response. We just wanna say thank you again for listening to our crazy little idea that we had way back in August that maybe we should have a podcast. What would we have a podcast about? Midsomer Murders.

Mark:

Wait. Let's make a Midsomer Murder podcast. Like, 20 people would listen to it. Yeah. No.

Mark:

Like, thousands of people listen to this podcast and that's insane that so many of you listen to this podcast.

Sarah:

And we super appreciate it and hope you all have a great holiday.

Mark:

Happy holidays.

Sarah:

Bye, Maniacs.

Mark:

Bye, Maniacs. So with the the Plow. Sorry. I have such problems remembering that word plow.

Sarah:

There's the Spitfire. Then there's the small version of the Spitfire, which is called the Welk Spitfire.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

And if the people flying it curse a lot, then we call it the blasphemous Welk Spitfire or BWS for short. BWS. Hey, Maniacs. Hey, Maniacs. This is Midsomer Maniacs.

Sarah:

Midsomer

Mark:

Maniacs is a podcast dedicated to the ITV series, Midsomer Maniacs. Each week, we dig through an episode of the show, including the murders, the mayhem, the loonies, and everything else we love.

Sarah:

Love the loonies. Whoo. Hope you guys had a great holiday. Absolutely. Still kind of in the holiday.

Sarah:

Got New Year's Day this week.

Mark:

Yeah. This is, dropping on the December 30. So, before your big New Year's Eve plans, thanks for listening.

Sarah:

Was this the last week of the last month of the last year of the decade?

Mark:

Yeah. So I was talking to my son about this last night. Next week is next week, next month, next year, and next decade. Wow.

Sarah:

Oh, I can't believe it's gonna be 2020. That's so weird.

Mark:

But what a year we've had. Yeah. I gotta say just a really quick aside that this year has been so spectacular for me in so many ways. I just am so pleased about the creative output and the success of this show is certainly part of that. We're like inching very closely towards 10,000 downloads for this show, which is a number that I would have thought would have taken us years and we're barely not six months into this show.

Sarah:

It's because we have awesome listeners who are as crazy as we are.

Mark:

Such awesome listeners who stuck with us through December through three regular episodes and four mini episodes that you all just gobbled up like crazy, and it was so fantastic. And, again, so many nice, awesome comments from people. We really appreciate it.

Sarah:

It's especially, don't know, useful, encouraging, to have so many great listeners when, you know, we're doing this in addition to full time jobs. You are about to publish your first comic. Yep. We have four kids who are all seniors in high school this year and are all in the midst of applying for college and getting accepted to college and all that stuff. I mean, we've had a lot going on.

Mark:

And don't forget, I'm doing technical direction for a play in a month that I haven't done a real lot of work on. But the month of January is going to be insane.

Sarah:

Needless to say, there were a lot of reasons why we might've stopped taking the time to do this, but we had such a great reception almost immediately that it's like, how can we not do it? We've got people who are actually listening and that makes it so much more fun to do.

Mark:

And I just want to say a special thank you to the official Midsomer people on Facebook and Instagram who have have been super nice to us, and the acorn people have been super nice to us as well.

Sarah:

Yeah. We're very grateful for all those folks and for you, our listener.

Mark:

And, you know, we have we have some, things that we've, planning in the near future that hopefully, we can get off the ground that, will create all sorts of new and interesting things for you guys to listen to. But this week we have one of our favorite episodes which is We could

Sarah:

easily say that at the top of every episode. This is one of my favorite episodes of Midsomer.

Mark:

You know, actually, because I already did the research for the next episode which is the

Sarah:

Saint Malley's Day.

Mark:

Saint Malley's Day episode. And, you know, that episode is is not one of my favorite episodes. It's not I don't dislike it, but it's not one of my favorites.

Sarah:

Those pudding club uppity ups.

Mark:

But I I ran across, like, so many people who were like, this is my favorite episode. And I I think that's one thing about Midsomer that we haven't yet talked about is that there are so many different stories that there can be in so many episodes that you can have a room with 20 Midsomer fans and they all have different favorite episodes.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. Because there's no bad episode of Midsomer.

Mark:

Well, except for the travelers.

Sarah:

But there's no irredeemable episode of Mids omer.

Mark:

No. Definitely not. You know, I think that there are times where I see what's coming next. I'm like, oh, I'm not sure. Oh, oh, it has this stuff in it.

Sarah:

This is ridiculous. That thing. Yeah. So one bad thing I can say about this episode, which is season five episode four, Ring Out You're Dead is that because Midsomer does have many different writers who write the episodes. I think this is one of the examples of the downside of that.

Sarah:

And that this episode centers around a rhyme, the ding dong del, the kitties in the well rhyme, which we had an episode around that rhyme just the season before.

Mark:

In fact, the episodes I checked were broadcast almost exactly a year between them.

Sarah:

Yeah. And and and in both episodes, the rhyme takes a prominent part in the storyline. I think they could have come up with a is there isn't there more than one rhyme about putting somebody in a well?

Mark:

I do believe there are a number of rhymes.

Sarah:

There must be.

Mark:

So before we throw into this, a couple of things. First, warning, if you, let your kids watch the show, they should be okay to listen to the podcast. But if their show is too much for them, the podcast probably is, even though this is a pretty tame episode. Yeah. It was filmed in June and July 2001 and broadcast the 09/15/2002 with 9,430,000 views, directed by Sarah Hellings and written by Christopher Russell.

Mark:

And I did go back and make sure that those two episodes were not written by the same person who did the

Sarah:

That would be really lazy, wouldn't it?

Mark:

That's that's some lazy writing right So

Sarah:

off the bat, this whole episode is centered around focused on bell ringing.

Mark:

What what do you mean bell ring? There there's cats in every scene. There are cats all over the place.

Sarah:

There are a lot of cats.

Mark:

I don't understand why there's so many cats because cats are hard to work with.

Sarah:

Cats are a bit more of a familiar topic to most people, I think, than bell ringing is. Maybe. So if we're gonna introduce some people to some knowledge, maybe bell ringing is what we should focus on rather than cats.

Mark:

I will point out the cats.

Sarah:

We'll talk about the cats.

Mark:

Spitfire is my favorite.

Sarah:

But let's talk about bell ringing. So what do we call it? Are they bell ringers? Are they change ringers? Are they strikers?

Sarah:

Weirdos?

Mark:

No. No. Actually, we we have to be very careful because just this morning on Instagram, we had a bell ringing club in Kingston On Thames follow us on Instagram, which

Sarah:

Hello, bell ringers.

Mark:

Hello, ringers. We absolutely love you guys.

Sarah:

And we just recently rewatched one of the new father brown episodes that centers around bell ringers. And there's a really persnickety guy who's like, we're change ringers, we're not bell ringers.

Mark:

Oh yeah, that guy, that guy who dies like right away.

Sarah:

There seems to be kind of some tension between people who are change ringers who ring big church bells and people who ring hand bells. Like, you do not want to mix them up.

Mark:

So we start in the cold opening. Speaking of bells, is the cold opening should really be called Bell Ringer's Revenge.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

Because we have heavy breathing in the church, banging on the door, and then the vicar gets the bell in the face.

Sarah:

Well, and that frantic run up the tower. Yeah. Whenever I see tiny stone stairs like that, that are super claustrophobic and really vertical and steep. Yeah. I always think about the time I was in Ireland and I went to kiss the Blarney stone.

Sarah:

Yeah. Wow. That's a trap. Yeah. If you've never done it, don't.

Sarah:

I was 18, but you have to go up a stairway just like that. But it also has people coming down the same stairway. So if you can imagine trying to pass one another on a stairway like that, and all tourists and you know, all of us Americans are a bit chubby. So we're all trying to pass each other on the stairs and then they swing you out a window to kiss a stone on the outside of a castle. I like the scene, in this cold opening with the shadows of the ropes for the bells because they look so much like nooses.

Mark:

They do look like nooses.

Sarah:

That's clever.

Mark:

I really like the lanterns on the end of sticks. Mhmm. They they did a good job of going, this is old timey without it being period y.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well, it's so dark that they need those things to kind of let you know that this is in the past.

Mark:

And, they throw the vicar down the well or at least a dummy that appears to be the vicar.

Sarah:

And again, there's a great filming technique here where they must have lowered a cameraman into a well of some sort to film up from the bottom of the well. It's a great shot.

Mark:

Yeah. The VIP of this episode already is the cameraman down the well.

Sarah:

Who went down the well for a split second shot. Yeah. But it's it's effective.

Mark:

So we're brought into the present and Reggie Barton is there. And Reggie is one of my favorite characters. He is such a great actor. First of all, he's he is just a fantastic actor. If you wanna see how great he is, watch the original Father Brown, the first episode Hammer of God.

Mark:

He may play the most unlikable human being ever in

Sarah:

that movie. Is he the husband?

Mark:

He's the brother of the priest.

Sarah:

Ah, yeah. Yeah. So Reggie's played by Graham Crowden, who was in a gazillion things, right? I I could go on and on about all the things that he was in, but I try to focus on something that I think is interesting when I'm doing my research. So in this episode, he plays a guy who was in the RAF during World War II.

Sarah:

Yes. And Graham Crowden was almost as old as his character was supposed to be. Yes. So he was involved in World War II.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

But he was young, so he was in the Royal Scouts Youth Battalion.

Mark:

Oh, that's cool.

Sarah:

Rejoined in 1940, but he was discharged. Uh-oh. Because he was accidentally shot by his own sergeant. Can you imagine how mad his parents were? It's like you you send your kids off to the boy scouts, and the troop leader accidentally shoots your kid.

Mark:

Oh, jeez.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

Is that why he had a limp? Maybe. It might be.

Sarah:

I couldn't find out where he was shot, like in what part of his body he was shot.

Mark:

He he always walks like his legs are locked.

Sarah:

Yeah. Even when he's younger, he does that. I didn't know if that was like an affectation of his of his acting or if he actually had that trouble, but

Mark:

He is just fantastic at eating scenery. He just eats everything Even around

Sarah:

when he's dead, he's awesome.

Mark:

Even when he's alone talking to the cats, he's Yes.

Sarah:

My favorite line of his in this whole episode comes right here at the beginning. He says, Oh, you're inhaling dust along with wickedness. I looked it up because I thought it must be a quote. Maybe it's Shakespeare or something. No.

Sarah:

No. It's all Reg. It's original. Reg. It's original Reg.

Mark:

So we're given Reg, who is a beautiful character, who is awesome. And then right after that, we're given Peter Falcon. Peter. Who is just like, every time we see this actor what's his name?

Sarah:

His name is Adrian Scarborough.

Mark:

Adrian Scarborough, who is a great actor.

Sarah:

Yes. He

Mark:

is very good. It and both Midsomers he's in are really good.

Sarah:

He's in three.

Mark:

He's at what? He's in the photography club one.

Sarah:

Yeah. That's picture of innocence. Yeah. And he's also in a dying art. What's the Which is a twenty sixteen episode.

Mark:

Oh, okay. Every time we see him, Bell ringer. Bell ringer.

Sarah:

He's a crazy bell ringer. He, he was in Gosford Park. He he has a long history of playing manservants and buffers.

Mark:

I know he I know he was in Gosford Park.

Sarah:

He's great in

Mark:

Gosford in Gosford Park.

Sarah:

But he also he basically plays the same role. Yeah. In a show called Blunt Talk with Patrick Stewart. Oh. Where Patrick Stewart plays this kind of washed up British broadcaster who comes to America to reinvent his career and brings his manservant with him.

Sarah:

Adrian Scarborough plays his manservant. Yeah. And there's one episode of Blunt Talk where Adrian Scarborough is in drag and it is hilarious.

Mark:

He is like, again, I try to watch sometimes like videos of these people being interviewed and again just the warmest nicest friendliest person but like I think they gave him direction that said you need to play this part as if bells are the most important thing, not only to you, but to the universe at large.

Sarah:

Yeah. Like, you can't overplay the importance of bell ringing.

Mark:

Because he is just so over top. It's beautiful.

Sarah:

One of the notes I have for this episode is that there are a lot of very well developed kind of nuanced characters that you like and dislike at the same time. Yeah. And it's difficult to say, oh, that person is a bad guy or that person is a good guy.

Mark:

Reggie is a perfect example.

Sarah:

Reggie is one of those. Yeah. Like he genuinely loves his nephew. Yeah. He is genuinely kind to the people that he likes.

Sarah:

Oh, he's smart. And he's very smart. And yet, he's a curmudgeon and a bully. And and Peter is another one.

Mark:

But he loves his cat. Yeah. And they both love their cats. Yeah. Because, you know, cats.

Sarah:

Peter is absolutely obsessed with winning a bell ringing competition. But the reason why he's so obsessed is that it's in his family. His family hasn't isn't has always been bell ringers.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

And they haven't won for a long time. So he wants to do it for that. I mean

Mark:

They're they're really the same person. Right? They're obsessed with tradition

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

And they're obsessed with winning and being right. Mhmm. And they put against each other, create an interesting story because you don't know who to root for there.

Sarah:

But Peter also comes across as almost being sociopathic. Yes. Because even when somebody's just been brutally murdered, the first thing he thinks of is how is this going to affect our bell ringing?

Mark:

Well, think he is sociopathic, and that's that's okay. He's one of those sociopaths who doesn't kill people or hurt people, just gets obsessed with bells.

Sarah:

Right. And so can be insensitive. Yep.

Mark:

Like the mushroom man.

Sarah:

Yeah. So we've got Reggie who's first, and then we've got Peter, the linger of the leader of the bell ringers. And then we've got Emma Yes. And Liam.

Mark:

Yes. Emma and Liam are engaged.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

And then we have Francis.

Sarah:

Mhmm. And Marcus. And Marcus.

Mark:

Well, you you And Greg. You left out Greg who enters the story next.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because, he's in bed with Rosalind and Sue catches him. I'm not even gonna make any notes about Sue Tutt, who's played by Claire Holman because we've already talked about her once. We love being another episode.

Mark:

We love Claire Holman. She's fantastic.

Sarah:

She's great.

Mark:

She She does a nice understated part here. You know, I think she does a great job.

Sarah:

And she consistently plays good people. Right? She's just a good person. She's eager to get rid of Greg because he deserves to be gotten rid of. She's kind to Reg because why not be kind to somebody?

Mark:

Well, he's an REF guy.

Sarah:

Yeah. And she's kind to Hugh, his nephew, again, because she has sympathy and empathy.

Mark:

But Greg wronged her by sleeping with Rosalyn and everybody else, or at least trying to.

Sarah:

And then has to show up at bell ringing practice with a pink bathrobe on because she'd thrown all of his clothes out.

Mark:

So Rosalyn Parr is a trope. Right?

Sarah:

Yes. Is

Mark:

is the and really, father Brown is based on this trope almost.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

Of the lady of the manor, the husband is never home. She has affection for the husband, but no real love, so gets her carnal pleasure from other places.

Sarah:

She's played by Carmen Desatoy?

Mark:

Yes. Who I really like Rosalyn in this part. I like I like this character, and then I found out that she was a Bond girl.

Sarah:

Yeah. She was in Man With the Golden Gun.

Mark:

Yep. She Roger Moore sucks a diamond out of her navel. Yes.

Sarah:

And again, another character who's really nuanced and well developed. She she is a nice person, though she is cheating on her husband left, right, and center, and yet she's not guilty about it. So you almost can't hold it against her.

Mark:

And she has a sense of humor. She does not take herself too seriously.

Sarah:

No, she doesn't. She smiles a ton. Yep. And she's not bitter.

Mark:

I think if Troy does anything with her, he's going to have fun. Yeah. It's not gonna be like it's a stark difference between her, the lady in the manor, and the lady of the manor in the episode, the dark harvest Mhmm. Dark, dark autumn. Yeah.

Mark:

Where she the that lady of the manor who liked to have herself recorded having sex took herself way too seriously. Rosalynn doesn't take anything seriously.

Sarah:

No, but she's also, you know, women doing it for themselves. She's like, I'm not the one who gets left waiting.

Mark:

Absolutely. She sticks up for herself completely.

Sarah:

She's out to have a good time and anybody who gets in the way of that, she doesn't have any time for. Like, sorry, no.

Mark:

She's chucking Greg's stuff out the window and then Reggie keeps walking down the street and is almost killed by Troy.

Sarah:

Yes. Because, you know, that has to happen once an episode. He almost runs over somebody.

Mark:

He has his legion coat on. Did you notice that?

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

Yes. So he has the coat for the local legion because he's obviously obviously a member of the local legion. And then Barnaby says, follow your ears. And

Sarah:

then we see, Hugh, Hugh Barton, who is Reggie's nephew.

Mark:

Who is like this little known actor at this time who

Sarah:

Hugh Bonneville.

Mark:

Hugh Bonneville of

Sarah:

Downton Abbey.

Mark:

Downton Abbey. So

Sarah:

He's also Mister Stink.

Mark:

Yes. Which is awesome. Mister Stink is fantastic.

