Written in Blood is the first episode of the first series of the popular ITV crime drama Midsomer Murders and first aired 22nd March 1998.
The Midsomer Worthy Writers Circle invites well-known author Max Jennings to one of their monthly meetings. The group's secretary, Gerald Hadleigh is opposed to the invitation but is outvoted. It becomes apparent that Jennings and Hadleigh knew one another at one time. When Hadleigh is found dead the next day, Barnaby and Troy begin looking into the backgrounds of the various Circle members and try to locate Jennings. When they do find him he is, as they say, incapable of assisting them with their inquiries. A second murder adds to the puzzle but in the end, the solution rests on learning of long-ago events and a hidden family secret. At home, the Barnaby's agree to care for daughter Cully's Russian Blue cat Killmouskie, with interesting results for Tom.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Max Jennings not only cheated on his wife, he only became successful because he took Gerald Hadleigh's life story (which he'd confided to him in strictest confidence) and than used it a basis for his book, violating patient client confidentiality AND turning Gerald's entire life story into a cheap spectacle. Notably even Troy (Who's somewhat weirded out by Hadleigh being a crossdresser) admits that he would have killed Jennings if he were in Hadleigh's place.
- Big Brother Attraction: Honoria Lyddiard, to Yandere levels. Even going so far as to keep his corpse in her house and murder both a man who revealed him to have been gay and her own sister-in-law out of jealousy.
- Crossdresser: Gerald Hadleigh.
- Deadly Dodging: Honoria is killed when she charges at Amy, who is standing in front of an upstairs window, with a knife. Amy gets out of the way and Honoria goes through the window.
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Fair for Its Day: Gerald is a cross dresser and a killer but he is also given a fair amount of sympathy. Even the murder he commits only occurs because the victim had betrayed him in the worst way possible - False Widow: In this case a False Widower as Gerald Hadleigh claimed to have had a wife who died years ago. But there never was a wife as Gerald was trying to cover up the fact that he was a closeted transvestite.
- Foreshadowing: Quite early on, a character states that Honoria Lyddiard's house feels 'like a morgue'.
- Mummies at the Dinner Table: Honoria Lyddiard still keeps the corpse of her dead brother Ralph in her house after his death from AIDS. Amy, Ralph's widow and Honoria's sister-in-law, is understandably horrified when she discovers this.
- Shout-Out: This episode not only references Psycho with the preserving of a dead body, the cross-dressing and the attempted insanity-driven killing with a knife, but there is also a reference to The Shining, where the murderer hacks a hole in the door with a sharp object to reach a terrified character in the episode's climax.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Hadleigh is a killer, but he only does so after the victim betrayed his trust in the worst way possible AND turned his life story (Which is incredibly traumatic) into a spectacle for money.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The subplot with Brian Clapper and his students is rather abruptly dropped after a scene where they plaster compromising photos of him with one of them on the village noticeboard.
