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Classic formulas done well always work and always will. A thousand years from now, when we're driving around in flying cars and sending our kids off to school on Mars, there will still be TV shows where a soft-spoken detective with an eye for detail will preside over a roomful of murder suspects, the most obvious of whom will, of course, be entirely innocent.
The Midsomer Murders series has been a tribute to the structural integrity and eternal appeal of the sturdy whodunit format, with John Nettles as Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby merely the latest in a long, long line of TV sleuths from Columbo to Morse to seek out justice from a pile of clues and red herrings. In a fitting finale to the series, Tom Barnaby has his Christmas interrupted when, in a suspicious accident, an old woman falls down a flight of stairs. A backstory of suicide, carnival magic and family members competing for a small inheritance deftly unfolds as he and his sidekick Scott (John Hopkins) investigates. All the hallmarks of your classic murder mystery are here: the big manor house; wood-panelled walls; hidden rooms; secret diaries; incriminating videotape; false leads; blatant foreshadowing that leads to the culprit's undoing; and that wonderful whodunit standard, the old switcheroo. May shows like Midsomer, and plods like Barnaby, live forever. Or at least until we have flying cars.
© The Age Company Ltd.