Sarah:

If you've never seen it.

Mark:

If your kids haven't watched Mister Stink, watch it with them. Absolutely fantastic.

Sarah:

And he's, again, he's been a gazillion things. I we could spend an hour listing them all off. Yep. But one thing I noticed on his list is something that we haven't seen yet, which is, he, he does a cameo in, Jack Whitehall's new Christmas with my father.

Mark:

Oh, there's a new Christmas with my father. Oh my gosh. We have to watch that.

Sarah:

If you haven't watched Jack Whitehall's travels with my father, pause this and go watch. I hurt after watching them. I've laughed so hard.

Mark:

I don't like okay. So Jack Whitehall is an acquired taste.

Sarah:

He

Mark:

is. I understand that some people might not like Jack Whitehall. I think he's fantastic personally.

Sarah:

But he's balanced out by his dad in

Mark:

He's the he's Jack Whitehall, I love because he's so effortless. Yeah. At no point do you think, oh, he's putting on a thing here. No. No.

Mark:

But he is. Like, he's playing character. And then his father is the most he is old and new Britain. It is his father wears a suit to a spa. Yeah.

Mark:

And, like, it's just But then fantastically uncomfortable.

Sarah:

Somewhere in Asia, and he gets that doll. Oh my god. If you if you haven't seen them, I'm serious. We will wait. Pause us.

Sarah:

Go watch any episode of travels with my father. They are so epically funny. But Hugh Bonneville does some kind of cameo in the newest one So that was just we should go watch it.

Mark:

We should watch that.

Sarah:

So Hugh Bonneville, every time I see this episode, all I can think about him is how bad his hair is. He looks like he's wearing a toupee made from an old rug. It's it's just horrible.

Mark:

Meanwhile, Reggie's hair is just like crazy. Yeah. It's awesome.

Sarah:

And I just kept thinking like, why? Because, and I looked at a bunch of images of Hugh Bonneville from this time and his hair is perfectly fine. Later on, he does thin recede a little bit on top, but he's never like bald or anything. He's got no reason to be wearing a hairpiece. I'm like, so why did they put him in one and why is it so bad?

Sarah:

Yeah. And I think I have the answer. Okay. Hugh Bonneville had just been in a movie, just finished filming a movie called Blow Dry.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

And in Blow Dry, he plays this crazy, maniacal hairdresser Okay. Who has bright fire engine red hair.

Mark:

Have we seen this movie? Yes. Yeah. So funny. Remember.

Sarah:

His hair is like so red and it's clearly his hair. It's not a wig. So they've bleached his hair and dyed his hair that color. And I think after that, either his hair was a bad color for a little bit, or he cut it all off Oh, he to could turn it

Mark:

have been either.

Sarah:

And in either case, that's why they put him in a hairpiece because Hugh Barton would be a very different character if his hair was like pink, because it was fading from being bright red.

Mark:

But Hugh Barton, the character, also is the kind of guy to have a hairpiece.

Sarah:

Yeah. He is. It's it's I think the whole thing works. But it's and and maybe that's why they gave him such a bad one. Yeah.

Sarah:

Because it's supposed to be bad. I don't know. But it it is bad. It bothers me.

Mark:

Speaking of bad, we're introduced to the killer next. Who is Joyce's best friend?

Sarah:

Maisie Gooch. Oh. Got a name.

Mark:

Fortunate niche.

Sarah:

It suits her.

Mark:

I keep calling her the gooch in my nose.

Sarah:

She's the church archivist.

Mark:

And the killer.

Sarah:

And the killer who constantly looks like she's been rubbing her eyes. I don't know if the actress has allergies or what, but it suits the character really well that her eyes are always kind of pink around the edges, makes her eyes look a little bit more insane.

Mark:

She doesn't get really insane to the last scene in the church. She's kind of nice up to them.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah. Nice, but weird.

Mark:

Well, and one at one point, I'm like, what? Yeah. And we'll talk about that. Troy's in the church, and he's reading a bunch of stuff on the on the notice board, so, of course, I have to read it all.

Sarah:

Oh, what'd you find?

Mark:

So Midsomer Diocese Guild of the Bell Ringers, that's the annual striking competition. On the June 9 in Mid Mallow Village Hall at 07:45, there's a resolution meeting and cheese and wine. Oh,

Sarah:

resolutions and cheese and wine?

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Nice.

Mark:

Also, I guess, the church offers care and help for friends of the church. So you can volunteer in the church to help out other people in the community doing things including, and this is all on these signs.

Sarah:

Okay.

Mark:

Gardening, property maintenance, carpentry, clothes alteration repair, available twenty four hours, a member of the UK Home Careers Association, fully licensed with the Ecclesiastical Insurance Company.

Sarah:

That's nice. Yes. If you're an old person and you need some help and somebody from the church shows up to give you a hand, you want to know that they're not there to actually steal your silver.

Mark:

Also, the 10:00 club meets on after Sunday school at Saint Catherine's Church in Midsomer Mill. All are welcome.

Sarah:

I'm guessing they meet at 10:00.

Mark:

Yes. That's good. That's good. This episode has some really great signage. Like they do a great job with the production of this episode.

Sarah:

And so for example, when they're up in the tower getting ready to practice bell ringing, they're surrounded by chalkboards that have bell ringing notation on them.

Mark:

Oh, well, this is a rabbit hole that both you and I fell down of bell ringing notation.

Sarah:

Yeah. I couldn't get very far though. I got kind of stuck. It was amazing to me how much bell ringing notation, ends up looking like, knitting patterns after a while when I was because I knit

Mark:

a lot. Notice I that also.

Sarah:

Yeah. But it's wow. It's complicated.

Mark:

So the first in the creepiness of this episode is creepy Troy because he's checking out Emma.

Sarah:

Not even trying to hide it.

Mark:

No. There's a midriff. I'm gonna stare at

Sarah:

him. He walks up to the door, and he just stares. Emma Taiso is played by Lindsey Marshall.

Mark:

Yeah. She was, like, probably 50 by now.

Sarah:

She played Cleopatra in Rome. She's also in a new Agatha Christie movie that should be out now called Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar. Oh. She plays Agatha Christie in it.

Mark:

Oh, cool. I thought she did I wanna see that. Fairly well in this.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah. She's a good actress.

Mark:

So Tom's mean to Troy. Tom's grumpy in this whole episode.

Sarah:

Yeah. There's a striking competition. You'll be in line yourself if you don't shut up.

Mark:

And later on, Joyce is like, you're so grumpy. He's like, I'm not so grumpy. Okay. If you're saying, I'm not so grumpy, you're grumpy.

Sarah:

Maybe he's grumpy because there was a killer in his house.

Mark:

Maybe. Troy tells Barnaby that Peter Fogden was up there and he calls him a jobsworth. Do you know what that is? No. A jobsworth is a person who uses their job description in a deliberately uncooperative way or seemingly delights in acting in an obstructive or unhelpful manner.

Mark:

The term can be applied to those who uphold petty rules even at the expense of humanity or common sense. Which makes sense. Like, he's the person who would be like, you can't have another light bulb because you had a light bulb already this year.

Sarah:

Yeah, because he's a maintenance guy at the police station, right? But we don't see him doing that. But he definitely likes the fact that he's associated with the police even though he is not involved in law enforcement whatsoever.

Mark:

Not police. Yeah. He also runs bets out of his little office.

Sarah:

Well, he he runs he's a bookmaker among the police, but he also places his own bets because he and the other bell ringers when on ring a ding ding

Mark:

Yes. He aptly named horse.

Sarah:

Yes. Of course. They bet on that horse. That all rhymed.

Mark:

Yes. Of course. Of course.

Sarah:

They bet on that horse.

Mark:

So there's this bell ringing scene where we kind of figure out the pecking order in the bell ringers, but there is a ton of jargon in here.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

And it's like the writer was like, now I think this writer, first of all, actually knows about bell ringing.

Sarah:

At least enough because they've studied it to Yeah. Do the episode.

Mark:

Yeah. I did check because at this moment, I fast forward to the end of the episode to see if there was a bell ringing consultant.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

The episode there was no.

Sarah:

It wouldn't surprise me if there was no.

Mark:

There was not. I double checked. But the jargon all seems pretty natural here too.

Sarah:

They do a good job.

Mark:

It looks really hard. Yeah. Physically difficult. Physically difficult. Francis falls over at the end.

Sarah:

Well, and then we learned that the shortest songs they play are fifteen minutes.

Mark:

We'll get to the length of bells. Like, it's it's crazy how long they play those bells.

Sarah:

I don't know why they play so long.

Mark:

Bell ringing is a a calling. I'm not gonna call it a hobby because the folks from Kingston On Thames might send us a nasty note, but the the calling of bell ringing is complex and interesting.

Sarah:

What I found interesting, in the cold opening and then when we meet the bell ringers is that they're not necessarily religious people. No. Some of them don't even go to service and yet they ring the bells.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

So it's maybe it's more of a musician's calling than a religious calling. I would have thought, I would have assumed before that if you spent that much time ringing bells is because you really love church. Yeah. I can see. But that may not be the case.

Sarah:

I

Mark:

wonder if they're the heaviest musical instrument to play.

Sarah:

Oh, they've gotta be.

Mark:

They're almost half a ton.

Sarah:

What's heavier than a bell?

Mark:

Yeah. That's interesting.

Sarah:

There's another hole you can fall into. What's the heaviest instrument?

Mark:

So I have a big problem here.

Sarah:

Okay.

Mark:

The gooch is only talking to the Barnabas at this point in time. Right. And we're supposed to under realize that the gooch knows that Greg has been thrown out of his house and that he went to the manor to be with Rosalind. Because the Gooch hand delivers a note to them.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

But, like, it doesn't show her following him or anything. How does how does Maisie Gooch know that Greg is at Rosalind's?

Sarah:

I I think we're supposed to assume that it's just a small village, and everybody knows that he got caught with Rosalind, so that would be where he would go when he got thrown out. Where else is he gonna go? Yeah. He's not gonna stay with Marcus. No.

Sarah:

No. Nobody's gonna stay with Marcus. With his velvet suit. His velvet suit and his shrine to Emma.

Mark:

So I thought the scene in Peter's office with Ring a Ding Ding was much later than this.

Sarah:

It's early on.

Mark:

It's really early on. It has the smallest covered color television in 2001. Yes. They must have ordered that special to get that color television. And he has pictures of racing horses posts on his walls.

Mark:

I noticed that. And so they went through 30 ks

Sarah:

in between six people at 101.

Mark:

At 101 in 2001. So that is roughly 63,000 US dollars today.

Sarah:

Wow. That's a lot of money even divided by six people. Not enough to kill for, but it's a lot of money.

Mark:

They get a lot of people in that maintenance office.

Sarah:

They do. And you know, I've seen those rooms before. When my dad worked at GM, the maintenance guys had a cubby that was the place to go hang out. Yeah. It was the place to be.

Sarah:

They had a microwave and a coffee maker and all that stuff. Yeah. I I wondered why Maisie would leave the note for Greg at Rosalind's and and why she's trying to break Emma and Liam up by framing Emma as trying to have some kind of tryst with Greg.

Mark:

It's weird. But they're all smiles in the next practice because there's little piles of money in the window. Everybody gets their money. So the signs behind them in bell ring practice include two for Peter's relatives, his uncles.

Sarah:

The plaques. Yeah.

Mark:

And they read things like a quarter peel of Grandishire Doubles was rung to mark the passing of Gordon Fogden, ringer of this tower, and I had to really look at this. It says, by his own band. Because at first I was like, does that say by his own hand?

Sarah:

So they call a group of bell ringers a band?

Mark:

A band. On 10/16/1975. Okay. So that led me down the rabbit hole of what is appeal? So appeal of eight bells must last at least 5,000 different changes.

Mark:

A performance of twelve fifty changes on eight bells makes a quarter peel. So this is a quarter peel. An appeal may take up to three hours to ring and a quarter peel forty five minutes. Wow. Yeah.

Mark:

That's a long time to be monkeying from those ropes like that.

Sarah:

Three hours. Three hours. 5,000. When they say change, that means each bell is rung. That's a note.

Sarah:

So we're talking about 5,000 notes?

Mark:

I guess so. Wow. Jeez. So the bell ringing notation hole that I fell down, I don't know if you saw this, was for this blue line method of notation.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

And the whole first parent part of the page is about how this person's notation is far superior than other notation. And I I looked at that and said, Bell ringer notation, civil wars or something I cannot get into.

Sarah:

Like there was a big battle over how to notate bells. Yeah. And I did see a few different styles of notating it and the blue line method, which is the one that makes those kinds of squiggly lines, because it's usually over a chart of the eight bells and it's a line for each player that connects the bells that they're supposed to ring and when they're supposed to ring it. There's a piece of software that you can use to create that notation. And man, did I try to get that software to run?

Sarah:

I had to install a version of flash that was like three versions old. My computer is like, have we gone back in time? What is this for? I even tried to install the mobile version. I couldn't get it to work because I thought, man, I could write my own bell ringing notation and it will play it.

Mark:

Oh. So you can hear

Sarah:

how it

Mark:

We could have written Midsomer.

Sarah:

I know. I spent over an hour trying to get that software to run before my computer went, stop it. Stop. Stop. Okay.

Mark:

So Reggie's pissed again. He's never not pissed. And so I was like, oh, there's a little toy playing here and a nice kitty who sits in a box.

Sarah:

Spitfire.

Mark:

Well, I didn't know his name was Spitfire at this point because he it's not clear. So, Reggie goes, Blasphemous Welk Spitfire. And I went for a deep dive trying to find Blasphemous Welk Spitfire. Like, I thought it was the title kind of plane. Or something.

Mark:

And I was like, later on in the episode, I'm like, oh, the cat's name is Spitfire.

Sarah:

Gonna be the Spitfire. Then there's the small version of the Spitfire, which is called the Welk Spitfire.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

And if the people flying it curse a lot, then we call it the blasphemous Welk Spitfire or BWS for short. BWS. Reggie does not like that they ring the bells. No. Right?

Sarah:

And we get a little impression of why he doesn't. He's constantly wanting to stop them, even going so far as threatening to change his will to stop them. And in the episode, we get the impression that the reason that he he doesn't like them ringing them is that he sees the bells as being sacred. And so they should only be rung for that purpose. Yeah.

Sarah:

Right? And the fact that they're doing it for a competition, the fact that they ring to celebrate their gambling win, he finds extremely offensive. And his whole life is centered around stopping these people. And I was like, you know, I don't know if those are enough motivation for him to be that obsessed.

Mark:

It's all very religious based for him.

Sarah:

Yeah. But he doesn't seem that pious. Yeah. So I've found that kind of, it was like, there's something missing there. And so I thought about that for a while and we know that he was an RAF pilot in

Mark:

And the

Sarah:

so I went and started to look up the connections between church bells and World War II. And I think I found his real motivation.

Mark:

Oh, really?

Sarah:

Yeah. So, and it took me a little bit to find this. I even had to read some scanned handwritten village church notes from the 1940s.

Mark:

We do deep dive research. We do.

Sarah:

So what I found is that on 06/13/1940, Churchill put out an edict banning the rings of church or chapel bells, except to alert for an air raid, right? Okay. That's

Mark:

So So the Germans are coming, ring the bells.

Sarah:

Right. So that's just three days after Italy joined the war and a month before the first time Great Britain was bombed

Mark:

Wait by the a minute. I'm a simple man, but do I want to be up a church tower when they're bombing stuff?

Sarah:

Well, I'll get to that. Okay. Right? So on June 4 was operation Dynamo, which is where the allies rescued like over 350,000 soldiers from Dunkirk.

Mark:

That's Dunkirk, yeah.

Sarah:

Right? Ten days after that, Churchill says, don't ring any bells. The Germans are coming. We know they're coming.

Mark:

This is invasion Britain at This this

Sarah:

is the same, orders that go out that say, you know, we need blackout curtains on everything. You cannot have open fires, all the stuff that would have given away targets. They go full out.

Mark:

And there's a great foils war episode that takes place in this time where invasion by Germany is in a they're waiting for it. Right. At that point.

Sarah:

Well, and then you've got dad's army and all kinds of stuff, right? About all the home fires. But so Churchill says no bell ringing in 1940. Three years later, an MP goes to the house the house of commons and says, I think we should lift this ban. And so on Easter Sunday, which is 04/25/1943, they say bell ringing is allowed again.

Sarah:

And so I read this MP's speech of his argument for allowing bell ringing. Still have blackout curtains, everything else, but bell ringing should come off the list. And the reasons that he gave, so he gives three reasons. He gives, is this one, it's not a good way to alert people to an air raid because nobody wants to run to the top of a bell tower when there are bombers coming. Exactly.

Sarah:

Right? So most villages weren't using the church bells anyway to Two, do people were so used to hearing the bells, even though they weren't rung at this time, that in villages where they did ring the bells to alert, people didn't really hear

Mark:

it. Didn't.

