Series / Midsomer Murders

John Nettles as Inspector Barnaby and Jason Hughes as DS Jones.

British Mystery of the Week drama (1997 to present) about a police detective and his younger colleague operating in the fictional English county district of Midsomer, which appears to consist almost entirely of picturesque little villages, mostly named after the scheme "Midsomer X" - Midsomer Parva, Midsomer Mallow, Midsomer Worthy, etc. ^note A town called Midsomer Norton actually exists, near Wells in Somerset

Has a bad case of Never One Murder (and a murder rate that ITV actually started making fun of in their adverts for this—according to a documentary made to celebrate Midsomer’s 25 years on TV that in aired in 2022, there had been 396 murders up to that point), with the killer frequently Beneath Suspicion until five minutes from the end of each two-hour episode. Many episodes featured a Special Guest who turned out to be the murderer, unless they themselves are murdered instead.

The original stars were John Nettles as DCI Tom Barnaby, and Daniel Casey as DS Gavin Troy. The current leads are Neil Dudgeon as DCI John Barnaby (Tom's cousin) and Nick Hendrix as DS Jamie Winter.

Has a brilliantly apt, lilting theme tune. Unrelated to Midsommar.

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This show provides examples of:

Tropes A-M

• 1-Dimensional Thinking: In "Shot at Dawn", a woman being chased by a hay baler attempts to flee directly away from it. Granted that turning may not have helped as the baler was being steered, but she could have at least tried, as it would have taken time for the baler to turn.
• Abandoned Hospital: Much of the action of "The Silent Land" centres around a supposedly haunted abandoned TB hospital.
• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: In "The Dagger Club", The Gambling Addict is playing poker in an attempt to win his way out of debts. After going all in, the woman who holds his gambling debts goads him into betting more: his share of the book store he co-owns, and the missing manuscript that is the MacGuffin of the episode. He accepts, and loses. When it turns out he never had the manuscript, the woman claims his wife's share of the book store as well, as recompense.
• Accidental Misnaming: Barnaby, flustered after seeing his ex-Sergeant in "Last Man Out," calls Winter 'Jones' by mistake.
• Accidental Murder:
  • The first Body of the Week in "Left for Dead" occurs as a result of a Staircase Tumble when two characters are struggling at the top of the stairs. Although pushed, it was an accident and no murder was intended. The later murders, however...
  • Played with in "Wild Harvest". The murder of the chef was intentional but the murderer didn't know that the chef's husband (and the murderer's ex-husband) would take up drinking again. It's set up in such a way that Barnaby, while questioning her, is faking that he's still alive to get the name of the poison before the murderer realizes she accidentally killed her ex... before we cut outside to show that both of them are still alive, having been treated for their poison.
  • What is chronologically the first death in "Midsomer Life" was a case of the accidental murder. The victim had been trying to escape from someone who just intended to scare him off when he suffered a fatal heart attack. The attacker hid the body in the woods, and its discovery 10 months later triggered a string of actual murders.
  • The third murder turns out to have been accidental in "Send in the Clowns" — the murderer triggered an alarm system while snooping around a slaughterhouse, and when the victim came around jostled a heavy wagon while trying to hide, which went rolling and knocked the victim on the automatic slaughter line (and left the victim too dazed to move away before the line went to the gassing room).
  • The third Victim of the Week in "Till Death Do Us Part" is shoved by the killer who is trying to intimidate them, only for them to stumble over the edge of the balcony and fall to their death.
  • The first Victim of the Week in "The Point of Balance" suffers a fatal heart attack when her attacker shoves a length of tulle in her mouth and she starts choking. She suffered from an undiagnosed heart defect that made her susceptible to SCD (Sudden Cardiac Death).
• Actor Allusion:
  • In "Picture of Innocence", Liza Goddard guest stars as a character who partly drives the plot, but only actually appears in the last couple of minutes of the episode. She's someone who Tom Barnaby says he used to date, briefly, about 30 years ago. In The '80s, Liza Goddard had a recurring role opposite John Nettles in Bergerac as someone who had a flirtatious relationship with Jim Bergerac.
  • In "The Axeman Cometh", Michael Angelis plays the drummer in blues rock band Hired Gun. In one scene, the band's singer (Suzi Quatro) scathingly calls him Ringo. Angelis took over as the narrator of Thomas & Friends from Ringo Starr, as they have very similar voices. Also, Michael Angelis' brother Paul provided the voice for Ringo in Yellow Submarine.
  • In "Vixen's Run", the plot kicks off when elderly Sir Freddy Butler dies at dinner. Despite there being traces of strychnine in his system, the coroner rules natural causes as strychnine is an ingredient in heart medication and Sir Freddy was rather old, fat and drunk. Several other members of his family are killed over the course of the episode by Sir Freddy's first wife Lady Annabel, played by Sian Philips. When she's taken away by Barnaby in the police car at the end she says:
  Lady Annabel: I suppose you want to know how I killed Freddy.
  Barnaby: But Sir Freddy died from natural causes.
  Lady Annabel: Oh... of course.
  • In "Secrets and Spies", the murder takes place during a cricket match. One of the competitors in said match is Peter Davison, formerly the cricket-loving Fifth Doctor.
  • Kenneth Colley, best known for playing Admiral Piett in the original Star Wars trilogy, guest stars in "Electric Vendetta" as a ufologist.
  • Actors Tom Chambers, Natalie Gumede and Danny Mac, along with singer Fay Tozer were all previous finalists, and in Chambers case, a former champion, of Strictly Come Dancing. They all ended up playing dancers during the ballroom themed episode "Point of Balance."
• Adaptation Expansion: Only the five episodes of Series 1 were based on Caroline Graham's Chief Inspector Barnaby books. The rest are original stories, even after Graham wrote two more books.
• Adapted Out: Troy in the original novels was married with a daughter.
• Agents Dating: It has a Running Gag around this: every time Sergeant Jones goes out for dinner with his officer girlfriend, Barnaby (either the old one or the new one) calls him because there's been a development in the case, usually another murder. Apparently the Running Gag of Tom Barnaby's "Eureka!" Moment striking whenever he's out with his wife is contagious.
• The Alcoholic: Many throughout the years, but special mention has to go to the alcoholic wine critic in "A Vintage Murder." Even she admits it's a cliché.
• All for Nothing: In the episode "The Killings of Copenhagen", the murderer is the daughter of the real creator of the Calder Cookie Factory's most famous creation. They felt that their mother had been bought out and never received the fame and fortune that was deserved. However, after the creative director confesses that it's the truth and is spared being the fifth victim, he drops the best bombshell ever: her mother had given her daughter a job for life, for a loved one's future was more important. Upon hearing this, the murderer realised their terrible mistake.
• Animal Assassin:
  • In "Wild Harvest", the first Victim of the Week is tied up in a forest, doused with truffle oil, and left to be gored to death by a wild boar.
  • In "The Village That Rose From the Dead", one victim is killed by being constricted to death by pythons.
  • In "Schooled in Murder", two of the Victims of the Week are trampled to death by a herd of cows after the murderer traps them in the pen and deliberately startles the animals.
  • In "Sting of Death", the first Victim of the Week is immobilised and then doused in a synthetic pheromone that beekeepers use as a swarm lure. This results in them being stung to death by a swarm of honeybees.
• Apophenia Plot:
  • One episode features a Conspiracy Theorist who believes a local university has ties to the Illuminati and are secretly controlling the world, and aren't afraid to kill people who get to close to the truth. He is right that they kill people (he ends up among their victims), but it's for far more mundane reasons than world domination: the school actually depends on its alumni getting cushy diplomatic jobs in foreign countries, smuggling art and precious statues back to Britain via diplomatic channels, and then the school uses the art to keep funding itself.
  • There's another, even more mundane one in the same episode where the school canteen gets its food from a local high-end restaurant for cheap.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: In "Night of the Stag", a village leader wants to restart an ancient tradition where one night a year, the men of one village would descend on the neighbouring village and ravish the women, thereby ensuring genetic diversity in the villages. One of the women in the neighbouring village is very keen on the idea and says she will leave the door open for him. However, she is not happy when he ignores her and goes for her daughter instead.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Most of the nobility/very old established families are complete assholes, more obsessed with their lineage and money than with murders.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Inverted when Tom reminisces on an unpleasant country club in "The Dogleg Murders":
  "Apart from the snobbery and the extortionate fees, there was the matter of me arresting the treasurer for murdering his mistress!"
