SCARE TACTICS
Death strikes a scarecrow festival as Midsomer Murders celebrates 25 years...
ITV’S Midsomer Murders has been entertaining fans with wickedly wonderful whodunnits since 1997. This week, the crime drama returns for a special episode to mark 25 years of the show, and the latest case is just as whimsical and darkly comic as ever...
Little Upton’s scarecrow festival takes a sinister turn when the dead body of Naomi Ashworth is found in the window of her vintage-goods emporium, posed like a scarecrow and padded with straw. DCI Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) and DS Winter (Nick Hendrix) are determined to collar the killer, but find themselves constantly playing catch-up with journalist Caitlin Dawson (Jessica Ellerby), who’s also Winter’s old flame.
Tv&satellite Week caught up with Hendrix, 37, to find out more…
WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THIS INVESTIGATION? It’s about a scarecrow festival, which is a very Midsomer-y concept. But there’s also a gambling narrative, and a vicar that wins the lottery, so there’s an interesting moral question about people in positions of religious authority winning lots of money and what they choose to do with it.
YOUR REAL-LIFE WIFE JESSICA
ELLERBY PLAYS WINTER’S EX, CAITLIN. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? The story is that they had a bad break-up, and it’s a sour, negative relationship in that sense. I think that is slightly easier to play with a real-life partner. If it had to be very romantic, it might have been a bit awkward.
HOW DID YOU FIND WORKING WITH JESSICA? We haven’t done it before, and it was a good experience. We didn’t come away thinking, ‘God, I’m not doing that again!’ We weren’t in all the scenes together – there’d be days where I was sitting at home and she was on set with all my colleagues, without me.
OTHER GUEST STARS IN THIS EPISODE INCLUDE SIMON SHEPHERD AND DAVID YIP. WHAT WAS IT LIKE HAVING THEM ON BOARD? Simon’s a bit of a legend. Part of the charm of our show is being able to cast established actors to come and ‘do their Midsomer’.
I did an amazing scene with David. A lot of our material is quite light, but now and then we do have a pathos-heavy scene, and when his character talks about losing his wife, he broke my heart. He was fantastic.
THIS YEAR MARKS THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF Midsomer Murders. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE
PART OF SUCH A LONG-RUNNING INSTITUTION? It’s an honour. I’m filming my fifth series at the moment, but because the show has run for so long, I’m still the new boy – in any other show, I’d be a seasoned veteran. People still talk about Neil being the new guy [after taking over from original star John Nettles in 2011] – and he’s been doing it for a decade!
One-off documentary Midsomer Murders: 25 Years of Mayhem (Sunday, 7pm, ITV) charts the history of the show, with contributions from the cast, past and present