Habeas Corpus is the first episode of the eighteenth series of Midsomer Murders and originally aired 6th January 2016.
Wealthy landowner Gregory Lancaster dies of pneumonia but when the undertakers arrive the body has vanished, even though his family was in the room below. Soon afterwards the body of Lydia Dryfield, the family's former nanny, is dug up from its grave to disappear. Melissa Ackers, the vicar, is not popular with Mrs. Lancaster and her daughter Rose, who suspect an affair with Rose's boy friend Craig Coffley, whilst millionaire Sonny Desai, childhood friend of Gregory's heir Felix wants to buy the house from him. New pathologist Dr. Kam Karimore presents evidence incriminating both Craig and Felix, and Sonny's opportune appearance also puts him in the frame. When two, far from dead, people also disappear, DCI Barnaby and DS Nelson must identify who claimed, on two occasions, Habeas Corpus.
Tropes:
- Faking the Dead: The murderer fakes his own murder, and then fakes his corpse being stolen before the police arrive (It Makes Sense in Context) as part of a particularly elaborate plot to take revenge on someone.
- Never One Murder: Subverted, as this episode manages to have no murders. At all!
- Parental Favoritism: A particularly sad example is the Lancaster family, where mother Hermione clearly favours her son Felix over her daughter Rose...to the point that she let Rose blame herself for her father's life-changing climbing accident when he scaled a rope to rescue her after she froze up, despite knowing that Felix had deliberately greased the rope to sabotage his sister in a climbing race they often ran. She wails that he couldn't possibly have known the consequences of his actions, and didn't want him to live with that guilt, or for his sister to hate him. Instead, she lets her daughter live with the self-loathing and give up her beloved climbing hobby as a result. Everyone present at this confession is thoroughly disgusted with her.