• Artistic License – Chemistry:
  • In "The Straw Woman", Reverend Hale dies when his cape mysteriously catches fire. It turns out that the killer had drenched it in a solution of phosphorous in toluene, which started to burn when the toluene had evaporated. However, toluene has a strong gasoline-like smell which the reverend would have noticed, and furthermore the evaporation would take heat from the surroundings, making the cape icy cold and near-impossible to wear.
  • The murders in "The Sword of Guillaume" are committed with the eponymous sword, which dates back to the Norman Conquest and has been inside a tomb for centuries. In real life the sword would've rusted to such a degree that it would be useless as a blade.
• Artistic License – Law:
  • On more than one occasion a member of the Barnaby family has been present for the discovery of a murdered body, if not discovered it themselves. That alone should have disqualified DCI Barnaby (both of them) from being involved the investigation, as a police detective working a case where their closest relatives are key witnesses would be a glaring conflict of interest, but this is almost never brought up. On the rare occasions it does come up, it ends up being glossed over, with the exception of "Painted in Blood" where it's used as justification to remove Barnaby from the case, while being treated as if this is an extremely harsh and over the top decision.
  • While this improves in later series where they wear appropriate gear, multiple episodes have Barnaby and company walking around crime scenes and handling items without the protective clothing needed to avoid contamination and accidental destruction of evidence, which would effectively render it worthless and inadmissable in court. This is perhaps particularly hilarious when they arrive on a scene where their colleagues are already suited up only to go trapsing over themselves unprotected. Maybe George told Tom eventually to stop doing it!
  • Several times during his run, Tom Barnaby and his sergeants break into a suspect's house without a search warrant to go snooping around. Even when they're caught in the act by the irate suspect in question, they're never suggested to face any consequences for this breach of procedure, despite the fact that it's illegal in the UK unless it can be proven that waiting for a warrant would allow the suspect to remove or destroy evidence.
• Artistic License – Pharmacology: The episode "King's Crystal" has a victim die from ingesting ground glass (quite ironically). Not only was the time it (apparently) took him to die ridiculously short (20 minutes), but according to a variety of literature sources, ground glass isn't deadly (or poisonous) upon ingestion, unless the slivers are large enough that the victim would sense them as he was chewing his food (and they would cut up the inside of his mouth as a result). The odds of dying to ground glass poisoning are, hence, slim to none, unless the victim truly wanted to die (which he didn't).
• Artistic License – Sports: Not entirely sure why the sabre fencing in "The Sleeper Under The Hill" is done with the pointy end when sabre is a slashing weapon. The coach's technique is also awful.
• Asshole Victim: At least three quarters of the dead people, plus a good number of would-be victims who are spared by Barnaby's intervention.
  • The truly unfortunate cases, though, are the ones where the murderer goes after the Asshole Victim's (usually but not always) innocent family instead.
  • Played with in "A Vintage Murder". The victims aren't very nice people, but they weren't involved in a hit-and-run that killed a little girl. When the murderer (the girl's mother) finds out, she's horrified.
• Attack of the Town Festival:
  • "The Straw Woman" had a village deciding to go ahead with a festival despite the vicar being burnt to death. The replacement vicar was then also murdered.
  • In "The Scarecrow Murders", people are being murdered and then dressed up and posed as Scary Scarecrows during the village's annual scarecrow festival.
• Auto Erotica: In "Country Matters", The Vicar confesses to meeting her (married) lover in his van in a field. Although she claims they were just talking, the flashback shows the van start rocking almost as soon as they get in.
• Awful Wedded Life: Nearly half the couples seen. In "Hidden Depths", for example, a woman was not only a witness to her abusive husband's bizarre murder, she calls out corrections when the murderer misses.
• Ax-Crazy: At least some of the murderers caught in the series.
• Axe Before Entering: The killer of the episode "Dark Autumn" attempted to cut through a door with a machete to get to his final victim, only for the victim to disarm him by hitting the blade. He, nevertheless, manages to get in the room, but is stopped by Barnaby and Troy before he can kill again.
• Baby's First Words: In "Breaking the Chain", John and Sarah Barnaby spend the episode trying to get their daughter Betty to say her first word. John wants it to be "Dada" and Sarah wants it to be "Mama" but eventually Betty says "dog" instead.
• Bad Habits: Jones disguises himself as a nun to trap a murderer in "A Sacred Trust".
• Bad to the Last Drop: While drinking a cup of canteen coffee in "Down Among the Dead Men", Barnaby asks:
  "Is this coffee or silt?"
• Baguette Beatdown: In "Shot at Dawn", a pair of wheelchair-bound old duffers from Feuding Families get into a jousting match with baguettes that interrupts Inspector Barnaby's dinner.
• Ball Cannon: In "Last Man Standing", the first Victim of the Week is killed by being tied in the cricket nets in front of a bowling machine, which is then used to bowl twenty cricket balls at him at high speed and batter him to death.
• Bar Brawl: In "Midsomer Life", a brawl erupts in the local pub between a group of entitled out-of-towners and the locals who are sick of being patronized. Inspector Barnaby gets punched in the face while trying to break it up.
• Barsetshire: The eponymous Midsomer district.
• Batter Up!:
  • A cricket bat is used as a murder weapon in "Dead Man's Eleven".
  • Jones gets knocked out with a cricket bat in "Last Man Out", and the killer would have beaten him to death with it had Barnaby not showed up.
• Beachcombing: In "Saints and Sinners", an archeological dig searching for the bones of a local saint is threatened by a group of detectorists camped in the next field looking to raid the site for the trove the saint was supposedly buried with.
• Bear Trap: In "Country Matters", a woman pretends to be caught in a bear trap as part of an elaborate sexual roleplay.
• Becoming the Mask: The leader of the hippie commune in "Death in Disguise" originally started the place as a scam to fleece gullible new-agers. However, along the way he has started to truly believe in the ideas he is preaching - much to the chagrin of his less idealistic partner-in-crime.
• Bedsheet Ghost: In "The Silent Land", a prankster dresses up as a bedsheet ghost in order to disrupt a ghost walk. However, the killer takes advantage of the distraction to murder the second Victim of the Week.
• Behind the Black: Barnaby manages to pull off this trope from time to time. One notable instance occurs in the Series 7 episode "Sins of Commission".
• Beleaguered Assistant: In "Happy Families", the Victim of the Week's executive assistant complains that he was treated like dirt and never appreciated by his boss, even though he was the one who was really keeping the company running. Of course, as he was Stealing from the Till and about to be exposed, how much of this was true and how much justification is unclear.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: In "Dark Secrets", the Victim of the Week is a poor beleaguered social services inspector. Dealing with the eccentric inhabitants of Midsomer would be enough to drive anyone crazy, but what he discovers while trying help an elderly couple gets him murdered.
• Believer Fakes Evidence: In "The Incident at Cooper Hill" had the local UFO enthusiast (and murder victim) plant evidence because he just wanted other people to believe as he did (his murder had nothing to do with the UFO thing).

• Between My Legs: In "Country Matters", Tom Barnaby's face is framed between the legs of "Mr. Hundsecker," when the latter mistakes Barnaby for a Dom (there have been a lot of sexual escapades around the village) who is going to whip him with a riding crop.
• Better Manhandle the Murder Weapon: In the backstory for "Death in a Chocolate Box", this led to Lord Holm's arrest for murder. Finding his wife dead, he picked up the murder weapon and was immediately arrested by the police officer who committed the murder. He was confused enough that he allowed himself to be convinced that he had committed the crime and then blacked it out.
• Beware the Nice Ones: One way to guess correctly who the murderer is with depressing frequency is to pick the one who is the only likable one of the lot.
• Big Damn Heroes: In a flashback scene in "Second Sight", a supporting character bursts into a school classroom and tells the kids they're going to play a game that involves them all running out of the opposite door... moments before a runaway truck crashes through the wall. He tells the local paper he can't explain what made him do this, but he saved all 27 kids and their teacher.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Lots...
