‘I never get bored of the murders’
I was a huge fan of Midsomer Murders
before I took on the role of Barnaby –
and that hasn’t changed a bit. I was recently flicking through the TV channels at about 11pm when I stumbled upon an episode. It was an old one with
John Nettles as Barnaby, and I thought,
‘I’ll just watch five minutes.’ About an hour later, my wife came in and said, ‘What on earth are you doing watching Midsomer Murders again?’
I have to admit, I felt a lot of pressure
when I took over the role from John. I’d been given a job that someone else had done successfully for a long time and I hoped I wasn’t going to be the one who messed it all up. My first scene was in a mortuary with the late Barry Jackson, who played the pathologist, and I remember feeling like everyone was looking at me thinking, ‘So, who’s this old guy, then? Is he any good?’ Luckily, I held my nerve.
The biggest mistake
people make about
the show is believing
that an a little exceptionally Midsomer village – is with
high It’s actually crime rate! a county; we film all over Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire – and if you look
Neil Dudgeon, 58, plays DCI John Barnaby at 17 for I think the murders such numbers, it’s a quite big a year, area. a it safe works which Believe place out isn’t it to at or very live. around not, much I never get bored of the murders – they’re so creative, aren’t they? That’s probably why the show’s still going after 20 years. The new series starts with a monk being boiled to death in his own beer – yes, really! It turns out that a microbrewery is launching a new beer, but it’s not entirely welcomed by the local community and we don’t quite know why or exactly who is against it. You have to piece everything together – that’s the beauty of this show. I’ve had some challenging moments, too. A couple of series ago, one of the producers popped into my trailer and said, ‘By the way, how are you with heights?’ The answer was, ‘Not very good,’ but that didn’t change a thing. Shortly after, I found myself filming a scene on the edge of a cliff in 80mph winds. The winds were so strong that we actually had to be tied to a tree because there was a danger of being blown off. It was the longest filming day of my life.