Caution: Midsomer Murders has reached hokum overload
You don’t tune into Midsomer Murders (ITV1) expecting verité film-making, but even so The Blacktrees Prophecy, the opening episode of series 23, touched the very heights of hokum. I like to think that writer Jeff Povey knew exactly what he was doing – if you put aside silly stuff like plausibility and just went with it there was some fun to be had.
It helped that the episode began on a strong footing, with a murder vividly portrayed and a bad guy who was properly unnerving. Warren Kaine (Aran Bell) was the fearmongering head of a group of local doomsday preppers who’d built a bunker in the woods worthy of a spread in Living Etc. When he got a call on his shortwave radio saying that someone had pressed the nuclear button he rushed to the shelter, only to find that it wasn’t the end of the world at all. Except for him.
A mysterious figure in a hazchem suit and a gas mask had spiked the ventilation system and Warren soon suffocated. Although our faceless bad guy will have brought back fond memories of Walter White cooking meth in Breaking Bad to some, you can’t beat a good mask for creepiness, and it gave the rest of this Midsomer Murders a dash of the chills that it so often lacks.
Naturally, hazchem man (or was it
woman?) kept cropping up with bricks and crossbows and massive tins of cooked meat, bumping people off willy-nilly with admirable inventiveness. In perhaps my favourite Midsomer Murders murder of all time, one suspect was eliminated from DCI Barnaby’s (Neil Dudgeon) enquiries when he was sent flying into a tree by an exploding lifeboat (that, for some reason, was being stored in the middle of a forest). A lesson for us all there, though I’m not quite sure what it is.
Povey, as that fatal “life” boat suggests, did at least drag viewers through the seeming – no, actual – hours of exposition with a lubricative sense of irony. Yes, Midsomer Murders plods its way through soused peatbogs of plot at an infuriatingly slow pace, and, yes, two hours of it does feel a little bit like listening to Alexa reading you Proust.
But given that steady-as-she-goes carnage is Midsomer Murders’ whole modus, and it’s currently one of Britain’s few winning exports, it must be part of its appeal. I don’t get it; other, much better shows are available. But with that accepted, little gags like marrying a story about the coming apocalypse with the arrival of Barnaby’s mother-in-law at his house were welcome. Just enough spice to make the stodge palatable.
The question that hovers over any celebrity travelogue, no matter the celebrity or the destination, is why? For Zuhair “Big Zuu” Hassan – rapper, DJ and Bafta-winning celebrity chef – the reason given for doing the umrah, a pilgrimage to Mecca, was because he wanted to connect more deeply with his Muslim faith. But the timing of the umrah for Big Zuu Goes to Mecca (BBC Two) – you can do it whenever you like – suggests that there was an additional reason, which was that Bafta-winning celebrity chef Big Zuu was asked if he’d like to go to Mecca. And he thought that he would: indeed, he got to take his two best friends from his show, Big Zuu’s Big Eats, with him.
If that sounds cynical then questions of motivation are relevant because Zuu cast his pilgrimage as a spiritual awakening. He has, he said, not been a good Muslim, being partial to a drink and to smoking hash (both of which, the programme reminds us, are haram, or forbidden in Islam). It’s time for a change. But what’s brought it on? Zuu didn’t say.
The nagging sense that this is an idea proposed to a celebrity, rather than an idea proposed by a celebrity, didn’t spoil the show. Zuu is terrific value on camera. Whatever he does, he takes people with him, both literally and metaphorically. Moreover, his introduction to the rituals of the umrah were fascinating and his observance of Ramadan and what that entails is particularly relevant at this time of year.
But beneath it all there remains the question of why Zuu is making the pilgrimage now. The programme flailed about a bit in trying to offer an answer. Jokes were made about whether Zuu is now going to “get” a Muslim wife; we were assured that this was “the most incredible experience of my life”, but when it comes to articulating exactly what being taken to Mecca to make a documentary has given him he said: “I’ve learned that faith is an incredible thing. It goes up and down. There is no right answer… my intention is what matters.” And it’s still unclear what the intention was in Big Zuu going to Mecca.
Midsomer Murders ★★
Big Zuu Goes to Mecca ★★★