• Bilingual Dialogue: In Strangler's Wood Troy questions a South American maid in Spanish - much to Barnaby's surprise.
• Bitter Almonds: In "The Village That Rose From the Dead", the second Victim of the Week is murdered by being forced to drink from a cyanide-laced flask. Barnaby, Winter and Kam all notice the smell of bitter almonds.
• Blackmail: Lots of it, and a prime cause of death.
• Blood Is Squicker in Water: In "Market for Murder" one of the victims receives a blow to the head in her pool. The police find her with clouds of red in the pool.
• Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress: In "Till Death Do Us Part", the second Victim of the Week is shot with ball bearings while modelling a wedding dress at a bridal show, leading to this trope.
• Bludgeoned to Death: In "Crime and Punishment", the second Victim of the Week has his head smashed in with a hammer taken from the display in his own hardware store.
• Blue Blood: They run into quite a few of these, as is the standard in a British mystery, nearly all of whom are Upper-Class Twits - or the murderer.

• Body Horror: Jane Rochelle's burns from "Judgement Day" are not a pretty sight, especially her hand.
• Bookcase Passage: In "Blood Wedding", Barnaby finds a priest hole/secret passage concealed behind a bookcase. Most tellingly, the passage leads to the room where the first murder was committed.
• Bondage Is Bad: In "Country Matters" this is inverted and played straight; while there are multiple men adopting the submissive role they are both bad and good. The Dom is the murderer.
• Book Ends: Tom Barnaby's final episode ends with the new guy being called out on his first Midsomer murder investigation - in Badger's Drift, the location of the murder that started the series.
• Bookmark Clue: In "The Stitcher's Society", the SOCO team find an important clue—a newly signed lease—in a book in the first Victim of the Week's house.
• Bound and Gagged:
  • In "Left for Dead", the murderer leaves Tom Barnaby bound and gagged on a mattress in the cellar. He has to be rescued by Jones.
  • In "The Dark Rider", the killer attempts to remove someone who is afraid of the dark from the line of succession by driving them into a permanent state of trauma by leaving them bound and gagged inside a priest hole.
  • In "Sting of Death", the killer places their third victim inside a sarcophagus which they start to fill with honey.
• The Boxing Episode: "The Noble Art". When a famous 1860 bareknuckle boxing bout is re-staged in Midsomer Morchard with great pomp, dead bodies begin to pile up for Barnaby.
• Brats with Slingshots: In "With Baited Breath", the third Victim of the Week is done in with a projectile fired from a commercial fishing slingshot (normally used to fire bait into the water).
• Break the Cutie: One particularly depressing episode saw a sweet-natured, ill-used suspect being cleared, only to realise that everyone she'd ever cared about or respected had been toying with her or manipulating her for their own ends. This destroys her sweet nature and turns her into an amoral Gold Digger, as she decides to Pay Evil unto Evil; everyone else was only out for themselves, so why shouldn't she take advantage of others?
• Break Them by Talking: John Barnaby's MO to many of his more Smug Snake murderers, and is awesomely done in "The Night of the Stag" as he and two others turn an entire community against the main murderer by revealing the bastard for what he is.
• British Brevity: No season is longer than 5 episodes.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Tom Barnaby goes through a few of these. Including one where a police inspector (married to a former sergeant) singlehandedly arrested an old lord for bashing his wife's head in, then quit the force to become a psychologist and attempt to rehabilitate the murderer. Except she'd killed the wife (who'd been sleeping with her husband) and pinned it on the lord, then killed the people who might have brought the matter back up: a blackmailer and her husband, who had slept with the lord's wife while she was in the cells...
  • Another episode had Barnaby's favourite band at the centre of a series of murders. Needless to say, by the time the case was closed, he wasn't so keen on the band any more.
  • In one episode, he meets a retired cop. They hit it off so well Tom starts taking his advice when looking into buying a new home, to Jones' consternation. So of course, it turns out the guy was a human trafficker.
• Broken-Window Warning: In "Send in the Clowns", one of the suspects receives a threatening note written in pig's blood tied to a brick and thrown through the window of their restaurant.
• Brotherhood of Funny Hats: "The Pudding Club", an exclusive club restricted to members of the elite Devington School's students who are pursuing careers in diplomacy. On the surface, it's just a "boy's club" that regularly eats "puddings"^note in the British sense of the term, which means anything from pies to desserts. In reality, it's a front for an illegal art-smuggling ring, with the members using their positions to smuggle valuables out of foreign countries and into the school proper, to be sold off to finance the school whenever it needs the money.
• Brother–Sister Incest: In the pilot, no less. Also appears a few times later on.
  • Subverted in "Shot at Dawn", where the prospect is raised with respect to a newly-engaged couple who are unaware that her mother and his father have been carrying on for decades; the mother only laughs and says that she's been very careful to ensure none of her children are the result of the affair.
  • Forms part of the backstory to the murders in "Dark Secrets". Once Barnaby realises this, the murderer becomes obvious to him.
  • So close to happening in "The Killings of Copenhagen".
  • Part of the plot of "The Fisher King". A couple had gotten together and married, only to then find out that they shared a father. At that point they committed to treating each other as brother and sister in the usual non-incest way despite officially being husband and wife, but then the brother got it into his mind that a Celtic ritual could get the gods to give permission for them to have sex again.Which gets him killed, but only because the murderer exploited the opportunity of the ritual to send an arrow into his back. The murderer's motivations have nothing to do with the incest, and more to do with just who the father was.
• Bullet Dancing: In "The Village That Rose From the Dead", a Crazy Jealous Guy does this to a man who cuckolded him in preparation for shooting him for real.
• Bullying a Dragon: In "Sins of Commission", the co-conspirators in the Jezebelle Tripp hoax figure it'll be easy to kill nice old Camilla. They are very, very wrong.
• Buried Alive:
  • The Victim of the Week in "Saints and Sinners" is buried alive in an archaeology trench.
  • In "Drawing Death", the murderer stabs their last victim and then rolls their still living body into an open grave (intended for one of their previous victims) and fills it in. Barnaby and Winter arrive in time to save her.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor Jones. Will anyone EVER treat him nicely? (Troy and Scott also received this treatment, but had a tendency to bring it on themselves.)
• The Bus Came Back:
  • After appearing regularly from Series 9 onwards, Jones left after the end of Series 15, but he made a guest appearance in "Last Man Out", the third episode of Series 19.
  • After appearing regularly throughout the first six series, Troy was seen leaving in the first episode of Series 7, but he made a brief guest appearance at the end of "Blood Wedding", the second episode of Series 11.
  • Detective Poulsen, who appeared in "The Killings of Copenhagen," also reappeared in "Death of Small Coppers."
• Buzzing the Deck: Done with murderous intent in "The Flying Club". The murderer is flying a light plane and chases the second Victim of the Week, who is on the ground. The murderer buzzes him low enough to strike his head with the landing gear of the plane, killing him. During the Motive Rant at the end, Barnaby acknowledges it was an exceptional piece of flying.
• Cacophony Cover Up:
  • In "Murder by Magic", the killer uses the sound of a gunshot being used in a magic trick to mask the sound of the gunshot they used to kill one of their victims.
  • In "Blood on the Saddle", the killer uses the noise of a mock gunfight being conducted in the main arena to cover the rifle shot he uses to murder the first Victim of the Week.
• The Cameo: Five time Olympic Gold Medallist in rowing Steve Redgrave makes a brief appearance at the end on "Dead In Water" as a scout for the British Olympic Committee.
  • Troy gets one at the end of "Blood Wedding," almost running Barnaby and Jones off the road in the process.
• Candlelit Bath: In "Last Year's Model", a sleazy music producer and his mistress are holding a candlelit Two-Person Pool Party when they are interrupted by Barnaby.
• Captivity Harmonica: A flashback in "Death in a Chocolate Box" to when the second Victim of the Week was in prison shows him playing the harmonica. When his new probation officer (the first Victim of the Week) enters, he pays a mocking note.
• Car Fu:
  • The first Victim of the Week in "Death and Dust" gets out of his car to clear a fallen tree on the road, and is run down by the car that has been tailing him. It later turns out to be a case of Murder by Mistake.