Sarah:

Because it was just a regular sound. It wasn't an out of the ordinary sound. But the third reason was my favorite. The third reason was that the bells weren't being used for air raid sirens because in most villages, the bell ringers had tied the clappers back to the side of the bells and secured them so they wouldn't ring so they could continue to practice.

Mark:

These people are obsessed.

Sarah:

So if you were going to ring the bells for air raids, you had to go up to the top of the tower when there were planes coming and you had to untie the clappers so that you could actually ring the bells and make a sound. And that took too long.

Mark:

Oh, that makes sense.

Sarah:

So this MP is like, what's the point? Why don't we just let people ring the bells whenever they want?

Mark:

So how does this relate to Reggie's motive?

Sarah:

So Reggie is in the RAF. Yep. Based on his age, he would have joined in about 1940, right? So he probably would have responded to the call that Churchill put out that basically said, you know, we're going to have to fight everywhere. We have to protect our own country, but we have to rescue these other people as well.

Sarah:

And so for those years, bell ringing became a sign of invasion, right? If you did hear bells, it meant the Germans were coming. Yeah. So he may, I can imagine that his character may have lived in Great Britain at the beginning of the war and associated Bells with invasion.

Mark:

Well, has such a visceral reaction to them right away. Yeah. That it absolutely could be something.

Sarah:

The writers probably didn't think that deep. Probably took it way further than I, than they did, but I like that depth. I like imagining that he has those reasons as well, that it's disrespectful and maybe a little PTSD to hear the bells when they shouldn't be ringing.

Mark:

I I I think that all that could fit.

Sarah:

Which then made me wonder, well, how do people practice ringing bells? If the songs are at least fifteen minutes long at the shortest, they've got to practice, which means they've got to play parts of it over and over and over and over again. If they're using real church bells to do it, the people in those villages would hate them.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

You would get so tired of hearing it.

Mark:

Even in this episode alone, they use the same sample. Yeah. Like the same They're

Sarah:

playing the same Musical. Set of Yeah. The same set of changes over and over and over again. And so then I found out that there are these mini rigs that's like a tower. It almost looks like it's built out of scaffolding that have simulated bells in them.

Sarah:

Ringers will, they put these things together and then they can put them anywhere they want and they can practice.

Mark:

Oh, like you can practice in your backyard?

Sarah:

Yeah. Oh. Like if you're a drummer and you play on a practice pad instead of real drums. Oh, that's cool. It's like that.

Sarah:

So I bet you bell ringers are much less hated now.

Mark:

I'm sure

Mark:

they are.

Mark:

Especially the ones in Kingston On Thames.

Sarah:

When they practice, you're just sucking up to them now. Yes. Listen, tell all your friends. They can practice now without annoying an entire village. Because otherwise, how do you learn to play?

Sarah:

Yeah. Exactly. Anyway.

Mark:

So back at the manor house, Greg gets a note, and he completely hides it from Rosalind. I love how in this scene, you see how stupid Greg is Yeah. And how smart Rosalyn is without them either saying it.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because god, he he's so dumb. He leaves it in the bathrobe.

Mark:

And she's like, mhmm. Okay. Whatever, Greg.

Sarah:

Yeah. As as soon as he leaves, she's going fishing through the pocket.

Mark:

Like, she does a great job, and she burns the note after she's read it, and she, like, knows exactly what's going on. Yeah. Because Greg is like, can I use your card? She's like

Sarah:

No. No. You overstep, sir.

Mark:

Yep. Peter's at the cop shop, and he talks to Barnaby about the bell ringing time. So, of course, I went in search of the bell ringing times.

Sarah:

Is this a newspaper or a newsletter?

Mark:

I could not find any bell ringing time.

Sarah:

You mean they invented something for Midsomer? They did indeed. Crazy thinking.

Mark:

But I did find the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers or the CCCBR, which have a fantastic little website.

Sarah:

I bet you they just call it the triple CBR.

Mark:

The triple CBR. And you can there's latest news about volunteering and all sorts of things. It's a very nice little website, but their mission is to be the strategic leader and public voice of the ringing community and the arbiter of standards, which says to me there's all sorts of fights about standards, and to promote an environment where ringing can flourish.

Sarah:

They made that rule about how many changes are required. Oh, they did. And they enforce it.

Mark:

So Troy totally throws Barnaby in it here. It this episode is Troy and Barnaby just goading each other off.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because Tom runs into Peter, and Peter's like, oh, Troy told me that you just like to hear bells, and you should come to the competition.

Mark:

Ray confirmed it with Joyce.

Sarah:

And Tom's like, I what?

Mark:

And it ends with the scene ends with him going, Troy. Yeah. I'm not grumpy.

Sarah:

So then we we can jump to the bell ringers practicing again.

Mark:

No. We have to cover the scene with Maisie where she says the thing that made me scream.

Sarah:

Okay. So We haven't even got to the first murder yet.

Mark:

I know. Okay. So Maisie goes, why can't they just live and let live? Okay. You're killing them or about to kill

Sarah:

She can't do that, but other people should.

Mark:

Reggie stops the bell ringers or tries to, and Liam shifts them.

Sarah:

Gosh. He just manhandles an old man Yep. With a cane and everything. Yep. Then the so Greg is up in the bells.

Sarah:

Right? And he's dead. Yes. And they start ringing. That's the blood squirting out of Greg.

Sarah:

The blood starts coming through the rope hole onto Emma.

Mark:

Which I think is a really clever thing. It is. It wouldn't work like

Sarah:

that. It's dramatic. But what does she do? Looks up with her mouth open. I just am like I just wanna scream, shut your mouth, don't eat the blood.

Sarah:

Step away and shut your mouth. And of course Peter immediately resents Greg for dying. Could he do this

Mark:

to Greg. And when Barnaby's leaving the church, so Barnaby is at the church, and so he goes to investigate the body first. And he like sees that he's been shot and stuff like that. And then the next shot of Burnaby is him walking out of the church rubbing his hands on his clothes. I'm like, did you get blood on your tongue?

Sarah:

Remember, you inhaled dust with your wickedness. It's probably dusty up there. So he's rubbing the dust off. So I'm not I'm not as perplexed by Maisie leaving a note for Greg at Rosalind's. I'm more perplexed by Maisie thinking that it would be believable that Emma would leave a note for Greg and Mark.

Mark:

Especially the the note that Emma the actress who plays Emma does a great job of being plain.

Sarah:

Yes. And and naive. Yes. Innocent. Right?

Mark:

And the letter is like, dearest Greg.

Sarah:

Yeah. But, like, if you wanted to have a fling with a guy before you got married, would you really go and leave an invitation to him at the house of the woman he's currently sleeping with?

Mark:

Yeah. Like, there there are all sorts of And problems with then why like, it's just convenient that Greg told Marcus because if Greg hadn't told Marcus, no one would have known about the note.

Sarah:

Yeah. And how Marcus and and Greg just happened to run each into each other in Costin. Yeah. And Greg just happened to tell him. I don't know why he would.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because anybody who looks at Marcus once knows he's in love with Emma. Yeah. So if Greg told him it was only to flaunt it and rub it in his face

Mark:

And Liam goes nuts. Yeah. He goes a little too nuts. Yeah. I don't like how he's with Emma.

Sarah:

Physically threatens Emma.

Mark:

Yeah. I don't like church. Yep. And But Troy saves the day.

Sarah:

He's a violent.

Mark:

Troy is super yeah. And nowhere is Liam anywhere violent like

Sarah:

that again. I think it's inconsistent with his character.

Mark:

Inconsistent. Troy is off to see Rosalind.

Sarah:

I'm between lovers at the moment. The last one died this morning.

Mark:

I don't think I'm such I don't deal with money, especially in such Yes. Small She totally lies about the notes. We were just carnal. Yeah. And she did she totally

Sarah:

Though she did shred his clothes. Why did she bother to do that if she doesn't care?

Mark:

You know, because she's saying she doesn't care. Mhmm. And, Troy is, like, completely freaked out by this whole entire thing.

Sarah:

Wouldn't you be? Yeah. Plus, he's in her bedroom at that moment. I think he knows he's in the lair, and he better get out.

Mark:

And Bartomy goes to go see Sue, and Angie, who is the weird character in this episode, fills him in with all the information while creepy Peter stands outside. Yeah. Looking in the window with his wide eye.

Sarah:

Well, not only does Peter look inside, but Hugh is always lurking across the alley in the shrubs. Dried up poison tongue harpy.

Mark:

Peter doesn't care about Emma's round bits.

Sarah:

Well and and he says, oh, Angie probably said something bad about me because I turned her down for the bell ringing team. Because you know, that's all that's important to anybody, right? So her whole life is now besmirched by the fact that he wouldn't let her be on the bell ringing team.

Mark:

Greg had good hands and stamina.

Sarah:

I love when after Emma dies and they're in the tea shop and Peter's like, Well, hey Angie, good luck for you. Now you can be on the team. And she's like, Oh, go to hell. She's surprised she just doesn't say,

Mark:

Fuck off.

Sarah:

He expects her to be like, oh, can I please Yeah? Smash a plate in his face.

Mark:

That's what I mean. Like, they told Peter that not only is bell ringing the most important thing

Sarah:

It's important to everybody. Important

Mark:

to the

Sarah:

entire world. Assume that everybody is as obsessed with it as you are.

Mark:

I'll tell you somebody who's obsessed. The lady with the baby carriage watching Liam and

Sarah:

Emma. Park. They're on the bench making up.

Mark:

She almost crashes the baby carriage.

Sarah:

What what is she doing? She's the worst background actor ever.

Mark:

No. She looks right at the actors and continues looking as she goes by.

Sarah:

And I blame the cameraman for that one because whoever was running the camera followed her.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

So she gets our attention. She's in scene all by herself first, pushing her baby. And then as she moves behind them, our focus is supposed to switch to them, but it stays with her because she's so weird.

Mark:

She was gone. So we have had creepy Troy, creepy Peter, and now we have creepy Marcus. Yes.

Sarah:

Well, Marcus is kinda creepy all the time.

Mark:

Yeah. He is.

Sarah:

He's got a box of Emma trinkets, including the handkerchief she used to wipe the blood off her face.

Mark:

The blood.

Sarah:

Yeah. Never mind the shrine on his walls.

Mark:

Yeah. So Joyce and Maisie are at Joyce's house, and she offers to help the Barnaby share some insights. I have an insight she could share with him. I'm the killer.

Sarah:

Is this the only time a killer is in Barnaby's house?

Mark:

Yes. And I also believe this is the first time that a killer uses a pistol. Maybe. There's shotguns. But no pistols.

Mark:

Pistols are so rare.

Sarah:

Yeah. In England. Yep. Yeah. Because this is an Enfield pistol.

Sarah:

It's a World War two pistol.

Mark:

Hugh and Reggie talk about a red heron.

Sarah:

Yeah. I'm gonna leave my money to the church restoration.

Mark:

Francis Laban, great aunt of Simon Laban

Sarah:

is the great aunt of Duran Duran if you don't get that reference. Okay.

Mark:

I know we're way off topic, and we're really long here. But what day is the wedding? And and how is the wedding supposed to happen before the bell ringing competition?

Sarah:

I think they get married on Friday.

Mark:

I that that is the best explanation.

Sarah:

In many, many places in the world, Friday is the day you get married.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

You get married in the morning, followed by a wedding breakfast, and then people have the rest of the day free.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

It's not an all day thing and you have to get a great big hat. Yes. It's a competition, not a wedding.

Mark:

A hat competition and it has to be on Friday.

Sarah:

This is not a thing in The US. No. This is a British thing. These giant hats at weddings. Yes.

Sarah:

It kinda makes me jealous. Like, I wanna go to a wedding and wear an obnoxious hat because it's the one time you can get away with

Mark:

it. Yes.

Sarah:

When I the first time I saw this episode and Emma got killed right after they walked out of the church, I was shocked. Yeah. I thought that is profound. Well To have somebody killed minutes after they were married.

Mark:

Luckily, they have sausage rolls.

Sarah:

We can't postpone. We can't cancel the wedding. My mom's already made all the food. She's done all the cooking. And in the the the trash that Troy fetches from Rosalyn's house, they find a 100 check that's been torn up.

Mark:

Oh, I know what that check's for.

Sarah:

Well, Rosalind, it's a check that she gave to Hugh. Well, no. No. But he's paying her back.

Mark:

He's paying her back. I know what he used for that.

Sarah:

Well, yeah. Why does she loan him a £100?

Mark:

To buy red herons.

Sarah:

Oh, or maybe the bad hairpiece. Yes. But she tears it up because she knows it's gonna bounce anyway.

Mark:

But she has another great line here where she thinks young Emma may have shot Greg as she goes. It's a blow for decent womanhood. Not that I'm a member of that club.

Sarah:

Again, doesn't take herself seriously, which I think is great.

Mark:

Yep. And doesn't come on to Barnaby. No. Like, I I love how

Sarah:

She knows he he is out of her league and she likes younger men. Yep. So why would she?

Mark:

We go and meet Maisie's nephew Dennis and her niece-in-law Jen and we find out that Francis Laban is a shooting mix shooter person.

Sarah:

I I think that Dennis Eberle and his unborn child are the real victims in this.

Mark:

Absolutely.

Sarah:

Because man, Maisie screws them up. Absolutely. Even though they don't get killed. Her house is an absolute tip because she's a church archivist. Yes.

Sarah:

Like that's her excuse that the archive is all over her house basically.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

She says, Oh, I saw Francis with her gun. Yeah. So she did it. Not me. Wasn't me.

Mark:

Francis is like, pew pewee. Right?

Sarah:

Yeah. So In her basement at her home shooting range.

Mark:

She's hungry like the wolf too. How

Sarah:

many how many more Duran Duran references do you have in your notes?

Mark:

No more.

Sarah:

No more. I'm I'm disappointed.

Mark:

So first of all, before the wedding even starts and she gets shot, I'm like, Reggie plays the organ? And who's that with him? Oh my gosh.

Sarah:

Roslyn's in church, and she's not on fire.

Mark:

Roslyn turning the pages at church, like smoking a cigarette and coming on to something. Yeah.

Sarah:

The cherub's got a nice butt. When so after Emily, after Emma, sorry, is shot. Well, okay. First of all, Maisie breaks a window in the church Yeah. To shoot Emma.

Sarah:

Yeah. That's pretty

Mark:

It's premeditated. That's for sure.

Sarah:

As a church archivist and somebody who's dedicated to the church where her great, great, great,

Mark:

Die people. Was a blacker. Could have been hundreds of years old.

Sarah:

She just breaks a window. Just breaks it. But so Emma gets shot, and Tom comes running into the church and bowls into Reg and doesn't think that Reg is the one who shot her.

Mark:

No. Well, it couldn't be Reg. He's creepy.

Sarah:

He

Mark:

is. His He cats.

Sarah:

He's Well, I love

Mark:

how Reg is never suspected even though they find Marcus with a cane. They're like, no. It couldn't be Reg.

Sarah:

But like, if Maisie's trying to frame somebody, speaking of the cane

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

She's clearly willing to frame anybody. She was in the church while Reg and Rosalind were putting the music away. She shoots out the window. Yep. Hustles out.

Sarah:

It could have easily been Reg who did the shooting. Yeah. But it would have meant that Rosalind was his accomplice.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Now those two as a murdering duo would be really interesting. Well That's a show I would watch. Luckily Reg and Rosalind on the run.

Mark:

Luckily, Maisie explains her entire motive to Barnaby then.

Sarah:

Yeah. Exactly. Well, you know, they killed the vicar.

Mark:

Cake. Lots of cake shots come up.

Sarah:

It made me wonder who was ringing the bells at the wedding since two of the ringers are getting married and one is dead.

Mark:

Well, later on, Francis says, we tried doubles and

Sarah:

it didn't work. Marcus and Francis and Peter rang the bells. Yeah. And it must have exhausted them.

Mark:

Yeah. Because Francis throws up right away. Well,

Sarah:

you would when you get this, you know, the bride gets shot in the chest while getting her photos taken. That's why you don't do that photo thing.

Mark:

So Peter then has a great scene where he consoles Liam. And he he the actor is fantastic here because there's a turn where he turns from, I'm actually consoling you to, I'm trying to convince you to ring the bell.

Sarah:

It's very, very sad. But Emma would have wanted you to proceed. Yes.

Mark:

And Francis says, don't have a panic attack with your asthma. Foreshadowing.

Sarah:

Yeah. So we find out that the well in the church grounds has been disused since 1860 when the bell ringers killed the vicar.

Mark:

Yes. Over beer.

Sarah:

Well, so not only beer, but they were rowdy and they didn't attend church.

Mark:

And beer. This whole thing is over beer.

Sarah:

They had beer up in the bell ringing chamber.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

So they were drinking and ringing the bells, and the vicar wanted him to stop. So they killed him and dumped him in the well.

Mark:

That's a bit extreme.

Sarah:

I think so too.

Mark:

I mean, even in 1860 old timey time.

