Eastwood: ...Barnaby is about to have the bolt of inspiration that cracks the case, solves the murders and the artifact-smuggling ring, and find out that the postmistress is getting off with the vicar, who's secretly her uncle.
Lothar: How many times have you seen this episode?
Eastwood: Dunno, they all blur together after a while. It's a new one, Troy isn't in it.
— Exterminatus Now; also, living rooms across the UK
Every time I go into any Midsomer village, it's always the same thing: blackmail, sexual deviancy, suicide, and murder. How could you possibly expect me to go and live in one of them?
— Tom Barnaby sums it up, Dead Man's Eleven
In the early days of MM, writers were encouraged to develop a bad habit in that whenever an advertising break approached, someone would be killed simply to make the story more interesting and to encourage the audience to keep watching. It could be argued that in the end this would turn the series into a parody of itself. For my part, I had to give up writing the show when I realised that there was hardly anybody left in Midsomer to murder.
—'Anthony Horowitz (in the postface to The House of Silk)