  • In "The Glitch", the first Victim of the Week is knocked off her bike by a car. The driver then reverses over the top of her, killing her. This also turns out to be a case of Murder by Mistake.
  • In "Death in the Slow Lane", the first Victim of the Week is killed when the murderer puts the vintage car he had just started in gear; causing it to move forward and resulting in the victim being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice on the crank handle.
  • In "A Vintage Murder", the first Victim of the Week is knocked unconscious by a car, before being dragged off to her death in the vineyard.
  • The second Victim of the Week in "Birds Of Prey," is knocked over by the killer after he discovers a body in the freezer while trying to steal some birds eggs. Initially he appears to be fine, as he manages to walk away from the accident, only for him to die in his sleep from internal bleeding.
• Casting Gag: In "The Magician's Nephew", which shares its title with the C. S. Lewis book of the same name one character is played by Ronald Pickup, who had voiced Aslan in the BBC adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia.
• The Catfish: In "With Baited Breath", fishermen flock to Solomon Gorge desperate to catch a giant fish that is said to lurk in the lake. Their plans are threatened when hundred of others appear for the Pyscho Mud Run.
• Cat Scare: Happens in "A Rare Bird" when Jones is searching a taxidermy studio. One cat turns out to be alive and makes Jones jump when it moves.
• Caught in a Snare: Happens to Winter in "The Death of the Small Coppers".
• Caught on Tape: In "The Ballad of Midsomer County", the killings all centre around a murder accidentally recorded on a master tape 20 years earlier, with the master tape then being hidden.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: In "Hidden Depths", Barnaby and Scott get locked in a cellar where there is no cell reception.
• Cement Shoes: In "With Baited Breath", the killer attempts to dispose of his final intended victim by tying her to a large rock, rowing her into the middle of the lake, and dumping her out of the boat, but is thwarted by the arrival of Barnaby and Winter.
• Character Name Alias: In "The Curse of the Ninth", the first Victim of the Week (who is a classical violinist) rents a safe deposit box using the name of composer Anton Bruckner.
• Characters Dropping Like Flies: The series is famous for its ridiculously high murder rate (even for a detective series). Depending on population estimates, the rural county of Midsomer has a crime rate beaten only by a few countries. At least once a character managed to survive being involved in one case... only to get murdered when he gets involved in a second case a few years later.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In Bad Tidings, Joyce mentions that one of Cully's old schoolfriends used to bully her. Guess who the murderer turned out to be...
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The show never actually explains what happened to Scott. His absence in the episode that introduces his replacement Jones is explained (he called in sick — Jones was a temporary replacement), but by the next episode Jones is there to stay without Scott being mentioned again. ^note Scott's actor in real life ended up in hospital seriously ill with pneumonia and unable to film any more episodes.
• Circle of Standing Stones: In one episode, the (first) Victim of the Week is found in a stone circle. A local Druid sect that uses it as a holy place is quickly suspected.
• Circus Episode: In "Send in the Clowns", things take a gruesome turn when Ferabbees Circus comes to town, bringing with it a chain of sinister clown sightings, threatening notes and deathly dangerous circus acts.
• Classy Cat-Burglar: In "The Creeper", the B-plot (which is tangentially related to the murders) concerns a burglar known as the Creeper who has been robbing wealthy country homes, including that of the Chief Constable. When Barnaby finally identifies the Creeper, it turns out to be this trope.
• Closed Circle: In "Happy Families", Barnaby and Winter go to investigate a murder in a mansion on island accessible only by a chain ferry. After the body is removed, a storm wrecks the ferry, stranding Barnaby and Winter on the island with the suspects.
• Cloth Fu: The first Victim of the Week in "The Point of Balance" dies when their killer shoves a length of tulle in their mouth during a struggle: causing them to choke and triggering a fatal heart attack.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: A highly successful and kind-hearted psychiatrist is oblivious to the fact that all three of her children are sociopathic, gleeful serial killers who murdered her husband (their own father) because they wanted her all to themselves, and hated him for wanting to spend time alone with her. They repeat the process for anyone they deem is getting too friendly with their mum - including Barnaby.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Dudley Carew in "Murder on St. Malley's Day".
  • Properly Paranoid: There really is a secret and sinister purpose to the Pudding Club... just not the one he thinks.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In episode one of series 2, a minor character, Miss Beauvoisin, works as an assistant at an estate agents. In a later episode she turns up, having taken over the business. By later series, every time someone is selling their house and a sales board is put up, it's for the Beauvoisin Estate Agent.
  • In "The Death of the Small Coppers", one of the suspects is listening to "The Ballad of Midsomer County"; the folk song at the centre of the episode of the same name. In fact this is one of many continuity nods in this episode; others include a delivery man delivering the magazine Midsomer Life and on the pub wall a print of one of the paintings from the episode "The Black Book".
• Constructive Body Disposal:
  • In "Red in Tooth & Claw", the killer attempts to bury his final victim (while still alive) in the concrete being poured for the foundation of a new heating oil tank, but is stopped by Barnaby and Winter.
  • In "Garden of Death", the body of a woman killed five years earlier is found buried in a Memorial Garden (which was under construction at the time of the murder).
• Contrived Coincidence: Many murders in the show are motivated by highly unlikely circumstances, but a particularly egregious example takes place in the episode "A Sacred Trust" where the villain of the piece participates in the massacre of a village in an unnamed African country, makes a fortune and over 33 years later settles in one of the Midsomer villages with his wife and son... a village that just so happens to include a convent where the prioress is the sole witness to his crime. And the kicker? He still would've gotten away with it if his Identical Son hadn't snuck into the convent with a girl to have sex and run into the prioress.
• Conveyor Belt o' Doom:
  • In "The Killings of Copenhagen", the murderer trusses up one of the victims and places them on a conveyor belt leading into an industrial baker's oven.
  • In "Send in the Clowns", the third Victim of the Week is stunned and dropped on to a conveyor belt into an abattoir which carries into the gassing chamber where is asphyxiated with carbon dioxide.
• Cooked to Death: In "The Killings of Copenhagen'', the murderer attempts to kill their final victim by feeding them into the industrial oven in a bakery.
• Cool Old Guy: DCI Tom Barnaby evolved into this as the series centred on him went on and in one episode it's revealed he was an ex-member of MI6.
• Cool Old Lady: DS Ben Jones' all-knowing Gossipy Hens gran is considered this by DCI John Barnaby.
• The Coroner: Dr George Bullard, Dr Kate Wilding, Dr Kam Karimore, and Dr Fleur Perkins are the poor old pathologists finding themselves knee deep in bodies to autopsy at various times.
• Corpse Temperature Tampering: "With Baited Breath": Following killing the third victim, the murder stashes their body within a freezer to disguise the time of death. Then using their stolen mobile phone, makes it appear they were still alive hours later whilst he was having dinner with Inspector Barnaby. It only falls apart when Doctor Fleur Perkins manages to use other methods to determine how long they were dead for.
• Couldn't Find a Lighter: In "Ghosts of Christmas Past", Jerkass Digby lights a cigar from one the candles on the dinner table as a taunt at one of the other guests who is not allowed to smoke.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: In "Send in the Clowns", several suspects receive threatening notes (one of them delivered by a brick through the window) written in pig's blood.
• Country Matters: The way Dennis pronounces the word "Constable" in "The Killings at Badger's Drift" leaves no doubt as to what he means.
• Courtroom Episode: Much of "Last Year's Model", takes place in a courtroom during the trial of woman who was arrested for murder the year before, as Barnaby starts to have serious doubts regarding her guilt.
• Covered in Gunge: In "The Glitch", a vandal known as 'the Bucket Man' is attacking cars in a village and dumping paint mixed with glue over them. The murder pours paint over his last intended victim to try and make it look like the work of 'the Bucket Man'. Ironically, his intended victim was actually the real Bucket Man.
• Cover Identity Anomaly: In "The Stitcher's Society", a Private Investigator joins the eponymous society: a support group for survivors of heart surgery. However, as he has never had heart surgery, he lacks the distinctive 'zipper' scar down the centre of his chest. This ends badly for him when the killer sees him without a shirt and realises that he is an imposter and must have an ulterior motive for being there.