Sarah:

And I think a bit ineffective because there's just gonna be another vicar. Plus, it's not a very good view of bell ringers. No. One of them sleeps around, one of them is kind of violent towards his fiancee, one of them is mentally broken, asthmatic and panicky, one of them loses guns and doesn't report them. And even in old timey, they were rowdy drunks.

Sarah:

Yeah. I think bell ringers are a little classier than that. And I'm not just sucking up to those people in Kingston.

Mark:

I I agree.

Sarah:

Marcus is sad in his blue velvet suit. Oh. Because he was an orphan.

Mark:

So the killer cam following Marcus here is laughable. We're supposed

Sarah:

to expect that Maisie is creeping along behind him on this path like a cartoon character.

Mark:

And then dodges into the trees with her camouflage sweater?

Sarah:

I I think she's got the full on face paint and everything going. And probably got some twigs in her hair.

Mark:

This is one of my least favorite deaths.

Sarah:

I wanna I wanna see a picture of Maisie in that shot.

Mark:

She uses a cane to push him in. He dies instantly even though he got to his Inhaler. Inhaler. And then the note comes out of his pocket and

Sarah:

Floats down the

Mark:

Floats River. Down the river. The notes, I hate that it's the same poem and I hate the

Sarah:

notes. So are we supposed to believe that Maisie stole one of Reg's canes to shove him?

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

That's how could she know that that's where he was gonna fall down? I don't think she could know that. I think maybe she intended to beat him to death with it.

Mark:

Maybe.

Sarah:

Like assuming if she scared him, he'd have an asthma attack and then she could pummel him with the cane until he was dead, which would be a much different death than going face down in the water. And but I do believe that somebody having an asthma attack, even if they just take a hit off their inhaler, they they could pass out.

Mark:

They could pass And

Sarah:

if you pass out face down in water, you're dead.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

That's it.

Mark:

You know who else is dead? Reggie. And wow. Like, I'm like, is is is he actually dead there?

Sarah:

Well, what's sad is Graham Crowden dies like a year after making this episode. So that's kind of creepy.

Mark:

It is.

Sarah:

But man, does he look dead?

Mark:

He looks really dead. Like no makeup dead.

Sarah:

He's super pale. Yeah. And his eyes aren't completely shut.

Mark:

No. And Hugh does his best to look completely suspicious. Well, I was over here fluffing on my uncle's pillows and I found him dead.

Sarah:

I think Hugh genuinely loves Reggie.

Mark:

Well, think at this point that comes through.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. But this, just remember, this is still happening on the day of the wedding.

Mark:

Days really get screwed up here. There's a lot happens during these days.

Sarah:

Reg dies, Marcus dies, Emma dies same day. So they have the wedding in the morning, and in the afternoon, while he's still in his wedding suit, Liam's coming to the tea shop saying, I guess I'll ring. Hours after his wife was shot. Yeah. I'm sorry.

Sarah:

He would be inconsolable for days.

Mark:

Well, and after Marcus has been killed. Like, two people die on this day.

Sarah:

Yeah. They should all just be

Mark:

in shock. And the which kinda explains a little more when, Burnaby goes to talk to Francis. I think we have the best scene of the episode.

Sarah:

Oh, where She's so upset.

Mark:

Where Francis explains that she's the reason this is all happening because she lost a pair of guns.

Sarah:

She's got that bottle of pills and she can't open them because she's shaking Just so

Mark:

fantastic acting. Mhmm. They did a really good job. And what I love about an episode where there's great acting is everything stops for that moment. And you don't mind.

Mark:

You're like, wow.

Sarah:

Frances Lebanon is played by Gwen Taylor. She was in 47 episodes of Coronation Street. Wow. So that's probably where most people know her from. But she also played missus Big in Life of Brian.

Mark:

Coronation Street's like a daily, isn't it? Yeah. So 40 seven's not

Sarah:

a lot. It's a lot of episodes. Oh,

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

It's not a tiny character. No. She was a big character. Yeah. But yeah, she plays Mrs.

Sarah:

Big Nose in Life of Brian, the Monty Python movie.

Mark:

Yes. Yes, she does.

Sarah:

She was in tons of things. She's just a great actress.

Mark:

She does such a good job here.

Sarah:

So I have this note and I just answered it for myself. I'm such a dummy. So the bells that ring while Marcus is being killed. So Marcus and Francis are on the road. They hear the bells ringing.

Sarah:

They go to check it out. Francis climbs the gate. Marcus can't because he's a weenie. So he's going to go home. And then of course, Maisie kills him on his way home.

Sarah:

I'm like, who's ringing the bells? Right? We know that it's a recording.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

And then I have a note, wouldn't Reg be running to the church to stop them from ringing the bells?

Mark:

Reg is dead. He's dead. All on the same day, Reg

Sarah:

Emma and Marcus.

Mark:

All die on the same day. Yeah. This is it's a bad day for the village.

Sarah:

Yeah. But, man, Reg is a good corpse.

Mark:

So they do some great editing here where Rosalind is reading Emma's note Emma's note.

Sarah:

She's reciting it. She's memorizing it. Verbatim. But we don't know that's what she's doing.

Mark:

That she's saying it to Troy.

Sarah:

Yeah. We know there's an age difference between us.

Mark:

They do such a great job with that, and they have a kind of fun play with it.

Sarah:

Yeah. This whole, like, intimidation of Troy by Rosalind theme is very funny.

Mark:

And she loves it. Yeah. And he's gonna get some except for Hugh, who's breaking in to the tea shop to steal a red herring.

Sarah:

Mhmm. He's such a bad burglar, breaks into the cozy kitchen because he's looking for the letter.

Mark:

He's looking for the letter.

Sarah:

Supposed to deliver to the bishop.

Mark:

So Reg explains what happened and that Reg knew all along. And what I like is there's never a moment with Reg that you're like told that. No. Like, I like that they don't do a nod and a wink to that.

Sarah:

Yeah. That Reg was far smarter than Hugh gave him credit for. Absolutely. And really did care about his nephew.

Mark:

Bell ringing competition. Saturday, there are a lot of people in sashes.

Sarah:

Yeah. They got their team sashes. So the village hall there in Midsomer Willow, has a big sign on it. It says it was built in 1911. And I thought, I wonder if there's anything significant about 1911.

Sarah:

It turns out there is. That was the year that George the fifth was coronated and a lot of village halls were built in that year in honor of the coronation. Oh, okay. So That's cool. Makes sense.

Mark:

So while the bell ringing competition is on and they're eating cakes. Mhmm.

Sarah:

Cakes. Troy breaks into Peter's house.

Mark:

And steps in the cat food. Yes. And then finds the revolvers under a cat. Now this is Clapper, our second named cat of the episode.

Sarah:

So Peter stole the guns, stashes them in the drawer that his cat sleeps in.

Mark:

After his wife left him. The wife.

Sarah:

His kitchen is so neat and tidy, but his desk is so messy.

Mark:

Everything's neat and tidy in the kitchen.

Sarah:

And here's where I have a note that says this episode should be called the word processor killer.

Mark:

It should be because Joyce goes to find Maisie and talks to mister Gooch. And he goes, actually, my name is Dennis Abril, and I can't type for crap.

Sarah:

It took me a half an hour to type that sentence.

Mark:

Who takes a half an hour to type like that?

Sarah:

If you were typing with a pencil in your mouth, you could type faster than that. He's clearly not very clever, but the word processor, MS word, is the smoking gun Yes. In this episode.

Mark:

Well, luckily, the gooch leaves the names of the people she killed along with the message.

Sarah:

Well, you have to remember which note's for who.

Mark:

And then the note at the end that's up in the church is way bigger than any printer in that house could print.

Sarah:

Maybe she taped them together.

Mark:

The desktop publisher and technical writer in me is like, that's just not possible.

Sarah:

She saved it as a PDF, She opened it in Acrobat and she printed it in poster mode so then she could tape the pages together.

Mark:

It's all one piece of paper.

Sarah:

That's how you do it. It's easy. Maisie thinks her family is cursed. Yes. So her great, great, great grandfather, uncle, whoever he was, was murdered by the ringers.

Sarah:

And because of that, all the Gucci's or the Admiral's have been cursed since.

Mark:

Now hold on. Marcus no. Liam, Francis, and Peter go up to ring in celebration.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

Okay. How did Maisie knew they were gonna do that?

Sarah:

They ring in celebration of what? Winning the competition. Oh, that's right. So they ring for the competition and then they go back up after they win.

Mark:

Yes. And in the meantime, she's tied off all the bells.

Sarah:

Here's the bell? Oh, she's yeah. That's right. She's tied them all off so they can't ring.

Mark:

Yeah. So they all go up I

Sarah:

think she just follows them.

Mark:

They go all up in the ringing chamber. Okay? And then she they send Liam up to look at the bells.

Sarah:

Right. Because they won't move.

Mark:

Now the door to the ringing chamber is open. I watched this very closely. And somehow, the gooch teleports up to where the bells are and shoots Liam.

Sarah:

Did you rewatch that scene when they're in the bell ringing chamber to make sure she doesn't sneak past the door? Yes. I did too. Because I would have been really impressed if they actually had her sneaking past and we didn't notice. Was like, they didn't notice.

Mark:

She got in her little gooch teleporter.

Sarah:

Here's another question though, and we may have to go back and watch it again. Is she in the scene where they're announced as the winners? No. She's not?

Mark:

I checked.

Sarah:

Because it would have been really easy for her to be there and then follow them up. Yep. Right? So she's already tied the bells off, so she must have predicted that they were going to go up and ring again.

Mark:

So then she goes down, okay, to the bell ringing room and has the gun on Peter and Francis. And somehow, Barnaby finds the teleporter and goes up past them into the bell ring where the bells are. Yeah. Because the gooch would have noticed Barnaby going up the stairs if not for the

Sarah:

He's got stealth.

Mark:

It's not an area you could sneak through. The door is wide open. I double checked.

Sarah:

I'm almost I'm also impressed with the fact that Maisie could tie those bells up.

Mark:

Well, with

Sarah:

her little female.

Mark:

She's got

Mark:

really good arms from doing the rubbins.

Sarah:

She's a buff archivist. She's buff archivist. The debt has been paid to ensure the family is uncursed, That the curse is lifted. So she's done all of this because her niece-in-law is pregnant. Yes.

Sarah:

That's the exacerbating event.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

That there's another generation on the way and she has to do something to ensure that this baby isn't cursed.

Mark:

Would she not have cracked earlier? Like, throw in a dead husband or something.

Sarah:

How is she cursed?

Mark:

I don't know.

Sarah:

She seems to have a nice little life.

Mark:

She's got a

Sarah:

little cottage. She lives in a nice little village.

Mark:

Yeah. She has a good life and Joyce is a friend. Maybe they should go for coffee.

Sarah:

There's a killer in my kitchen.

Mark:

Meanwhile, Troy gets hit in the face by one of those ropes.

Sarah:

That would hurt. It would. It would hurt.

Mark:

I think they do a good job on the makeup.

Sarah:

Man, if Maisie loves her nephew, she she sure does screw him up.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

He and his wife are standing there and they now realize she killed all these people for our sakes. Yep. Now that doesn't make them responsible, but it sure does put a shadow over them. Yes. You know?

Mark:

And Rosalind tends to Troy, and Barnaby takes a phone call. And episode.

Sarah:

And a teacup.

Mark:

Yeah. He steals the tea cup.

Sarah:

They hand him a cup and saucer and he just goes walking down the alley with the cup and saucer. What I really like when Sue says that she's going to employ Hugh as a pastry chef.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

And when the, the camera pans to Hugh, there's a cuckoo in the background. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. It's like a little comment on him. So after the credits Hugh's a pastry chef.

Mark:

Yeah. Who and his girlfriend have lots of money? They got all of, Reggie's money. Plus, if they can find it, they got the 5,000 from Greg because she's still married to Greg.

Sarah:

That's right. Legally.

Mark:

Yeah. Well, Greg's dead, but

Sarah:

And he gets to be a pastry chef now. So he's okay. Sue and Angie are okay.

Mark:

Maisie goes to jail. Yes. Peter, I think, loses his job.

Sarah:

I would think that he would get fired for stealing the guns.

Mark:

Those pistols.

Sarah:

Yeah. And not reporting them. Francis, sad.

Mark:

Liam, sad. Maisie prison, sad. Poor nephew, sad. Rosalind, no change. Troy gets some action, I think.

Sarah:

At least he gets some pampering. Yeah. And poor Joyce says, there goes another hobby. Yeah. And that's it.

Sarah:

I guess I can't be a brass rubber now. Killers. Damn it. They ruin everything.

Mark:

They ruin everything.

Sarah:

Okay. So now corpses. Greg, Emma, Marcus, Reggie, I think we both agree. Reggie. Hands down.

Sarah:

Hands down. Best corpse.

Mark:

Absolutely great actor. Great dead body.

Sarah:

He's epic. He's practicing. He oh.

Mark:

That's rough.

Sarah:

I got you with that one.

Mark:

I wonder what he died of. Like, did he know he was sick or something here? Probably not. I hope not.

Sarah:

I hope not. Because then, yeah, that would be kinda weird.

Mark:

He's so fantastic. I love everything that he's in. I like, when I see him in something, I'm like, oh, this is gonna be good because he's gonna eat up all the scenery.

Sarah:

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention, Maisie Gooch, she's played by Gemma Jones, among lots of things. She was in Bridget Jones's diary. Yeah. Those movies, she plays her mom. But she's also in Rocket Man.

Sarah:

She plays Elton John's mom. Oh. She's in Gentleman Jack, which is a really good show, but she was also in the Devils.

Mark:

Oh my gosh. She was in The Devils too. Yeah. I wonder so we see Gooch. Gooch.

Sarah:

And you said practicing was a bad joke? Oh, good God. I think we need to wrap this up before we go too far. Wow. If you disagree with who the best corpse was or, if you have some information about bell ringing or change ringers Yep.

Sarah:

Let us know. We're always happy to learn.

Mark:

Absolutely. Fantastic episode. We love this episode. Next episode, is 23 of the podcast, which is episode five of season five, which is Murder on Saint Malley's Day, which on rewatching, I enjoyed so much more than I ever have.

Sarah:

The old boys and the pudding club. Yep. Yep. We hope you have a great New Year's.

Mark:

A spoon as a murderer instrument is fantastic.

Sarah:

Is. Have a maniacal New Year's, Maniacs.

Mark:

Absolutely. You guys have made our New Year already fantastic. Thank you so much for listening.

Sarah:

Bye, Maniacs.

Mark:

Bye, Maniacs. Then there's, like, this scene that is good because it shows what?

Sarah:

Of course, of course, they bet on the horse. That that sounds like the theme song for mister Ed.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Who's a horse? Yes. I didn't mean to do that.

Mark:

It's okay.

Sarah:

Yeah. Of course, it's okay. It was funny and unintentionally.

Mark:

Yes. Whatever.

Sarah:

Excuse me while I be a boss around here.

Mark:

Boss, boss, boss. Yeah. Stop running in the hole.

Sarah:

Hey. Guess what? Hey. What? It's Midsomer Maniacs.

Mark:

Midsomer Maniacs.

Sarah:

It is. It's us.

Mark:

Hey,

Sarah:

Maniacs. Hey, Maniacs.

Mark:

Midsomer Maniacs is a podcast dedicated to the ITV series Midsomer Murders. Each week, we dig into an episode of the show, including the murders, the mayhem, the loonies, and everything else we love.

Sarah:

If your kids can watch the show, they can handle the podcast, and this is episode 23 of Midsomer Maniacs.

Mark:

Is this the youngest death we've seen in this episode?

Sarah:

Depends whether you're going on the age of the actor or the character.

Mark:

The age of the character. Because clearly, he's 45. Yes. This episode was well

Sarah:

Murder on Saint Malley's Day.

Mark:

Murder on Saint Malley's Day.

Sarah:

You might wanna tell them what episode we're talking about. Which is

Mark:

season five episode five.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

And I'm gonna get irritating about this, but it says Saint Malley's apostrophe s in the title of the episode

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

And in the title card of the episode. Mhmm. And then they don't know where to put apostrophes after that.

Sarah:

So after that, the day no longer belongs to Saint Malley?

Mark:

No. It's not his day anymore.

Sarah:

It's it's many Saint Malley's running around having a day? Yes. Okay. They go from possessive to plural. Aren't you an English major?

Mark:

The episode is filmed July and August in two thousand one and broadcast the 09/22/2002. And 9,370,000 viewers directed by Peter Smith and written by Andrew Payne. And, you know, I think Andrew Payne may have went to one of these schools.

Sarah:

You think he went to a posh school?

Mark:

I I I think there might be some lingering stuff here.

Sarah:

There are definitely some actors in this episode who went to posh schools.

Mark:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Sarah:

I can tell you about that.

Mark:

The episode takes place in a village called Midsomer Parva. It's interesting because parva in Latin means little. Oh,

Sarah:

it's like little Midsomer.