• Cowboy Episode: "Blood on the Saddle". It becomes rather hilarious to southern/western residents of the United States as well...
• Cracking Up: Scott once cracks his knuckles in anticipation of taking on a particularly annoying suspect. Barnaby stops the car and tells him in no uncertain terms that he will not tolerate Police Brutality.
• Cramming the Coffin:
  • The 'body buried in the grave beneath a coffin' is used in "Beyond the Grave".
  • This is attempted in "Four Funerals and a Wedding", but rain washes away the dirt and exposes the body before the coffin can be placed in the grave. Also, the victim was the deacon who was supposed to be performing the funeral service.
• Crime-Concealing Hobby: On occasion, the crimes are committed because of the hobby, which are Serious Business in Midsomer and cause for any number of reprehensible activities from adultery to blackmail to creative accounting. One episode has a mentally-disturbed woman murder people who might interfere with the local tourist attraction (a miniature village), and in another, a Social Climber murders any potential witnesses that saw her driving drunk (which would have barred her from entering the village social club), etc.
• Crazy People Play Chess: "The Sicilian Defence" revolves around a chess tournament and a computer chess game. As it takes place in Midsomer, needless to say there are more than a few unbalanced personalities involved. The killer leaves chess notations in the pockets of the victims.
• Cricket Episode:
  • "Dead Man's Eleven" (series 3)
  • "Secrets and Spies" (series 11)
  • "Last Man Out" (series 19)
• Crime After Crime: "Talking to the Dead" is a textbook example. The original crime (which the viewer only learns about after several murders) was the comparatively minor one of stealing goods that were already stolen. When one of the crooks they were stealing from discovered them, the murderer killed him and blackmailed his accomplice into helping him dispose of the body. However, things quickly escalated and he committed three subsequent murders to prevent his crimes from being discovered, and would have committed a fourth if Barnaby had not caught him.
• Crime Magnet: Okay seriously, Tom should just lock Joyce in the house. Every time she goes somewhere, murder ensues.
• Crossdresser: Gerald Hadleigh from the series 1 episode "Written in blood".
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Day-to-day life in Midsomer is apparently so boring without a bit of homicide that murderers dedicate their brain cells to devising really bizarre ways of bumping people off. Specifically, victims have been:
  • Tied up and covered in truffle oil while a boar is set loose
  • Had their wheelchair hijacked via remote control and subsequently steered into the path of a milk float (although the victim had been shot in the head beforehand).
  • Tumble-dried to death.
  • Pinned to the lawn with croquet hoops while wine bottles are catapulted at them.
  • Knocked out, had a hollowed-out TV with a hole in the top shoved over their head, and wine poured into the TV until they drown, which happened in the same episode as the above.
  • Crushed to death with a forklift, then broiled in an industrial sterilizer.
  • Had their head crushed with a giant wheel of cheese.
  • Boiled to death in a brewing vat of beer.
  • Had their corset tightened until their chest could not expand enough for them to breathe.
  • Knocked off their bike by a wire strung across the road and ran over by a tank.
  • In "Sting of Death", the murderer commits a series of bee-themed murders. The first victim is stung to death by a swarm of bees; the second is coated in beeswax and turned into a human candle; and third is almost embalmed alive in honey.
• Cryptid Episode: "Secrets and Spies" - After a break-in at Causton Museum where an animal skull was stolen, ex-spy Brenda Packard tells Barnaby that Allenby House, owned by testy ex-spymaster Malcolm Frazer, is a safe house for agents. Geoffrey Larkin, a visiting former agent, has a bitter argument with Frazer, who accuses him of treachery when they were spying in Berlin during the Cold war. Larkin threatens Frazer with a dossier marked "Wolfman" and next day is murdered, seemingly by a wild animal, the legendary Beast of Midsomer.
• Cymbal-Banging Monkey: There is one in the nursery where the first murder occurs in "A Christmas Haunting" It starts banging its cymbals as the body hits the floor.
• Daddy Issues: Said word for word by Winter at the end of "Point of Balance".
• Danger Takes a Backseat: The first two victims in "The House in the Woods" are garroted by a killer hiding in the backseat of their car.
• Dead Animal Warning:
  • In "Death in Chorus", artist Connor Simpson is shocked when a pig's heart is nailed to his cottage door.
  • In "The Axeman Cometh", a campaign of harassment against Gary Cooper sees a dead sheep dumped on his tennis court, a gutted pig placed in his trout stream, and a skinned rabbit strung up in his garage.
  • In "Breaking The Chain," the local village councillor is sent a pig's heart in the post.
  • In "Till Death Do Us Part", the first Victim of the Week is being trolled by someone who is sending her dead animals with ribbons tied around their tongues.
  • In "The Devil's Work", someone comes by the yurt. Jordana gets up and opens the door but doesn’t see anyone. Then there is a knock on the door. Jordana looks outside and sees a wrapped package on the ground. It is a dead raven.
• Dead Artists Are Better: After an artist is murdered in "The Dagger Club", her dealer immediately triples the price of all of her artworks.
• Dead Guy on Display: In "A Dying Art", the killer places the bodies of their victims as parts of sculptures on display in a sculpture park.
• Deadly Bath:
  • The first murder victim in "Echoes of the Dead" is found submerged in a petal-strewn bath, dressed as a bride.
  • The first Victim of the Week in "Fit for Murder" is drowned in a flotation pool at a spa. Joyce discovers the corpse when she goes for treatment.
• Deadly Disc: In "Written in the Stars", the murderer uses a razor-edged disc to slice the throat of the third Victim of the Week.
• Deadly Prank: Provides the motive for murder in "Death's Shadow". A group of schoolboys decide to haze an unpopular boy who wanted to join their gang by making him undergo an initiation. They make him stand on a rickety chair, blindfolded, with his hands tied behind his back and a noose round his neck. They then leave him for hour, planning to make him think they had abandoned him and panic. However, when they return, they discover he has fallen off the chair and slowly strangled. They remove the blindfold and untie his hands so it looks like he committed suicide. Decades later, these events will come home to roost...
• Deadly Remote Control Toy:
  • In "Shot at Dawn", a remote control toy car filed with explosives is run up alongside an old man in a wheelchair, although his friend manages to hurl it away before it explodes. The old man was actually the killer and was faking an attempt on his life to divert suspicion. As he had the remote control, he was sure not to detonate the bomb until it was well away from him.
  • Not strictly speaking a toy, but in "Death by Persausion" one Victim of the Week is murdered when a remore control delivery drone drops a razor sharp carving knife on him.
• Dead Man Honking:
  • Not dead but unconscious. The Teaser to "The Silent Land" ends with Joyce crashing her car. The scene fades to the credits with the horn blaring as Joyce slumps unconscious on the steering wheel.
  • In "Death and the Divas", an attempted murder by cutting the victim's brake lines ends with the intended victim's face planted on the steering wheel and the horn blaring.
• Dead Man's Chest:
  • A dismembered body is placed in a wicker hamper and left in a railway station in "Echoes of the Dead".
  • In "With Baited Breath", the body of the third Victim of the Week is found stuffed into a chest freezer.
• Dead Man's Hand: In "Blood of the Saddle", the third Victim of the Week in a string wild west themed murders is found slung over the saddle of his horse with a dead man's hand planted in his fist.
• Deadpan Snarker: Both Barnaby's are this, at times.
  • In "Midsomer Life", the village of Midsomer Sonning is full of these.
• Death by Falling Over:
  • The first Victim of the Week in "Death in Disguise" dies after a Staircase Tumble.
  • As does the first Victim of the Week in "Left for Dead".
• Death by Irony: Some murderers have a dark sense of humour in addition to a malicious streak, so many victims are killed either by what they loved, or what they had used to torment others.
• Death by Looking Up: In "The Dark Rider", one victim is lured outside his ancestral home and looks up just in time to see a gargoyle toppling on top of him.
• Death Glare: John Barnaby and the killer in "The Night of the Stag" have a glare off in the final showdown in Midsomer Herne.
• Decade-Themed Party: In "Dance With the Dead", the village of Morton Fendle is obsessed with the now disused WWII airfield based there. They hold a 1940s themed dance that the Barnabys and Jones attend.
• Defective Detective: Averted, unusually for the genre. Both Barnabys are well-adjusted and cool-headed with stable family lives, and their sergeants also have their heads screwed on pretty effectively too.
• Defenestrate and Berate: "Ring Out Your Dead"
• Depraved Bisexual: Midsomer Murders is not usually flattering in its depiction of bisexuals — especially female bisexuals.
  • One of the victims in "Not In My Back Yard", who was using seduction to manipulate several people of both sexes.
  • In "Dance With The Dead", a missing woman had half the village wrapped around her little finger, charming people of both sexes in order to ensure that she could maintain her comfortable, "free spirited" lifestyle without having to deal with unpleasant things like morals or responsibility. While Barnaby supposes that she used sexual favours to get her own way, most of her targets seemed to be genuinely smitten and protective of her, rather than lusting after her.
• Depraved Homosexual: Some. Though everybody's depraved, so it's kind of hard to tell...
• Detective Mole:
  • DI Mark Gudgeon from NIS takes over the investigation in "Painted in Blood". Problem is, he was the one who committed the murder.
  • Sgt. Trevor Gibson in "Sleeper Under the Hill" turns out to be involved in the killings and does his best to throw Barnaby and Jones off the trail. He ultimately falls victim to his partner in crime.
• Died on Their Birthday: In "Fit for Murder", we learn that Tom's father died on his birthday. As Tom approaches the age his father was when he died, he starts to worry that he is going to die on his own birthday.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage:
  • In "Judgement Day", when Midsomer Mallow's youth orchestra is shown rehearsing.
  • In "Things That Go Bump in the Night", the brass band at the railway open day plays the theme tune before moving on to more traditional tunes.
• Diet Episode: "Blood Will Out" has Barnaby being put on a diet, with Troy given the uneviable task of making sure he follows it.
• Dirty Cop:
  • DI Mark Gudgeon and his NIS underlings in "Painted in Blood".
  • Sgt. Trevor Gibson in "Sleeper Under the Hill".
  • The Debt of Lies features several different variations of this (although none of them are actually active by the time they first appear), from borderline to clear and regulars at crookedness to cops that slipped up once or twice.But all of it is irrelevant to the actual motive for the murders, which is much more personal.
• Dirty Old Man:
  • Major Teale spends almost every moment he is on screen either perving on women, or talking about it.
  • In "Things That Go Bump in the Night", the musical director of the village church is a man of advanced years with a bad case of wandering hands, including feeling up one of his choristers under the guise of correcting her technique.
  • Will Green in "The Night of the Stag" is outright called this by the object of his lust, in a Batman Gambit the killer uses this as part of their plan.
• Disappeared Dad: "Death of a Stranger": Simon Tranter, father of Grahame Tranter, who walked out and disappeared 30 years before the story.
• Disconnected by Death:
  • In "Breaking the Chain", Barnaby is talking to a suspect who is on his mobile phone to one of the other suspects. The suspect turns to Barnaby and remarks that he heard sounds of struggle and then the phone went dead. Barnaby hurriedly races to the scene and arrives in time to save the next victim who has been left in a room that is filling with gas.
  • In "The Village That Rose From the Dead", the third Victim of the Week is on the phone to his wife when the killer whacks him on the head with a length of wood.
  • In "Death by Persuasion", one Victim of the Week has just worked out who the murderer is and is on the phone to his girlfriend when he is killed by a knife dropped from a drone.
• Discreet Drink Disposal:
  • Barnaby does this with a cup of acorn coffee in "Death in Disguise". Leads to a That Poor Plant moment.
  • In "The Axeman Cometh", Jack 'Axeman' McKinley, who is The Alcoholic, avoids falling Off the Wagon when pressed into sharing a bottle of vodka to commemorate a fallen band mate by secretly pouring each glass into the plant beside him.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Plenty allusions to Hamlet in the episode "King's Crystal." We have the head of a manufacturing firm with the last name "King" killed by his brother who then marries his brother's widow. The son of the first man is handsome and broody. The broody son is being pursued by a girl whose father is stabbed to death in the episode, and has university friend who is trying to help him and keeps trying to persuade him to leave the emotional madhouse he is in. There is also a play within the episode as well.
• Dominatrix: In "Crime and Punishment", one of the suspects is secretly a dominatrix; operating her service under the cover of a mobile beauty salon.
• Don't Come A-Knockin': In "Country Matters", The Vicar confesses to meeting her (married) lover in his van in a field. Although she claims they were just talking, the flashback shows the van start rocking almost as soon as they get in.
• Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off!: In "Blood Will Out", the Victim of the Week is a bully who thrashes his stepdaughter with belt.
• Doomed Appointment: In "The Noble Art", one of the suspects finds her flat broken in to and ransacked. She calls Barnaby and tells him she will tell everything about what is going on, but that she is too scared to stay in her flat, and arranges to meet Barnaby at the statue of a local boxer. As she hangs up, she hears someone entering the flat. Barnaby and Jones wait at the statue and, when she doesn't show up, go to her flat and find her dead.
• Down to the Last Play: In "Last Man Out", an undercover Jones wins the cricket match for his team by hitting a six off the last ball, despite having been knocked unconscious with a cricket bat earlier in the game.
• Dramatic Drop: In "Sting of Death", a milkman discovers the first Body of the Week, which is covered in bees, and drops the basket of milk bottles he is holding. The bottles shatter dramatically when the basket hits the ground.
• Dress Hits Floor:
  • Happens in "The Curse of the Ninth" as young woman prepares to take a shower, unaware that an intruder has just broken into her home.
  • Happens in the "Point Of Balance," as one of the dancers goes to take a shower, then the camera pans to the secret spy camera someone has hidden in the bedroom....
• Drinking on Duty: Every single episode involves Barnaby and his sergeant having a pint. Gotta wonder if they might solve the mysteries faster if they weren't perma-buzzed...
• Driver Faces Passenger: Troy sometimes does this with realistic results (see below).
• Drives Like Crazy: It's a wonder Barnaby kept letting Sgt. Troy drive.
  Barnaby: Troy! ... You were driving on the wrong side of the road.
• Driven to Suicide: On several occasions, including the pilot, the murderer ends up offing themselves before Barnaby can arrest them.
• Dry Crusader: A sect of these appear in "The Night of the Stag".
• Dying Declaration of Love: In "Schooled in Murder", Helen tells Jim she loves him right before they're both trampled to death.
• Ear Ache: The third Victim of the Week in "Blood Wedding" is killed by having a hatpin thrust into her ear.
• Easter Egg: There are 20 Easter eggs in the 20th anniversary episode "Death Of The Small Coppers." Each one references a previous episode's mystery or murder.
• Edible Bludgeon: In "Schooled in Murder", the first Victim of the Week is pinned beneath a set of shelves and has a large wheel of cheese dropped on her head.
• The Eeyore: The Reverend Giles Shawcross in "The Sword of Guillaume".
• Embarrassing Hobby: Troy secretly collected a comic called The Hawk which he was embarrassed about. Inspector Barnaby did not seem to mind when he found out, although he thought Troy was a bit stupid for keeping it secret.
• Empathy Doll Shot: In "A Sacred Trust", a flashback to a mercenary attack on an African village shows a girl dropping a doll that is then trampled by one of the soldiers.
• Enfant Terrible: At least two episodes have had children as the murderer (though one just masterminded the whole thing using his mentally-retarded uncle to do the killing).
• Enhance Button: Usually Averted due to the show's rather classic detective approach. There's one in "Days of Misrule", though.
• Entitled Bastard: A common trait among the gentry and "old families" of Midsomer County. In one episode, one such gentleman brushes off accusations of conspiracy to commit murder by saying that, as a scion of England's old wealthy families, "we make our own rules." (And he has nothing on the episode's murderer.)