Mark:

Yeah. It's it's like every use of Latin in this episode, it is used to put something down.

Sarah:

Yeah. And unnecessarily. Yeah. It the cold open shows a guy driving down the road in his car.

Mark:

And This is Archie Bellingham. We'll learn.

Sarah:

Yeah. And the road is blocked by some traffic cones that he gets out and

Mark:

The worst trap ever.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

Like, if I was driving along a country road and I saw that, I'd be like, this may be a

Sarah:

trap. Would you really? I would I think you'd do exactly what he did, except you'd stack them neatly Well instead of throwing them into the ditch.

Mark:

Yes. It did irritate me that he

Sarah:

threw them into the ditch. What caught me though is it looks like the road winds through a moor. Yeah. It's like It's a very non Midsomer place.

Mark:

And, also, it's like, okay. Was spoon man, which I call him, the murderer That's what

Sarah:

call Ludlow spoon man?

Mark:

Spoon man. Was he just waiting there knowing that he was gonna come down? Like, this is a lot of pre med meditation.

Sarah:

They were expecting him to bring the Buddha.

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

Which is brass Yes. Not gold or anything. No. Don't get me started on how cheap the props are in this episode.

Mark:

Well and

Sarah:

It's a whole room of crap you could buy at Pier 1

Mark:

or whatever. Think Buddhists are gonna do gold stuff. Don't they have a thing about golden images or something?

Sarah:

Not necessarily, but it's just so clearly a cheap brass Buddha

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

That it's it's hard to go, oh, it's a treasure.

Mark:

Cheap brass Buddha. That's a fun name.

Sarah:

It's the name of my band. Yep. Cheap brass Buddha.

Mark:

Devington school, one mile scum. That's the kind

Sarah:

of thing that townies would paint on

Mark:

a sign.

Mark:

Just think of Brian, what's his name? Running in and going scum.

Sarah:

He would have written scumbag.

Mark:

Yes. He would have. We're transferred to the school where they don't pay their electrical bill.

Sarah:

This is Devington School.

Mark:

Yes. And

Sarah:

Let's talk about schools for a second. Okay. Because this is a very posh exclusive school.

Mark:

So this is okay. I'll I'll play a North American person. This is a private school then.

Sarah:

No. No. It's a public school because we're in The UK.

Mark:

But public school is where everybody can go.

Sarah:

No. So so not all so in The UK, private schools that are not religious are called public schools.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

And government run schools

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

So not all government run schools are called okay. Let me back up.

Mark:

Okay. I'm confused already.

Sarah:

Okay. So there's three kinds of schools.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

There are publicly funded schools

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

That normal people go to. Yes. And they're just schools.

Mark:

Like Troy?

Sarah:

Yeah. He just goes to school. Yeah. Just school. Okay.

Sarah:

Then there are private schools, which in The UK, they call public schools.

Mark:

Okay. Okay.

Sarah:

There's a reason for that. And then the third are religious schools.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Okay? The religious schools were first.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

And so even if you were extremely wealthy, if you weren't of the religion, you could not go to that school.

Mark:

So is this why, like, at universities like Oxford, they have colleges that are that are religious related?

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

So if it was a Catholic private school, no matter how wealthy your parents were, they could not buy you a seat.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

So then non religious affiliated schools popped up

Mark:

Mhmm.

Sarah:

And they called them public schools because they were open to any member of the public who could afford it.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Now That's why

Mark:

In Canada, when I

Sarah:

was schools are called public schools.

Mark:

In Canada, when I was growing up, public schools were the non private schools, the ones for everybody.

Sarah:

The ones that were governmently government funded. Right? No. So a a public school in The UK is a not for profit, non religious, fee paying school that offers both boarding and day students.

Mark:

So Devington's not for prob not for profit. Right. Well, then we're done here.

Sarah:

It's not a nonprofit. It's a not for profit.

Mark:

Which defeats the entire purpose of the episode.

Sarah:

Yes. Well, that's the whole point. Right?

Mark:

Okay. Yeah.

Sarah:

So Anthony and the guy who gets killed right off the bat

Mark:

Archie.

Sarah:

They they're trying to profit.

Mark:

Oh, okay.

Sarah:

Whereas the true Devontonians are trying to reinvest in the school and their students, which is what a not for profit does. They can make money, but they have to reinvest the money in the institution

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Instead of taking the money out. Now you know.

Mark:

Yes. Thank you.

Sarah:

It's a public school.

Mark:

Do you think, Barnaby went to a public a public school or he went to regular school?

Sarah:

I think he went to regular school.

Mark:

Well, we know Troy did because there's references to it now.

Sarah:

We we go to his school. Yeah. Right? We visit his school. Scumbag.

Sarah:

Scumbag works there. Yeah.

Mark:

Frying. Yes. And

Sarah:

and it's pretty common for, these exclusive public schools to have some kind of not a secret club, but, like, an exclusive club. It's because if you can afford to be there, that doesn't mean that you should be there according to their standards or whatever.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

So you're gonna get some rich but not classy people get in, and so they need that kind of next echelon up of exclusivity.

Mark:

Because this reminds me of, like, skull and bones at at

Sarah:

Yale. That's like a

Mark:

Yale or whatever it is.

Sarah:

Yeah. And they're I mean, every school's got them. They're more common in private universities than and because this school is like six through 18. Yeah. But, yeah, Yale's got skull and bones.

Sarah:

Oxford has one called the Bowlingdon Club, and Cambridge has one called the Apostles.

Mark:

Oh, wow. That doesn't go straight to their head or anything.

Sarah:

No. Not at all. But there's tons of stories. And there's a lot of stories about

Mark:

So if you meet somebody from Cambridge, were you an apostle? Wink.

Sarah:

Wink. Wink. Wink. You think they have a special handshake or something?

Mark:

You know it. They're all Masonic related.

Sarah:

Pose like they're at the last supper, and that's how you know they're in?

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Okay. So the exclusive club at Devington is the pudding club.

Mark:

The pudding club.

Sarah:

Which we know was founded because the food was bad, and so the rich kids shipped food in from London.

Mark:

Including these suet puddings Yeah. Which, as far as I can tell are a shell of pastry with gravy in it. Yeah. They look gross. Wait.

Mark:

And cigarettes later on.

Sarah:

Later on. Yeah. If Marcus has anything to do with it.

Mark:

Speaking of Marcus, he's running this meeting, and he's got something to say to Daniel Talbot.

Sarah:

Marcus Haywood just makes me think of Blaine.

Mark:

He's so blamed. He's absolutely Blaine from pretty in pink.

Sarah:

It's not a name. It's an appliance.

Mark:

Not a name. It's an appliance. He's very posh. And he's accusing Daniel of fraternizing with the village folk.

Sarah:

Of sharing pudding club secrets Fight. Outfighters.

Mark:

Fight. Fight.

Sarah:

They're such a posse with their big spoons.

Mark:

And the

Sarah:

But they don't get plates. It doesn't matter how fancy you are. The pudding club does not get a plate.

Mark:

No plate for you. And Ludlow's outside with the giant spoon mace.

Sarah:

He he will he will beat you to death with that spoon.

Mark:

He will. Certainly. And Jonathan what's his last name?

Sarah:

Eckersley Hyde.

Mark:

Eckersley Hyde arrives.

Sarah:

You You gotta have a double barrel last name to be fancy.

Mark:

Yes. Speaking Latin, desist.

Sarah:

I I like that when he takes Daniel to see his grandfather, he wears his gown in the car.

Mark:

He wears his gown almost this entire episode.

Sarah:

Well, he hardly ever leaves the campus. That's true. Right? When he's on campus, that makes sense.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

But when you leave campus, you're supposed to take it off. Yeah. Like, that's the rule.

Mark:

And Marcus does this thing that bullies I hate when they do when, you know, the teacher shows up. They're acting all nice and smarmy and all that stuff. Mhmm. By the way, as a teacher, we we all know you're doing this.

Sarah:

Yeah. But in this case, they wouldn't care.

Mark:

Yeah. They don't really care.

Sarah:

They're a bunch of ruffians anyway.

Mark:

Now off to Buckingham Palace. I mean, Charles' Palace. I mean, Anthony's Palace.

Sarah:

The Talbot home. The Talbot home. Yeah. Because Anthony Talbot looks like Charles. Ho ho ho ho.

Sarah:

He's played by Jeremy Child.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

And in reality, Jeremy Child is a baron.

Mark:

Oh my gosh. So he's had this way of discussing things all his life too.

Sarah:

Oh, he's playing himself Yeah. Basically.

Mark:

Well, I'm assuming he's a nice person.

Sarah:

He may be a nice person.

Mark:

He's not a nice person in office. Class Yeah.

Sarah:

He is playing himself.

Mark:

And his father's dying, and his wife really doesn't care. Yeah. Miranda did Miranda have another gig at this point in time? Because every single shot she's in, she's looking to leave.

Sarah:

Wouldn't you?

Mark:

Yes. Absolutely.

Sarah:

The Talbins house is actually a house called Hall Barn.

Mark:

Oh, it's in the old barn.

Sarah:

It's the furthest thing from a barn ever. Certainly no barn. But that same house has been used in Downton Abbey. It was used in chariots of fire. It was used in Howard's End.

Sarah:

It was used in Gosford Park. Like, it is the house.

Mark:

But but they like, they know it in this episode, but they always refer to those houses as the old pile.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's the kind of house that you can't afford to keep up after the death duties. It's that kind of house.

Mark:

Exactly.

Sarah:

Actually owned by the UK government in reality. You can sort of see in a couple of shots when they're outside, especially when they're up in the graveyard on the hill, you can see that there's like a lake or a pond kind of behind it. And on the other side of it, there's this little temple, this little Greek temple.

Mark:

There's a folly out there.

Sarah:

It's a temple to Venus and it's a folly. And that folly has been used in more TV and movie shows than the house.

Mark:

Temple Of Venus. Yes. If that's not a thing that you take your mistress or the maid out to

Sarah:

The fact that it's clearly visible from the house kind of hurt your chances there. But Yeah. I don't think he cares.

Mark:

So sir Walter's dying, and luckily, we know this because doctor is here. Yes. Only ever referred to as doctor.

Sarah:

Played by Roger Briarley.

Mark:

Not the doctor. Not a doctor. Doctor.

Sarah:

It's like nanny. Yes. You don't call her the nanny. You call her nanny. He dies only after he knows that it's after midnight, which means it's Saint Malley's Day.

Mark:

So Saint Malley's Day is not an actual holiday, strangely enough, but it always reminds me of Saint's Within's Day. Do you know about Saint's Within's Day? No. Saint's Within's Day is an actual it's not a holiday. It's like a tradition in England.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

And it's when I tell you about it, you'll be like, oh, that's where that's from.

Sarah:

Okay.

Mark:

So if it rains on Saint Swithens Day, it's expected to rain for the next forty days. So this tradition of an event happening on a particular day predicting the weather

Sarah:

Like Groundhog Day?

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

But forty days of rain is a little bit different than a couple more weeks of cold weather.

Mark:

I'm building the ark, man.

Sarah:

Yeah. I mean, that's like crossing the desert or something. I don't know. It's that's kind of a hard one to live up to.

Mark:

But that when I heard about Saint Swithin's Day, I was like, oh, so that got translated to North America as Groundhog Day.

Sarah:

Do you think Saint Swithen looked a little bit like a Groundhog?

Mark:

I don't know, but I

Sarah:

Maybe he was a little hairy man who came out of a hole.

Mark:

It rained today. It's going to rain forever forty years.

Sarah:

Of course. Goes back into his hole.

Mark:

The real re of course, the real reason I know about Saint Thyrdom's Day is because there's a Billy Bragg song about Saint Thyrdom's Day. Of course, the relationship ends and it rains. So Ah.

Sarah:

This is So Saint Malley is not a real saint? Nope. Okay.

Mark:

No Saint Malley at all.

Sarah:

Long story short.

Mark:

It's going to rain for forty years.

Mark:

And Miranda is right to the booze.

Sarah:

Miranda's doing everything she can to get away from these horrible men that she's roped herself to other than her son who seems genuinely nice.

Mark:

I feel bad because I I've seen that actress before, and I think she does good stuff. And I think she just is like an add on in this episode.

Sarah:

Yeah. She's kind of a foil to the rest of them. Like, rich people can be genuine and nice. It's possible, but only if you're a woman.

Mark:

And not speak too much Latin.

Sarah:

Yeah. We go to the school. Right?

Mark:

Well, Barnaby and Joyce are brought to the school because of their best friends.

Sarah:

That we've never met before. Never met before. The Woodards. George and Sylvia. They have a son, Toby Yes.

Sarah:

Who wants to go there or they want him to go there. Why don't they bring him with them to see the school?

Mark:

I they have to bring Tom and Joyce.

Sarah:

I I just imagine the writers sitting there going, okay. We need an excuse for them to be there for the race. But there hasn't been a crime committed yet that they know about, so Tom wouldn't be there for that reason. So what other reason could we have? The Woodards.

Sarah:

I know they're visiting the school, but not because of Collie going there or something like that.

Mark:

Because we all know Collie gets sent down.

Sarah:

They must have some friends. It's just it's a bad I mean, it it works. It's fine, but I don't I don't buy it. Yeah. I think they've got better things to do with their time.

Mark:

To the brave and faithful, nothing is impossible to translate from Latin.

Sarah:

Eckersley High definitely likes to speak in Latin just because it makes him feel smart and important, I think.

Mark:

So the Saint Maui's Day race is not really a race. It's cross country wrestling.

Sarah:

Yes. Yeah. It's it's it's rugby relay or something.

Mark:

Something.

Sarah:

Because they have to carry a rugby ball, and the person who crosses the finish line with the rugby ball wins.

Mark:

So the other thing that annoys me no end in any of these shows, it happens all the time. And every time it happens, I am annoyed by it. And that is if your microphone makes that sound before it's turned on or while it's being turned on, you need to fire your sound guy.

Sarah:

The feedback sound that every mic makes in every TV show?

Mark:

Doesn't need to make that sound. It drives me insane.

Sarah:

That's because you're an AV guy.

Mark:

That to me as a sound guy, that is a failing of the sound people.

Sarah:

Devington doesn't strike me as a super techy place. It I doubt they've got an AV guy.

Mark:

They have a Mac.

Sarah:

No. One kid has a Mac.

Mark:

And a PS one?

Sarah:

Yeah. One kid. They don't notice they don't have kids running the the mics there. Right? So let's talk about the kids before we go too far into the plot.

Mark:

You mean the adults?

Sarah:

Yes. They are adults. Definitely. So, Nicholas Oddsley, who plays Marcus Haywood, he's 20

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

In this episode. The actor is 20 years old. Daniel Talbot is played by Sam Crane, and he is 23

Mark:

Oh my gosh.

Sarah:

In this episode. Now they're supposed to be 18. Right? Paul Starkey, who's the pub owner's kid, the bad kid, is played by Luke DeWolfsen. He's 26.

Sarah:

Charlie Mennel, played by Tom Fell. Charlie's the blonde haired kid who gets into get. He gets into the pudding club after Dan Daniel buys. He's 26. And Arabella Haywood, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, who we'll talk a lot about.

Sarah:

Yeah. This is Marcus's sister. She's 25. Yeah. Now she still looks 25.

Mark:

Yes. She

Sarah:

does. That woman has a baby face and will never age. No. I'm incredibly jealous of her, but she's 25. So the oldest of them is Charlie, Charlie Mennel.

Mark:

Yeah. I noticed the picture of IMDb for the guy who plays Marcus Hayward has, like, he's got scruff on his face. I was like, he's a man.

Sarah:

Yeah. Nick Nicholas Oddsley has been in a lot of things since. Since. But still, it does not look his age. No.

Sarah:

There's this whole that this group of actors who they look very young. Yeah. They pull it off. I I believe that they're young. I buy it.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

None them's got a punch or anything.

Mark:

No. So the idea of those this race is there's a ball. Now I did notice in the picture of Daniel's grandfather winning the race, he did not have a ball.

Sarah:

Yes. He does.

Mark:

No. He doesn't.

Sarah:

He's carrying it.

Mark:

Oh, I didn't think he was.

Sarah:

Yeah. Okay. He's carrying it.

Mark:

I can be wrong. Don't worry. We'll get to a point where I'm very wrong. And you carry that ball through the race.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Right? And it I guess it's no rules in terms of what you can do to get that ball.

Sarah:

It's whoever crosses the finish line with the ball

Mark:

Yeah. Wins. So the bell goes off to start the race a little bit late.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

And then the clock, which clearly says 3PM

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

In my mind translated to 9AM. So the rest

Sarah:

You were thinking mirror clock time.

Mark:

The rest of the notes in this section for me is all about why are there yobs in the village at 9AM? And then later on when they're Why

Sarah:

does the race take all day?

Mark:

They're establishing the alibis. They're like, I was here at 03:20. I'm like, that's six and a half hours after the race started.

Sarah:

You're silly.