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: The episode "The House in the Woods" is driven by this trope. A murderer is shielded by his twin brother, who bitterly complains that the murderer was "born wrong" and can't help being what he is. He even Took The Heat and served his brother's prison sentence for killing a police officer, then doesn't defend himself against further murder charges that his brother frames him for. For his pains, the murderer tries to garrote him as soon as he stops being a useful scapegoat.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: In “Blood On The Saddle” Susan Fincher seduced Adam Burbage, taking advantage of his love of Westerns and the Old West meaning that he secretly owned and knew how to use several illegal guns, to murder her husband and anyone else who stood in her way of gaining the disputed land in Ford Forley; planning to simply have Adam take the fall. However, she underestimated how unstable Adam was, thus upon realising she’s betrayed him Adam turns up intending to kill her next. She’s only saved by the intervention of Inspector Barnaby and Sergent Jones.
• Erotic Asphyxiation: One Jerkass cigarette executive turns out to be into this, as revealed by his wife. As there was a recent strangling recalling a similar series or crimes decades ago, it's yet another reason to suspect him. The murderer was actually his boss, who murdered his blackmailer and tried to pin it on the previous killer, a hotel owner who ended up stabbed in the shower by his mother when she thought he'd started killing again.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Barnaby gets a lot of these from offhand remarks by his wife or daughter.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • One murderer takes a small boy who he knows to be the witness to his crime out on a boat ride. Then Barnaby has his "Eureka!" Moment and heads for the dock, expecting the worst... only to find the kid unharmed, with the murderer saying he couldn't kill him.
  • In "Painted in Blood", the two corrupt NIS officers are pissed that their also corrupt superior murdered a fellow officer who refused to be part of their scheme. They wanted to steal another suspect's ill gotten money, but wanted no violence towards innocent people.
• Everybody Did It: In "The Scarecrow Murders", instead of the usual one murderer, there were three working in concert. They had met in an online support group for gamblers and, on discovering they had all had their lives ruined by one particular online gambling company, moved to the village where it was based to extract revenge. Each of them killed one of the principals involved in the company, and teamed up in an attempt to kill the last but were arrested by Barnaby and Winter. They attempted to dress the murders up as the work of serial killer, but the methods of killing were so different that Barnaby was convinced there had to be more than one killer.
• Everybody Has Lots of Sex: Illicit affairs probably make up half the secrets Barnaby uncovers.
• Everyone Is a Suspect: Almost everyone in "Blood Will Out" has a motive for killing Hector Bridges.
• Evil Brit: Pretty much everybody but the recurring characters is a lying, perverted, murdering hypocrite.
• Evilutionary Biologist: "Master Class": An elderly piano virtuoso takes a talented young girl under his wings. It turns out that she is secretly his daughter from an incestuous relationship, and that he wishes to conceive a genetically superior child with her to save Britain from degeneracy.
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: In "Fit for Death", Miranda Bedford has been writing a novel for decades: to the point that many people don't believe it actually exists. Towards the end of the episode, another character attempts to destroy the manuscript (thinking it may contain incriminating information) only to discover all he has destroyed is her handwritten copy. The novel has been sold to a publisher, and her transcriber has been delivering each chapter as it is finished.invoked
• Facial Horror: In "The Stitcher's Society", the third Victim of the Week is killed when one barrel of his shotgun is stuffed with rags, causing it to backfire in face. The Coroner Fleur Perkins comments that there wasn't much left of his face afterwards.
• Faked Kidnapping: In "Faithful Unto Death"
• Faking and Entering: In "Drawing the Dead", the wife of one Victim of the Week discovered her husband's body and realised that her son had killed his father. She attempts to disguise the murder as a burglary gone wrong. Barnaby's "Eureka!" Moment comes when a witness describes hearing the sound of breaking glass after she heard the scream of the woman discovering the body.
• Faking the Dead: In "Habeus Corpus", 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.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: The third Victim of the Week in "Let Us Prey" is shackled to a bed and then impaled by a falling chandelier.
• False Confession: In "Death of a Hollow Man", Colin Smy confesses to killing Esslyn after he thought he saw his son David change the blade of the razor used. He shortly afterwards withdraws the confession after David is cleared.
• Family Relationship Switcheroo: In "Death and the Divas", it is revealed that when a younger sister had an illegitimate baby, her older married sister registered the baby as hers and raised the girl as her own.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Downplayed. in "The Ballad of Midsomer County", Danny Carver isn't keen on his daughter Melody becoming a famous folk singer as he worries it will change her irrevocably. He comes around at the end of the episode. Ironically, Melody's real father probably wouldn't have minded.
• Fatal Method Acting: In "Death of a Hollow Man" the actor playing Salieri in a production of Amadeus accidentally cuts his own throat when the prop razor he was supposed to use is switched out for a real one backstage. For extra irony, Salieri in the play survives having his throat cut. invoked
• Faux Affably Evil: A classic example is Sam Quested the main killer, in "Night of the Stag". He has the thinnest veneer of Affably Evil charm.
• Feedback Rule: In "The Dark Rider", Sarah Barnaby is plagued by feedback while attempting to narrate the Civil War reenactment. She keeps yelling at her sound engineer Andy to fix the problem.
• Femme Fatale Spy: Alice Krige's character in "Secrets and Spies". Trained by MI6 to setup Honey Traps.
• A Fête Worse than Death: In the episode "The Straw Woman".
• Fictional Painting: In "The Black Book", the sale of a previously unknown painting by an 18th-century painter sends Barnaby into an investigation of murders as well as art forgery. The episode features an entire fictional catalog of paintings by this artist.
• Fictional Province: The show is set in the fictional Midsomer County.
• Fingertip Drug Analysis: In "Happy Families", Winter tests a bottle of poison he finds in the kitchen by dipping his finger it and touching it to his tongue. It turns out to be a prop for the murder mystery game that was supposed to be played at the party.
• Flat Joy: One episode centers around the filming of a Scarlet Pimpernel movie. When the guillotine falls on an aristocrat, the revolutionaries have less-than-enthusiastic reactions.
• Fleeting Passionate Hobbies: It seems every other episode opens with Barnaby getting dragged to his wife's latest hobby group. Given that the episode then reveals they're all a bunch of immoral murderers, adulterers and thieves, it's no wonder she ends up looking for a new one.
• Food Slap:
  • "Not In My Back Yard" opens with a heated argument about an experimental design house being built in a traditional village where a woman hurls a glass of champagne in the architect's face. Needless to say, she becomes the first Victim of the Week.
  • In "Death in Chorus", a dispute between two choir directors erupts into a brawl when one of them (played by Peter Capaldi) throws a drink in the other's face in the pub.
• Footprints of Muck: In "The Great and the Good", the murderer uses the schoolteacher's boots to plant muddy bootprints on her doorstep as part of a Gaslighting scheme to convince her that she might be the killer. Circumstances intervene to make the bootprints less effective than they might have been, but seeds of doubt are planted in her mind.
• Force Feeding: Used as a murder method in "The Lions of Causton". The second Victim of the Week is stunned, and then the killer pours molten chocolate down his throat until till he drowns.
• Foreshadowing: In "They Seek Him There," one of the Victim of the Week plays a French Noble who is guillotined in a film shoot. Three guesses as to how they are murdered later on.
• Forklift Fu: In "Sauce for the Goose", Victim of the Week Dexter Lockwood is crushed by a forklift before being dumped in a sterilizer.
• Freudian Excuse: Often a factor for a Sympathetic Murderer, ranging from taking revenge on those who'd terrorised them as children, or were raised in particularly hostile environments.
  • Nastily subverted, however, in "Death and Dreams", where the someone appears to have a trope-type Freudian Excuse, but doesn't...The three children of Banraby's psychiatrist friend saw their father die in a climbing accident, which we're lead to believe is the cause of their obsession with keeping their mother with them. Then it turns out the two older children killed their father for daring to be affectionate with their mother!
• Frying Pan of Doom:
  • In "Sins of Commission", an intruder in the hall is knocked out by the housekeeper wielding a frying pan.
  • In "Last Year's Model", the Victim of the Week is murdered by being bludgeoned to death with a heavy saucepan.
• Full-Boar Action: In "Wild Harvest", the first Victim of the Week is tied up in a forest, doused with truffle oil, and left to be gored to death by a wild boar
• Gaslighting: "Beyond the Grave", as well as "The Great and the Good".