Mark:

I was wrong.

Sarah:

It clearly starts at 3PM. Yes. Supposed to ring the bell. It's delayed because we know he's not actually there because he's off in the woods ready to kill Daniel instead.

Mark:

Yes. Spoon man. So they go off running, and their running is weird. Yeah. Especially Daniel, I don't think he's ever run before.

Sarah:

Well, and it's this weird mix of, like, a cross country run where you would pace yourself. Right? So the person in first in the beginning may not be the one who's winning at the end because they may be running too hard.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

But in this case, since he's got the ball, he can't afford to have a leisurely pace. He has to run full out.

Mark:

Yeah. Sprint, basically.

Sarah:

And he doesn't wanna run at all. No. So, yeah, he doesn't run super graceful. And then Charlie's right behind him, and he's just a big lumbering oath.

Mark:

Luckily, his dad's there to cheer him on. And by cheer him on, I mean insult him until he starts to run. Yeah.

Sarah:

Go, you idiot. Run.

Mark:

Ugh. I hate his dad so much.

Sarah:

It was kinda nice for Marcus to make sure that Daniel got the ball, though.

Mark:

It was. It's kinda Marcus is a is a complex dude. Yes. So they run past, Devington School annex for girls. And you know how he has all the time in the world for girls?

Mark:

Marcus. Stops, blows them little kisses, and everything. The townies are even clapping here.

Sarah:

Yeah. The the older people in town, I think and a lot of them probably benefit from the town gown relationship. Right? There's a lot of business associated with the school. So the adults in town probably understand that it's a benefit to have the school there, whereas the younger people in town hate the school because they're they're snobby.

Mark:

So we live in a university town. It is the town of Indiana University, one of the largest state run schools in the country.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

It's a big school. And when we say town and gown, we mean the relationship between the people who live in town who are not associated with the university and the people who are associated with the university. This is the weird thing about Bloomington is you could go to the grocery store and meet somebody who had won a Nobel Prize.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

It's it's a strange situation.

Sarah:

Yeah. The person who cut you off at the four way stop could be a professor emeritus of nuclear science or something. Yes. But you can still flip them off. It's okay.

Sarah:

Yeah. Absolutely. People.

Mark:

Yes. Speaking of people,

Sarah:

they were I'm a doctor, and you can flip me off. I'd say if I'm stupid, it's okay.

Mark:

Yes. Speaking of people, Dudley Carrue has got his rug. Where is he going with the rug?

Sarah:

He seems to be moving things in and out of his house. I don't know why he's got all that junk outside of his house. I understand all the paperwork and stuff in his house, but not the junk outside.

Mark:

I'm glad that Dudley that Daniel has time to stop and say hi.

Sarah:

Mhmm. I think what he wants to do is hide.

Mark:

I think

Sarah:

so too. He would like to go into Dudley's house. Dudley's like, run. Run.

Mark:

Then there are yobs. I wanna say that these yobs in the in the village green are not credited, but they do the best damn job as yobs ever. They they are clearly Yobs.

Sarah:

They're probably the same kids who play extras at the school just in jean jackets.

Mark:

Oh, I'm sure they are. But they immediately look like, the way it's filmed, you're like, know exactly what's gonna oh oh, there go the cans. They're throwing them.

Sarah:

They've they've got lager cans. Yeah. And Paul is on his motorcycle. Paul Starkey almost runs Carter off the road, Dennis Carter.

Mark:

Well, we'll get to that because it's a weird cut. I don't wanna talk about the weird cut, But I wanna talk about the the first clearly aptly named pub. Yes. So it's called the Chalk and Gown, and it is clearly a rebranding of an existing pub.

Sarah:

Yeah. They they painted a sign just for the episode.

Mark:

Well, they they made up a sign. Mhmm. And it's in paint. It's not a very good job.

Sarah:

No. Is that supposed to be a gown, that red thing?

Mark:

I think so.

Sarah:

The but nobody wears red gowns.

Mark:

I guess. It's weird.

Sarah:

Yeah. I'm not sure.

Mark:

Back at the school, Barnaby has a great diplomat joke.

Sarah:

They're they're fancy diplomatic people who go to that school.

Mark:

And, Barnaby's, yeah, like, really diplomatic, I guess.

Sarah:

I guess. Because Anthony Anthony Talbot is so rude.

Mark:

There's, like, some tackling and on the track and off the track and all sorts of weird stuff and ends up that Daniel goes into the forest to find a stump.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because what he really wants to do is run away. He's going after his hold all, which we have a call a duffel bag

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

To take off.

Mark:

But spoon man is there. We don't know what spoon man at this point in time. Because Daniel goes, what the hell are you doing here?

Sarah:

It's Ludlow.

Mark:

Yep. The porter. Yep. With this death, right, we're like, we know something bad happens here. But then there's this weird cut to a taxi going through a puddle

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

By a Ford sign.

Sarah:

Well, it's a Ford because it's it's known that that part of the road floods.

Mark:

Yes. A

Sarah:

Ford sign is there.

Mark:

A Ford is a shallow place with good footing where the river or stream may be crossed by waiting or inside a vehicle getting its wheels wet. Essentially, it's a warning that your vehicle could get wet. If you see this sign, drive slowly, but appreciate how clean your wheels will be afterwards.

Sarah:

And Dennis Carter's station wagon, no problem going through that area. But Paul Starkey on his motorcycle, there's no way he's gonna go through it.

Mark:

He's gonna be so wet. It's not funny. Yeah. So then Daniel, who had been cramping. Right?

Mark:

They do

Sarah:

stitch in his side.

Mark:

He has stitch in his side and now running towards the school. Did you notice he's got no ball at this point too, or does he have the ball?

Sarah:

I don't you noticed the ball. I don't. I think you've got a block.

Mark:

Maybe I have ball blockage.

Sarah:

And I think he's got more to worry about since he's been stabbed, so maybe he dropped it.

Mark:

Yeah. I mostly, I would be screaming, help me. Help me. Not I'm gonna finish this race. And I know he's not gonna finish the race.

Mark:

Like, he's not running towards the school to finish the race, but I would think he was a would be in a little more panicky mode than slow mo fall down mode.

Sarah:

And if he fell down on the racetrack, the other runners would have found him quicker than it would have taken him to get to the school. Yeah. If he needed help. I don't think he would have died from that injury anyway. Yeah.

Sarah:

I don't think so.

Mark:

And we'll there's a good twenty minute portion of this episode where it's not referred to him actually being dead or not.

Sarah:

Yeah. When they initially start to question people, they they say that he's been he was attacked, he was stabbed, and then all of a sudden, everybody's talking about him in the past tense and you know that he actually did die.

Mark:

Yeah. There there's no clear like, there's no Saco scene with him dead or anything like that.

Sarah:

We don't really we don't see his dead body. We just see him collapse. And and then Barnaby clearly sees he's injured, but then feels the need to rub his hand around in the blood and hold

Mark:

it up. Can't you see he's injured? Can't you see? You should be screaming in ambulance.

Sarah:

And putting pressure on

Mark:

the wound instead of taking

Sarah:

your hand off of it to show how bloody it is. Yeah. Then maybe he's gonna rub it on his jacket like he did in the last episode.

Mark:

And the slow mo is really bad here. I don't know what they use to film this or if it's on film or video, but the slow mo is really choppy here. It's not as good as it could be. And the music is really weird. Yeah.

Mark:

Oh,

Sarah:

and it's this kind of panicky spinning camera. And the I think the whole point of having it in slow motion is to have the opportunity to show the reactions of the other people who are there in the same hairy legs?

Mark:

Because that's what I was like, woah. Hit that dude's Sasquatch.

Sarah:

He's got legs like Saint Swithin in forty days. But the the you you need to see Anthony say, oh, get up, boy. Come on. You can't win if you don't get up.

Mark:

Like Yeah.

Sarah:

You know, that's kind of insensitivity. And, you know, he is as obsessed with the school as Peter in the last episode with the Bells. Right? He's just single-minded.

Mark:

Now I know I'm a broken person. Do you know how I know I'm a broken person?

Sarah:

I I know all kinds of reasons why you're broken, but what about now?

Mark:

I have a note that says fourteen minutes in, three deaths. Nice.

Sarah:

Because Archie, Walter, and Daniel have all died.

Mark:

We're not messing around. Death right away. Two murders

Sarah:

and one natural death. Right? So let's talk about these buildings real quick because the where the race takes off, we're in this nice square with this big statue, and they they make a lot of the location.

Mark:

And not walking on the grass.

Sarah:

Yeah. Don't walk on the grass. So the girls annex, the Saint Maui's girls school, is shot at the Natural History Museum of Tring. Tring? That's what that building is.

Sarah:

What is Tring? It's it's a village.

Mark:

Oh. I think. Where do you live? Tring? Tring.

Mark:

Hello? Tring.

Sarah:

Hello? And the Tring. Tring. And Devington School, they used two different colleges for it. So when we're in that square where the race starts, that's at, Royal Holloway

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Which is part of the University of London, though it's not in London. Yeah. And so the race starts in the square in there, and that statue is of Thomas and Jane Holloway. Oh. So he he started the school.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

And he he got all of his money through patent medicine. Oh. You know, quackery medicine. Yeah. That's how he made all of his money.

Sarah:

Excellent. And built a school. And the other school that they use for mostly for interior shots of Devington is Bearwood College, which is now Redham House School. It's a great big estate that was then, it housed Canadian soldiers from 1914 to 1918.

Mark:

That's something that happened. Yeah.

Sarah:

Yeah. And after it was used to house Canadian soldiers, two businessmen bought it and turned it into a school, and it's been some sort of school ever since.

Mark:

Oh, okay.

Sarah:

Yeah. I just I love those buildings. They're just so incredible. I thought for sure they were places in Oxford or something.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

And they're in that style. They're gorgeous. But they aren't.

Mark:

Let's cut to the waffle. Cut the waffle. Sorry. I I just dislike Daniel's dad so much.

Sarah:

You're supposed to. Yeah. I really like when Ludlow attacks him and his hair gets messed up.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

I just wanna noogie him the whole episode, and I hate that he has that ducktail in back where his hair flips up.

Mark:

He's so Charles without being Charles.

Sarah:

Yeah. He looks like prince Charles so much.

Mark:

And he's at no time for town and everything for gown. Yep. The obs in the village threw missiles. I thought those were beer cans, not

Sarah:

missiles. Missiles.

Mark:

Missiles. So he says a couple of interesting things because, like, once he starts to talk, I'm, like, completely bored with him already. He says that Daniel has won colors for cricket. We know what cricket is. Dead man's 11.

Mark:

Ruggers, we know from other places it's rugby, and fives. And I was like, what the heck is fives? Fives is a weird game.

Sarah:

What is it?

Mark:

It's played with two or four players in a court enclosed on three or four sides with a hard ball being struck with the hand usually protected by a glove. And so it's handball? It's handball. But the reason why it's in these kind of alcoves is it was originally played against the sides of churches, and the buttresses acted as the sides of the court.

Sarah:

Oh, well, no windows would have been broken that way.

Mark:

Yes. And it's called fives.

Sarah:

They Even though it has two to four players.

Mark:

Well, I was at first, I was like, but there's two to four players. I watched a whole video on fives.

Sarah:

Walls, two to four players. Where does the five come in?

Mark:

I I watched the whole video on fives. And even some of the last championship of fives, it's a very big college game

Sarah:

Okay.

Mark:

As you can imagine. It's called fives because you got five fingers in a hand. So that's why it's called five.

Sarah:

So if you've lost a finger, do you get

Mark:

do you get to play? Fours.

Sarah:

You have to play fours.

Mark:

Poor dick is only playing twos. Yeah.

Sarah:

So let's talk about Eckersley Hyde.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

So he's the headmaster of Devington School, an old boy.

Mark:

Yes. I

Sarah:

hate that old boy. Yeah. He's played by Desmond Barrett, who's also in they seek him here, which is a 2,007 episode of Midsomer.

Mark:

Yeah. We'll get there. We're pretty close to that.

Sarah:

And Desmond Barrett appears to be a genuinely awesome guy. Like, he's just all around very nice guy.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Even though he plays these kind of uppity, you know Come. Yeah. That's not what you say when somebody knocks on your door. Absolutely. His favorite thing to do I work in a private school,

Mark:

but it's very different.

Sarah:

It's very different. Yeah. He he's done a lot of Shakespeare, a lot of Shakespeare. But his favorite thing to do now in his older age is that he likes playing dames and pantomimes. Oh, excellent.

Sarah:

And there are some incredible pictures of him dressed up as dames. I mean, lipstick all over the place and bright blue eyeshadow.

Mark:

He has a fun time.

Sarah:

We'll we'll add a picture to the to the episode notes, but he seems to be having a really good time now playing these not so serious characters. He's fun.

Mark:

Spoon man tells Troy not to walk on the grass.

Sarah:

Because that's a thing in a lot of schools.

Mark:

And Marcus shows up and he knows everybody's name. I don't know how he knows everybody's name.

Sarah:

Because he's he's an insider. I guess. Right? So he knows everybody.

Mark:

And he it's tells Barnaby and Charlie Mahal. He meets with with the headmaster and goes through the history of the pudding club. There's a scholarship. They get to wear these special silver spoon cufflinks. Get it silver spoons with the spoons.

Mark:

They're silver.

Sarah:

Get it. Like a silver spoon in your mouth?

Mark:

Yes. Get it.

Sarah:

Get not a plate.

Mark:

Get it. But no no plate. And then the headmaster takes Burnaby to Daniel's room, and I'm off.

Sarah:

Personal hygiene in the adolescent male are rarely on speaking terms. Which I think is his best line. Teenage boys are stinky.

Mark:

So the following things can be found in Daniel's room.

Sarah:

And and I'm gonna pause you just for a second to give you props because for once, I think the analysis of these rooms is actually interesting because the set dressers did a lot of purposeful things in Arabella's room, in Daniel's room, in Marcus' room, and in Charlie's room Yeah. To say things about how they are different from Absolutely.

Mark:

They they the set dressers did an amazing job

Sarah:

except for once. We'll get there. Hold on. There's a really good one. Okay.

Mark:

So there's a a picture of a nun with a grandfather clock and a curved bowl. I couldn't find that picture anywhere. There's a picture of the seaside. There's a picture of an f one car crashing. He has his schedule up, a picture of Pisa with students in front of it.

Mark:

I'm assuming a trip that they went on. Picture of a surfier. There's some trophies, a violin case, a lava lamp, a boomerang, a PS one. There were no games. It's unplugged.

Mark:

And I I heart you card.

Sarah:

And very neat drawers.

Mark:

Yes. Oh, and there's a picture of, Bart Bart Simpson. They use cartoons to show character traits.

Sarah:

Yes. Because doesn't somebody else have a Homer Simpson poster?

Mark:

No. It's not Homer Simpson. I'll get to who it is.

Sarah:

Oh, okay. So

Mark:

no. No. He has a Homer Simpson.

Sarah:

Yeah. With the brain. It's the one with the brain.

Mark:

Yeah. Yeah. He he Daniel likes the Simpsons. Somebody else likes South Park, the naughty boy. Fire and b finds the dirty bag and it has a toothpaste and a razor.

Mark:

And the biggest absolute problem with this is Daniel shaves.

Sarah:

Well, he is 25.

Mark:

I don't know about that.

Sarah:

He's 23.

Mark:

Walk. I love it. This episode does such a great job that in the background and all the scenes at the school, there are teachers yelling, get off the quad. No walking on the grass. There's all this stuff in the background.

Sarah:

Boy, stop running.

Mark:

Yep. Get the plan. All this stuff in the background, which is great. So they go to Charlie's room, and all I wanna do is fix his collar, first of all. Yeah.

Mark:

I'm like, oh, dude. And this is a very different room. So he has the following things in his room. The babes of the week. He has several scantily clad women.

Sarah:

There's lot of bikini bikini babes.

Mark:

And he has not one, but two m and m posters. And some He's a bad boy.

Sarah:

Alcohol related images. There's a Heineken bottle picture. Bottle. Just a picture of a Heineken bottle.

Mark:

Yep. His room's messy. It's got a Mac computer and a keyboard in the background because we all know those music types. He also has a Diet Coke that he's drinking and a poster that says gangster number one. I don't know what that's related to.

Mark:

And then he has mister Hanky from South Park. Yeah. So, you know, Simpsons, good boy. South Park, bad boy.

Sarah:

Oh, is that it? Yeah. The Simpsons are classy.

Mark:

I guess so.

Sarah:

Oh, okay. I don't know how that works.

Mark:

I know I'm drinking this Diet Coke, but I want a Fanta now.

Sarah:

It's an old Coke. Yeah. The label's half peeled off. There's nothing left.

Mark:

The whole place is full of psychos and weirdos.

Sarah:

Except I wanna be one of them real bad.

Mark:

Yeah. That's clearly obvious. Troy is eating up some sausages. Don't run-in the corner, boy.

Sarah:

Yeah. Missus Bosworth, who works in the kitchen, is feeding him. Did you recognize her from anywhere?

Mark:

No. But I liked her instantly.

Sarah:

The actress's name is Paula Jacobs, and she plays missus Kessler. You recognize that character?

Mark:

Dean Kessler from Animal House. No.

Sarah:

No. Okay. She's somebody's mother.

Mark:

No. I don't know.

Sarah:

American werewolf in London.

Mark:

Oh, the

Sarah:

She's the werewolf's mother. That's right.

Mark:

That's right. Yes. Oh, I love me some American werewolf.

Sarah:

As soon as I saw her, I'm like, where do I know her from? I know her. I can see her much younger.

Mark:

Except for Griffin Dunn and the other lead in American werewolf in London, I believe everybody else in that movie has been in Midsomer.

Sarah:

That may be true. We'll have to do some comparisons. We'll have to. Yeah. But that's where that's where I knew missus Bosworth from.

Sarah:

She's so sweet.

Mark:

She makes good sausages. That has lobster. Lobster. She'll feed Troy anytime. Did you get a kinda not motherly vibe off that?

Mark:

No. Was kind

Sarah:

of a motherly vibe. Okay. You come here and I'll feed you anytime. Okay. I thought.

Mark:

They go to see Dennis Carter, which is across from deadly crew's house.

Sarah:

Dennis Carter and his infinite cab. It's a Tardis cab.

Mark:

I have an entire paragraph in my note going, why is the time so wrong?

Sarah:

You're so upset about the time even though you shouldn't be. Stupid. Yeah. So he has a little station wagon that apparently in the evenings, he uses to drive some kids from Devington School to the chalk and gown so they can go drink in the upstairs room. And when they clear that room out later in the episode, there's, like, 30 kids in there.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Like, do they all fit in that station wagon?

Mark:

And as he as Dennis is about to give up Paul Starkey on second watching, we found a mistake

Sarah:

Oh. In the Midsomer episode. In the Carter house. Yes. So and Tom is sitting at the table with Dennis.

Sarah:

Dennis is having some tea. And right as and then Julia, his daughter, comes home. Julia is the one who Daniel had a thing with.

Mark:

And Dennis gets up.

Sarah:

Yes. And behind Julia, there is a handwritten sign on a piece of poster board.

Mark:

Which says, this is a dressed set. Please keep out.

Sarah:

A dress set, meaning that the set dressers had set that room up for that shot and didn't want anybody to come in and move anything. They forgot the whole side.

Mark:

That's the first real gaffe

Sarah:

we should include a time stamp for folks so they can go right to that point in the episode and see that sign.

Mark:

Put it in the in the episode notes, the time stamp.

Sarah:

It just says my notes just say, oops. You're right, though. As closely as we watch this, the fact that we've never seen anything so overt other than the credit card Yes. With the the production assistant's personal information on it. I think this dress set sign is about the closest thing to a production gaffe that we've seen.

Mark:

Are you the police? Yes, Dudley. We're the police. Dudley crew. So they go to Dudley's house, which is just another amazing like, I I wanna find these people who do the set production.

Mark:

It's just brilliant. They do such a good job.

Sarah:

Yeah. The crates and crates, they must have carried into there of old newspapers, old reports, old books, box files, just the stuff. Now here's a question for you guys

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

As you're listening

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

That Mark and I could not figure out. In Dudley Carroux's house, in the main room where they speak to him, the room that has all the papers and box files and craziness, in the center of that room is a desk where he sits and goes through his stuff. And on the corner of that desk is a sagey green colored machine. With a crank. With a crank.

Sarah:

It's like two big cylinders and a crank. We think it is like a binding machine, like to put a spiral binding into a set of papers. Like, it might punch the holes and then screw a a metal

Mark:

Yeah. I have one of these in

Sarah:

into it. Yeah. But I'm not sure that that's what it is. Yeah. And I'd like to know if anybody else recognize it and if they can confirm that that's what it is or tell us what it actually is if it's not.

Mark:

I have a number of antique audio visual and office equipment things in this room.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

And I don't know what that is, and I wanna know what it is pretty badly.

Sarah:

Yeah. So it's on the corner of Deadly's desk. Yep. So hopefully, somebody will take a look and tell us what it is.

Mark:

Also on his desk is the conspiracy gazette.

Sarah:

You wanna subscribe to that, don't you? Real bad.

Mark:

If it was real. About crop circles. That's the cover story. It's issue 49 volume two.

Sarah:

Don't you think that by now they would have covered crop circles?

Mark:

It's only two fifty. Well, know,

Sarah:

Oswald was at Dovington School before he killed JFK.

Mark:

Well, yeah, Dudley writes an up an issue a story called the royal family are working for the Kremlin. Now, you know I watched this show a little too closely. I read the whole article. It's fantastic. It's written completely seriously.

Sarah:

They wrote the whole it's not like Lorem Ipsom.

Mark:

No. They wrote the whole article. Now the second article under that is called in search of mysteries. So they kinda dropped the ball there. But I think they even dropped the ball even more because that crop circle title page, it should have had Lloyd's name on it.

Sarah:

Yeah. That would have been great.

Mark:

That would have been just

Sarah:

It would have been even better if it had a a butt up body laying in the middle

Mark:

of it. Yep. If they had done that,

Sarah:

that You're right. Lloyd should have written that article.

Mark:

Yep. Lloyd should have written it. That would have been his his final piece.

Sarah:

Or they could have had, yeah, they could have had an honor of Lloyd.

Mark:

That would have been brilliant. That would have just been fantastic. Yeah. I was hoping. They picked it up and said crop circles.

Mark:

I'm like, Lloyd. Poor

Sarah:

Lloyd.

Mark:

Did you touch anything? You went to the school? Look at the school, not the village.

Sarah:

I'm a lying influence on the twentieth century.

Mark:

Okay. Crazy man.

Sarah:

He's not wrong.

Mark:

No. He's not. That's the best part is everything he says is right. Except The Oswald thing.

Sarah:

Yeah. I mean,

Mark:

he is former JFK conspiracist, I know that Oswald was not there.

Sarah:

You know where he was instead. Well, and he didn't write an article about how the royals are actually lizard people. No. Right?

Mark:

Well, that's

Sarah:

I mean, that would be crazy. No. The fact that they're working for the Kremlin.

Mark:

That's Anthony who's the lizard person. That's true. Oh, hi, cook. At the cap and chalk and gown, I guess we'll take lobster off the menu.

Sarah:

Yeah. That's real subtle, isn't it? Like, gee, you think that the pub in town gets food from the school? Yeah. Lobster and mayonnaise.

Mark:

Barnaby gets a scotch. Troy gets an orange juice.

Sarah:

That's what they do. Yeah. Because Troy's gotta drive, and god knows he doesn't need to drink and drive. He's bad enough as he is.

Mark:

Yes. Please remove your muddy boots is on a sign in the back.

Sarah:

Oh, that makes sense. Yep. In a country pub.

Mark:

We should have an all vehicle weight alert for this guy. Oh, wait. Here he is when they fall in Paul Starkey there.

Sarah:

Yeah. And he just shows up. Right?

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Because, you know, he's a bad kid. He wears leather and drives a motorcycle.

Mark:

Smoke cigarettes. Regents. That also does not have an apostrophe.

Sarah:

Okay. So I know what happened to you. Okay. Once you realized that you were wrong about the time, you decided to vent all that anger at apostrophes. Is that it?

Mark:

So

Sarah:

Can I talk about hats? Sure. Because we kinda skipped over it when I wanted to talk about it. Now I'm not sure where a good good place to talk about it is because one of the things that just kept kind of niggling around in my brain while I'm watching it is that the the kids who go to Davington, of course, they wear a uniform.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

The super fancy kids wear tails.

Mark:

Yes. Right? With their spoon

Sarah:

Cufflinks. Cufflinks. I think there's something to be said about colors of bow ties. The the pudding club seem to wear white bow ties.

Mark:

And waistcoats. There's something going on with that too.

Sarah:

Color of the waistcoats, but they all carry straw boaters.

Mark:

Even the bad kid has one in his room.

Sarah:

Yeah. And they I I don't see people wearing them. They're carrying them.

Mark:

Well, that's what you do with your straw boater.

Sarah:

So it's like you're required to have it, but not required to wear it.

Mark:

Put your straw boater on.

Sarah:

Which I was surprised by because you think when they were outside, they would have had them on.

Mark:

Yeah. You would think. So I

Sarah:

went down that rabbit hole because I wanted to know what's the deal with the boaters. Yep. And they're kind of a British hat anyway. So they are common summer uniform hats.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

And schools all over The UK include boaters as part of their uniform. Okay. But only posh schools.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

And here's why. Straw boaters are hard to keep on.

Mark:

Oh, why are they hard to keep on?

Sarah:

Because they're very shallow.

Mark:

Okay. Yeah.

Sarah:

They don't really sit on your head.

Mark:

No. I see that. So if you have a small head and you're rich

Sarah:

If you don't have to do much. Oh. It's easy to keep them on.

Mark:

That's that makes sense.

Sarah:

Now if this happened at Devington in the fall or the winter, they may all be carrying top hats.

Mark:

Oh, they wear tops?

Sarah:

Yeah. Wow. Because that's the a beaver skin top hat is the cold weather.

Mark:

Like Sherlock. Yeah. But Sherlock never wore a boater.

Sarah:

Not no. Not not a flat hat with flaps.

Mark:

No. No. Not that. In the books and the at least one of the shows, Sherlock, for the great majority of the books and the shows, wears a top hat. He doesn't wear a crazy coonskin deerstalker.

Sarah:

Yeah. Missus Hudson brushes it clean for him. Yeah. Right? Because it's actually fur.

Sarah:

It's very short fur, but it's fur. It's beaver fur. Yeah. So that would have been their other uniform hat.

Mark:

And,

Sarah:

still at Eaton, Cambridge, and Harrow, a boater is part of the official uniform. Wow. That doesn't mean that people wear them or carry them around.

Mark:

They can't be actually made of straw. They are.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah. It's it's braided straw like you would make a a seat out of.

Mark:

Oh.

Sarah:

Like a woven chair seat. It's like that.

Mark:

I wonder how much one of those

Sarah:

would cost. It's braided and then it's stitched together. It's like you braid it into like a flat ribbon

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

And then you stitch it into the shape of a hat. They're pricey.

Mark:

Now my gigantic noggin could never fit one.

Sarah:

It would just sit on top of your head. That's what they do. But I think that's why you see most of them carrying them because it's a pain in the butt to wear it because it doesn't stay on your head unless you have a ribbon on it. Now can you imagine all these boys running around in hats with ribbons tied into their chins to keep their hats on?

Mark:

No.

Sarah:

That's another reason why they're good for boating because if they blow off and they get wet, you can dry them out. So it it's okay.

Mark:

That's good. So at the school that night, we have a kidnapping.

Sarah:

Yeah. Basically.

Mark:

They go and get Charlie, Chaz, down his room, and he's just sitting there reading. I don't know what he's reading, but and they take him up to the pudding club and make him a member.

Sarah:

Well, they're about to, and then Anthony comes charging in.

Mark:

Ra Ra Ra Ra Ra Ra.

Sarah:

Excuse me while I be a boss around here.

Mark:

Boss. Boss. Boss. Yeah. Stop running in the hole.

Sarah:

And then, you know, Tom and and Troy are interrogating Paul who does such a perfect job of I don't care. I'm not saying anything.

Mark:

I'm not guilty, but I'm gonna act like it.

Sarah:

Didn't do anything. Yeah. But who I really like is his attorney.

Mark:

Who says nothing is gets no credit, not even lawyer.

Sarah:

But works his face really hard.

Mark:

Yep. Works Super hard.

Sarah:

He reacts to everything that said.

Mark:

Like a mimey clown sometimes.

Sarah:

Like, I got this nonspeaking part, but I really want somebody to notice me, so I'm gonna really act over here. I make a face.

Mark:

So the next day in the headmaster's office, he's talking to Anthony. And, again, these are two characters I don't really like all that much, so I'm concentrating on the paper. Yeah. The costume echo, which has the same border, the costume is pretty standard.

Sarah:

Mhmm. It's consistent.

Mark:

The headline is a little weird.

Sarah:

What is it?

Mark:

It took me a while to get it all, but it says, evacuees tales of life in the county.

Sarah:

Evacuees from where? I do not know. So these are immigrants? I guess so. Who've been relocated to Midsomer?

Sarah:

I guess. Okay. That's bad.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Like, if you get evacuated from a war zone and they put you in Midsomer, you're probably just as likely to die. Exactly. Don't relocate me there. That's where everybody gets killed. Let those office, he has the giant spoon.

Mark:

So the story about Archie is in the paper. Archie? Who's Archie? Oh, oh, wait. The guy from the beginning.

Sarah:

Yes. The guy from the beginning who's a diplomat. Of course.

Mark:

Of course, he

Sarah:

is. He's a very fancy diplomat. We get to see Ludlow's office with his giant spoon rack. Yes. A spoon race.

Sarah:

So his his porter's lodge, in every show I've ever seen that has a porter at some kind of public university, especially.

Mark:

He's got a bowler, first of all.

Sarah:

Porter always has a bowler. He's always impeccably polite to everybody, very helpful. But they usually have a little room that looks out onto Like the alcove that everybody comes in. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah:

The entrance to whatever interior space there is to the school. But Ludlow's office, though he does have a little counter, it seems to be inside the building

Mark:

Yeah. It's weird.

Sarah:

Somehow. But it was difficult to kind of figure out where where he is, but he he he can show up at any time.

Mark:

His plus five mace of screwiness.

Sarah:

He is everywhere. Yeah. Silently appearing all the time.

Mark:

Marcus gives some information at the Talbins' home about Annabella and Arabella and Paul Mhmm. And Daniel. And it's all lies. Every little bit of this is lies.

Sarah:

Yeah. He would cover in for everybody, especially himself.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Right?

Mark:

And Andrew goes Anthony goes, I hope you're not one of these chip on the shoulder types. And Barnaby goes, nope. I'm a let's do the proper job properly types.

Sarah:

And, again, just slap them. Just once. Just Anthony just needs a little slap.

Mark:

So then we meet Arabella, and I'm like, oh, Bletchley Park.

Sarah:

Bletchley Park and everything else. Yeah. Arabella, Anna Maxwell Martin. Not only is she in Bletchley Circle is the name of the show. Yeah.

Sarah:

She's also in Death Comes to Pemberley Yep. Which, there's two of those. They're Masterpiece Theater productions, but they're also really good books Yes. Where she plays Elizabeth Darcy. Yes.

Sarah:

But they're after the books. Right? She's also Merrily Watkins in Midwinter of the Spirit, which is a miniseries based on a series of books by Phil Rickman where she plays a vicar. She's a widowed vicar.

Mark:

Oh, that's right.

Sarah:

And there's kinda supernatural stuff.

Mark:

That's right. I forgot about that.

Sarah:

Books are all super good. Yep. But the most recent thing we saw her in was Good Omens. She plays Beelzebubb

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

In Good Omens.

Mark:

That's quite a range that she's got.

Sarah:

Yeah. She's got the flies. Oh, she's really nasty.

Mark:

Because she's kinda mousy in Bletchley Circle.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well, because she looks like a little girl.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Right? So she's very good at playing those kind of, you know, underestimated people. And the same thing is true of the Marilyn Watkins role too. She's this kind of quiet, reserved vicar, and then she's fighting evil and doing exorcisms and stuff. So

Mark:

He's gross and from the village. She does posh really well.

Sarah:

Yeah. Which basically mean the same thing. Right? Yeah. To these folks anyway.

Sarah:

If you're from the village, you must be gross.

Mark:

Chaz is now in the pudding club. Yeah. And he's a completely different kid and lies to Barnaby's face. How you get Barnaby mad is be posh and lie to his face.

Sarah:

Yeah. If you obstruct Yeah. What he's trying to do for stupid reasons, he's gonna get really angry.

Mark:

Barnaby who looks at Arabella's French notes, which are in French. I did look Mhmm. And do look like French notes.

Sarah:

Written by a high school girl. Yep. Big bubbly heat.

Mark:

Right? Notices that the handwriting is different than the iHeart Daniel card.

Sarah:

Yeah. Because the card in Daniel's room was actually written by Julia. Yeah. Julia Carter, who's played by Victoria Chalet. She's not an actress anymore.

Sarah:

She's now a psychotherapist and a counselor.

Mark:

Oh, that's good.

Sarah:

She quit acting about ten years ago.

Mark:

Oh, okay. Well, I hope she helps people. Yeah. And they go have a word with Dennis. And they sit in his car, and all I can think of is, dude, that hair is coming right out of your nose.

Mark:

It is gigantic. Like, I'm like, plot, plot, plot, whatever. Daniel, you need to Dennis. Dennis, you need to clip those nose hairs.

Sarah:

And then somebody breaks into Dudley's.

Mark:

Well, before that is when Marcus puts the cigarette in the pie Yeah. Which I'm not really sure why he does that. Because he's angry. He's angry. But

Sarah:

Yeah. Because he see Troy he sees Troy talking to Dave Lynch, and he knows that it's it's all out.

Mark:

And I think I it's just annoying. It's just annoying.

Sarah:

It's just a blame thing to do. Yeah. And Anthony says he's a feckless oik.

Mark:

Yeah. Barnaby goes to Dudley's house and meets Julia there, and she just spills the beans about everything.

Sarah:

She was in love with Daniel. They were gonna run away together. Yep. She was waiting at the Boston bus station, and he didn't show up. And then she finds out he's dead.

Sarah:

That's sad. Yeah. They're like Romeo and Juliet.

Mark:

Except I

Sarah:

mean, they're Their relationship is like that. They're not supposed to be together. Yeah. But they were gonna run away. And then the best murder of the episode.

Sarah:

Oh, Dudley.

Mark:

I'm like, oh, he is a pretty lamp.

Sarah:

He's played by Patrick Godfrey, who has a long, long history of acting. But, wow, you've gotta be a really good actor to be drugged down a set of stairs on your face.

Mark:

Yep. And leave a blood trail behind.

Sarah:

And he does it. But it gets better.

Mark:

Because we find out in the next morning. Yeah. He's on the cricket pitch, And Barnaby says, smothered by a meat pudding, flattened by a roller, and bashed in the head. Not necessarily in that order, which is a joke.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

Okay? Barnaby tells a joke. And then Troy says, oh, not accidental then. And Barnaby's like, this is no time for jokes, except for the one that I just told. But Dudley is a great dead body Yeah.

Mark:

Underneath that ruler. He is in the ground.

Sarah:

What struck me is that as fancy as Devington is and as important as cricket is, they have the crappiest cricket score sign ever.

Mark:

Yeah. Like, you would expect it to be like a jumbotron or something.

Sarah:

Or like the one in dead man's 11, like little nicer. Little hut Yeah. Thing. No. This is like a sign that somebody's drawn on with marker 50,000,000 years ago.

Sarah:

It's all faded and nasty and yeah.

Mark:

So they cut a hole in the ground and put grass over top of it and then put Dudley in the grass in the ground.

Sarah:

Yeah. I mean, the the roller that you see near him isn't the roller of the machine. No. That's a fake roller. Yeah.

Sarah:

But he is in a hole in the ground. Yeah. They did With a pudding stuck in his mouth.

Mark:

Dead body acting supreme.

Sarah:

The first time they showed his face dead, I thought, did they put, like, a weird prosthetic chin on him or

Mark:

something? No. That's a pie.

Sarah:

No. It's a pudding crammed into his face. But, wow, he's real dead. Yeah. Real, real dead.

Mark:

And, Barnaby figures out that Daniel didn't have his black armband on. So now after all the guys with white sticks have been all over this forest, Troy and Barnaby go there for five minutes and find out everything.

Sarah:

Because the white stick brigade did not go to the place where the trunk is.

Mark:

But why Newton go everywhere?

Sarah:

They should've. Yeah. Because Ludlow had been waiting there.

Mark:

He finds a toothbrush. That toothbrush is nasty.

Sarah:

Well, it's been in the trunk of a tree. I doubt that's how Daniel wanted it to to look. I doubt he would have used it like that, but it fell out of his hold all.

Mark:

There's another newspaper article about missing diplomat questions in the house. But more importantly, above that, there's a picture of a kid in a poultry truck. And another great headline underneath, it says web info and technology.

Sarah:

Yeah. Then we get the scene at the pub with all the kids upstairs Yeah. Having their drinking and singing and all that stuff.

Mark:

Charlie bites into that pie. It's just gross. And Arabella has her hands all over him. It's just all skanky, skanky, gross.

Sarah:

It's just the scene before my favorite scene. That's all it is. It doesn't matter what happens in that scene because the next scene is the swimming scene.

Mark:

My god. At what point in the meetings for this show did they go, and now we're gonna switch to a horror

Sarah:

movie? Bobbing dead diplomats.

Mark:

So boys go running out of Debington. They have towels. Yeah. They're blue towels. And they go to a pond somewhere, and they're supposed to swim across this pond.

Mark:

Mhmm. But the coach gives them a ball.

Sarah:

Yeah. He clearly wants him to play, though. Then he says, no. No. Don't play around.

Sarah:

I wanna see swimming.

Mark:

Then it looks like he's gonna go through their bags. Like, he's going through a bag.

Sarah:

It's his bag. It has his talent.

Mark:

I know. You don't but the way he picks it up at first, you think it's not his bag. That doesn't matter. Oh, but what matters is Archie.

Sarah:

What matters is that Archie comes bobbing up out of the water looking like a zombie, and it's awesome.

Mark:

Fantastic. Like, he bobs up to his waist out of the water.

Sarah:

Yeah. He does. So it must not be very deep. No. Right?

Sarah:

So they make this actor up. They put all the gelatin all over him because that's what they use to make him look slimy. Right? They've got a rope tied around him to make it look like he's been bound up. Yep.

Sarah:

And then the kid is like, oh, I can't swim. I'm splashing around. Whatever. And then Archie crouching under the water looking like a zombie, he closes his eyes and just goes boo up out of the water.

Mark:

My notes are, I can't swim. Oh, no. I'm drowning. Then Archie will save you.

Sarah:

He's not a very good floaty. No. He's not. Well, maybe he is now. I just kept thinking brains.

Sarah:

I wanted him to come back and bite that kid. Roy

Mark:

is not up for this dead body.

Sarah:

He's like, Tom's looking at it into the tarp. He's like, look at that wound. Look at all that festering crap. Oh, there's maggots in there. Look at that slimy skin just sloughing off.

Sarah:

And Troy's like, I don't wanna look at any of that.

Mark:

And Marcus is missing. Oh, wait a minute. He's in an Arabella's room. Yeah. Big surprise.

Sarah:

That's the first place I would look.

Mark:

The it is like the worst. Oh, Marcus is a missing thing. And then Marcus just gives everything up.

Sarah:

All of these kids have well, everybody in this episode except Tom and Troy have rooms that are so outsized. Eckersley Hyde's office

Mark:

It's gigantic. Humongous. It's bigger than our dining room.

Sarah:

And it's bigger than our master bathroom, which is ginormous.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

It's weird big. But Arabella's room, I mean, it is the perfect teenage girl's room. They did a really good job. Yep. But it's huge.

Sarah:

It's gigantic. And none of these kids have a roommate they have to share with either.

Mark:

Yes. And they have no parents. Just great big rooms.

Sarah:

Yeah. Well, I imagine the Haywood parents are probably, you know, off circling the world or doing diplomatic service somewhere fancy or whatever.

Mark:

So Marcus gives up Ludlow here, and it all slips into place. Yeah. And they go to find Ludlow in his rooms, and they find the clock that set off the bell.

Sarah:

They find that there's a timer on that clock. Yeah.

Mark:

Meanwhile, everybody else is looking at the wall and saying, the spoon mace is gone.

Sarah:

There's an outline of the spoon.

Mark:

And where is Ludlow? Oh, he's gonna take care

Sarah:

of Anthony. Marching across the countryside like the Terminator with his spoon. He's the spoon inator. I just see, like, if there was a barn in his way, he would just go in one side and out the other side. Yep.

Sarah:

There's a stone wall. Boom. Right through it. There's a Ludlow shaped hole in it and a little spoon cut out

Mark:

next to it. Spoon inator. Yeah.

Sarah:

Just walks over cows and goes, you know, straight line right into their house. They

Mark:

know Ludlow's involved.

Sarah:

Yeah. Ludlow and Eckersley, what's it? So Are the bad guys.

Mark:

Let's go look at the pudding room. Yeah. Okay. Why not go look for Ludlow?

Sarah:

Because they haven't been in the pudding room yet?

Mark:

Well, they find out the pudding room secrets in about two seconds, which I'm like, wouldn't everybody find these out in two seconds?

Sarah:

Especially if you leave your white glove half way underneath the hidden door.

Mark:

Did you notice he had the white gloves on when he was stomping across the

Sarah:

He's got more than one pair.

Mark:

I guess he does.

Sarah:

Lou. And then they find the Pier one stockroom

Mark:

Yes. Back there. With Indiana Jones going, all of this belongs in a museum.

Sarah:

Yes. The so the pudding room has no electric lights. It's just candlelight. But when they open up the secret room, there are already candles burning in there.

Mark:

Yeah. Somebody was in there already.

Sarah:

Eckersley Hyde comes in after them.

Mark:

Oh, I know. Somebody slipped out.

Sarah:

They just leave the candles burning there all the time. But there's also that weird green ambient light in there.

Mark:

Yeah. It's strange.

Sarah:

There must be, like, a giant emerald in a case over there or something, you know, or or, like, nuclear, you know, atomic green nuclear stuff in a tube

Mark:

or something. Like, the the thing about this episode that just doesn't age well is this is so colonialism, and they just think of it as, well, that's what we should do.

Sarah:

We just smuggle rare artifacts.

Mark:

We're helping. We're helping them.

Sarah:

And Eckersley Hyde says they have ivories from Afghanistan.

Mark:

Oh my gosh. You were so uncensed by that.

Sarah:

Like, from what? Who? Like, what kind of animal in Afghanistan has ivory?

Mark:

But we we found out that they're actually rare ornamental ivories. They're like plaques. Yeah.

Sarah:

Like, inlaid ivory things. And they are elephant ivory, but there are no elephants in Afghanistan anymore. And the ivory didn't come from Afghanistan, but they're ancient. They're ancient. Yeah.

Sarah:

There's no way anybody would have one of those, by the way. No. That's like saying we have one of the pyramids. Yes. We know how many they are, and we know where they are.

Sarah:

Yeah. Oh, we have one of the Elgin marbles. Yeah. No. You don't.

Sarah:

No.

Mark:

And then, like, Eckersley, what's his name is like, oh, well. Well, I sent Ludlow to clean up this mess.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Like, just nonchalantly, like, I had him kill a bunch of people.

Sarah:

Because no one human is as important as Devington School.

Mark:

And the pudding club, especially. Yes. The pudding treasure. Ludlow, the spoon inator, is going across the field.

Sarah:

And this is where Miranda really shines because she's like, oh, come in. Oh, you're gonna go kill him? Okay. I'll wait out here. Oh, can I listen?

Mark:

What is their plan here? Yeah. Because even though she doesn't like him, she would say, he did it.

Sarah:

Uh-huh. And when they find Anthony with the spoon shaped injuries, they I think they might know what happened.

Mark:

Was she gonna get spooninated after him?

Sarah:

Maybe. I guess. You can't stop Ludlow.

Mark:

Anthony goes to use the phone, and it gets spooned. It gets spooned. Boom. And he he he punches him right in the face.

Sarah:

And then his hair gets messed up, and it's like, you go, love love.

Mark:

And then he's like, I'm gonna strangle you. Yep. Okay. This is a great thing about Midsomer. This is a person who we've been hating all episode.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

And now he's being murdered. And we're kinda like, go, Ludlow. But

Sarah:

Ludlow's insane. He is. He's crazy.

Mark:

For the sake of a club at a school, he's killing people.

Sarah:

I just wanted him to grab Anthony's hair and, like, pull his head back and shove the spoon down his throat.

Mark:

You will eat your supper.

Sarah:

I know because I wanted to be able to say, oh, gag me with a spoon. But he actually throws the spoon aside. He's like, I don't need this spoon. I'm gonna kill you in my bare hands.

Mark:

For telephone smashing.

Sarah:

The thing is is that Ludlow is a great guy. He's helpful. He's useful. He's always around. But when he's got on his white gloves, stay away from him.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

Because that's when he's in killer mode. Yeah. If he's got his white gloves on, stay away.

Mark:

It's it's just nuts.

Sarah:

Well, Troy's got on a shiny suit.

Mark:

So He does.

Sarah:

That suit at the end, the the suit that he's wearing in the closing credits is so shiny, you could see a reflection in it.

Mark:

And and they walk across the glass the

Sarah:

grass. And the subtitles

Mark:

Say, don't run-in the corner, boy.

Sarah:

Yeah. But it says Tom is saying that, and it says Troy is saying

Mark:

Why don't you in lessons, boy? Yeah.

Sarah:

It would be funnier if it was them yelling those things.

Mark:

It would be funnier.

Sarah:

But it's not.

Mark:

And then it's another sort of, oh, it's all wrapped up episodes.

Sarah:

Har har. Oh, well.

Mark:

You know who I feel bad for? Toby.

Sarah:

Toby? Yeah. Well, I don't think he's gonna be going there to go to school.

Mark:

He got mentioned, but he doesn't even appear in the episode.

Sarah:

All these kids are gonna be finding another school to go to. Yeah. Because Eckersley Hyde is going to jail too.

Mark:

So after the credits of this episode, Anthony, the headmaster, and Ludlow all have to go to jail.

Sarah:

I don't think Anthony's gonna go to jail.

Mark:

I think he's gonna go

Sarah:

to one of those guys who gets out gets out of it

Mark:

all the time.

Sarah:

I think he'll frame Eckersley, Hyde, and Ludlow for all of it, and they'll go to jail. Because Anthony didn't lift a finger to hurt anybody.

Mark:

So Yeah. But he stole all these things.

Sarah:

Yeah. But prove it. I just think he's the kind of person who gets away with it.

Mark:

I just have a scene of some two guys at a desk in Scotland Yard in a, like, a basement going, that's where everything is.

Sarah:

The art theft division is like, we can wrap up all of our cases. I I can kind of I get some satisfaction out of imagining the three of them in orange jumpsuits, though. Yes. Can you imagine Anthony in prison Yes. With his hair all messed up?

Mark:

And Edgar Lee, what's his name, speaking Latin in jail? And Ludlow in the

Sarah:

in the commissary going, this spoon's not big enough. It's not big enough. I need a big spoon.

Mark:

I want where's my big spoon?

Sarah:

Meanwhile, Miranda's, like, living on the Riviera or something. Very happy.

Mark:

With her her dead son's girlfriend.

Sarah:

Yeah. Julia, they can hang out together.

Mark:

They seem to hang out together.

Sarah:

So who's a better corpse? Dudley or Archie?

Mark:

It's really tough.

Sarah:

It is tough.

Mark:

I gotta say Dudley because the camera's on him more. Yeah. But But Archie is really good.

Sarah:

They're kinda tied in my head. Yeah. They're both really good.

Mark:

It's tough.

Sarah:

That school's not gonna be the same.

Mark:

No. I I would think the school would close. I

Sarah:

don't know. I think they'd bring somebody else in to run it.

Mark:

I just hope Chaz gets beat up and Marcus gets beat up.

Sarah:

Charlie and Marcus? Yeah. I

Mark:

I think The gets will find them.

Sarah:

I think Marcus has his own problems. He doesn't need yobs.

Mark:

The yobs will find them. And it turned out to be really nice guys and date Arabella.

Sarah:

You guys have gotta look for that sign in Dennis' house. Yeah. So awesome.

Mark:

I'll put it in the show notes.

Sarah:

We'll put a time stamp in there for you. We'll give you a picture of Eckersley Hyde dressed as a dame in a pantomime.

Mark:

And a few other things. Thank you once again for listening. We're this is '23

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

I think. '24 will be a talent for life. And I gotta tell you, the first twenty minutes of the episode is spectacular.

Sarah:

Yeah. Is this the is season six the last Troy season?

Mark:

I think season six is the last Troy season. This is the episode with Honor Blackman in it, and she is fantastic.

Sarah:

Yep. She is.

Mark:

This notion that she said, I'm the murderer or I get killed in a gruesome way. One second. Absolutely.

Sarah:

We can do that. Ugh. This is a fun one, though. It's really fun. Yep.

Sarah:

Even without saint Swithin.

Mark:

It's gonna rain for forty days.

Sarah:

You're so silly. Remember to

Mark:

put in your apostrophes.

Sarah:

And don't get upset about time if you don't need to. Nope. Unlike Mark. Alright, folks. Hope you enjoyed it.

Sarah:

We did.

Mark:

Thank you, Maniacs. Thanks for listening. Remember that we are at Midsomer Maniacs on Twitter and and Instagram, and we're on the Facebook groups for Acorn and Midsomer Murders. And if you listen to us on iTunes or any of those other services, please rate and review us. It helps people find us in the future.

Mark:

I I can't tell you how many times I've made comments on Facebook posts, especially. I'm like, we just covered this in the podcast. And people are like, podcast? What podcast?

Sarah:

So next week, episode 24, lust for life.

Mark:

Talent for life.

Sarah:

Talent for life. Sorry. Lust for life is a completely different thing.

Mark:

That is a great car.

Sarah:

It's a good song. Yep. Yeah. Bye, Maniacs. Bye, Maniacs.

Sarah:

What is a parva?

Mark:

Oh, I know what parva means in Latin.

Sarah:

Okay.

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.