• Geographic Flexibility: The villages often gain features and places previously unseen or unheard of. The series is filmed in locations all around England and Wales. It shows. But, surprisingly, it mostly averts California Doubling. The use of this trope is to be expected, given how the series is one of the Long Runners of British TV and is set in a small fictional English administrative region with a predominantly rural, old-timey character.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Actually averted with Troy, who's a bit of a homophobe and never considers lesbians as arousing.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Although the series has never shied away from depicting some spectacularly nasty murders, viewers are generally spared the worst of it. "The Sword of Guillaume", however, averts this trope to the point of horror.
• Grammar Correction Gag: In "Death and Dust", a woman (a retired English teacher) receives an anonymous note, warning her about her fiancé's past affairs. The note turns out to be from her children who do not want her to remarry. When she finds out, she delivers a stinging response that ends with:
  "And you don't need a comma between 'Hepworth' and 'and'. It's completely redundant."
• The Grand Hunt: In "Death of a Stranger", Barnaby investigates a murder that takes place during a fox hunt, and has a village full of toffs as suspects.
• Grave Robbing: In "Habeus Corpus", the body of a dead man is stolen from his bed minutes after he is pronounced dead, and then the body of a woman who died five months previously is dug up and stolen from her grave.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: In "Not In My Back Yard", the first Victim of the Week is done in with a broken bottle.
  • In "Hidden Depths", the guy is tied down to the lawn while the murderer uses a small catapult to hurl filled bottles at him. His wife sees the whole thing and corrects the murderer's aim.
• Gulliver Tie-Down: In "Small Mercies", the first Body of the Week is found in a miniature village: staked down and tied to the ground like Gulliver.
• Hand Gagging: In "Blood Wedding", the murderer clamps a hand over the mouth of the third Victim of the Week before killing her by thrusting a hatpin into her ear.
• Hand of Death
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: In "The Oblong Murders", a woman walks in on Jones while he is in the shower and is obviously enjoying the view. He hurriedly grabs a washcloth to cover himself.
• Handy Cuffs: In "Death in a Chocolate Box", Tom for some reason—possibly lingering respect as the murderer was someone he had once looked up to—handcuffs the murderer the with their hands in front of them. The murderer feigns sickness, then whacks Tom in the face and then dashes away, on to the Railroad Tracks of Doom.
• Happier Home Movie: In "Hidden Depths", a has been celebrity who used to host a TV quiz show is shown at home watching a video of a command performance where he got to meet Princess Diana. He constantly rewinding and re-watching the part where Diana shakes his hand.
• Happily Married: Tom Barnaby and his wife Joyce, as well as John Barnaby and Sarah are apparently the only happily married couples in Midsomer.
  • There are a few other Happily Married couples, they're often the murderers.
• Headless Horseman: In "The Dark Rider", a character masquerades as the headless horseman from local legend in order to frighten the aristocrats.
• Head-Tiltingly Kinky:
  • In "Dead in the Water", Barnaby is watching a pornographic video that was used to blackmail one of the suspects. Joyce walks in and asks him what he's watching. As he tells her, she starts tilting her head with her eyes glued to the screen. She then asks him if he fancies an early night.
  • Also the footage of Jenny Frazer in "Secrets and Spies", going off Jones's facial reactions.
• Heir Club for Men: The murders in "The Sword of Guillaume" ultimately stem from Lady Matilda's bizarre attempt to secure an heir for her son, who is a brain-damaged quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair following an accident. The plan involved arranging a marriage then extracting sperm to impregnate the wife.
• Hello, Attorney!: Rex Masters' solicitor in "The Animal Within" definitely played up to this, even if she was on the slightly more older side of the trope. She even let Rex take some sexy pictures of her for her husband.
• Hero Stole My Bike: In "The Glitch", Tom steals the murder weapon (a rally car) in order to get to where the killer is about to strike next as fast as possible.
• Hidden Depths: Troy questions a South American maid in Spanish in Strangler's Wood, much to Barnaby's surprise.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: In "The Sleeper Under the Hill", a criminal hides a stolen painting on his wall, claiming that is a forgery of the famous painting.
• High-Voltage Death:
  • In "The Dagger Club", the first two victims are electrocuted by booby-trapped roulette wheels.
  • In "With Baited Breath", the first Victim of the Week is killed when an obstacle on an endurance trail that is set to give a mild electric shock is cranked to the maximum while he is in contact with it.
  • In "A Tale of Two Hamlets" the second victim is electrocuted on his exercise bike.
• Hillbilly Moonshiner: The British equivalent (yokel moonshiner?) appears in "Night of the Stag", brewing a particularly potent hooch known as 'the Beast'.
• His Name Is...: Classic case in "The Glitch". The mechanic leaves a message for a friend indicating he knows who the murderer is, but he's murdered before they can talk. He leaves a cryptic Dying Clue at least.
• Historical Longevity Joke: Barnaby once asks his sergeant how old he thinks Barnaby is. He replies that he's done speed dating, not carbon dating.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Murderers with a sense of poetic justice deliberately invoke this. For example, a malicious game show host who thinks of himself as a wine connoisseur gets a taste of his own medicine when his victims force him to take part in a deadly quiz show where they slowly drown him. In wine.
• Hollywood Darkness: Given the large amount of nefarious activities that takes place in Midsomer, it's not surprising that a lot of said activities take place at night. While very occasionally a blue filter is used, many of the night scenes are actually shot at night, but with strong ambient lighting that would in reality make our local criminals very conspicuous. If you imagine a full moon turned up by a factor of a thousand, you'll get a general idea.
• Hollywood Silencer: In "Murder By Magic", one of the victims is shot with a revolver that is later stated to have had a sound suppressor on it to explain why no one heard the shot.
• Home Counties: Where Midsomer district is supposedly located (or is it set in The West Country?)
• Home Nudist: One such person appears in an episode, to Barnaby's surprise and Troy's horror. Then it turns out the guy is an outdoor nudist as well, which compromised the murderer's plans as he thought he'd been spotted
• Horrible Judge of Character: A downplayed example, but in several cases Tom Barnaby overlooks the murderer as a suspect due to personal attachment and invariably ends up with a Broken Pedestal, though he's at least aware of it enough to catch himself in "The Noble Art" and point out that he's been dismissing his friend Gerald as a suspect. Gerald is of course the murderer.
• Hot Librarian: Sarah Sharp, the village librarian in "The Silent Land". She deliberately dresses to invoke this trope because she knows the effect it has on one particular man who is obsessed with her.
• Human Sacrifice: The killings in "Murder by Magic" ultimately centre around an ancient human sacrifice, and someone's attempt to recreate in the present-day although this is a misdirection.
• Hunting "Accident": "Ghosts of Christmas Past". During a Christmas family reunion, there's a pheasant shoot scheduled. The unsuspecting victim picks up the gun, says it feels heavier than usual, pulls the trigger and Kablooie. The cartridges that slipped into her pocket were too small, meaning they slid down the barrel and didn't fire (or eject) until the victim loaded another set in thinking the last shot was a dud. What's worse is that, according to The Coroner, this is actually a very common accident when hunting is involved. Had the threat for there to be two victims not been made, it would've been ruled a genuine accident
• Identical Grandson: Relatives of two characters from "The Killings At Badger's Drift" appear in "Dead Letters", played by the same actors.
• If I Can't Have You…: A common motive, particularly for murderers foolish or unlucky enough to fall in love with the local womaniser/Gold Digger/fly-by-night.
• I Have Your Wife: In "Faithful Unto Death", the wife of a local businessman is kidnapped. Her husband is sent photographs of her bound to a chair and looking bruised and battered along with ransom demands (and the usual exhortation not to contact the police). The wife is actually the mastermind of the scheme, and is using it to extract cash from her husband before he is murdered.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Exploited in "Send in the Clowns", which opens with Les Morrison trying to prank Terry Bellini during a performance with a prop gun, only for Bellini to be fatally shot through the heart. Everything appears to point to Morrison having grabbed a loaded gun without realizing it. However, a forensic report reveals that the bullet was indeed blank — the round that killed Bellini was from a rifle, which was shot simultaneously with Morrison's handgun and at a similar angle to give the illusion that he had a live gun.
• I Know Kung Fu: A particularly silly example occurs in "Death in a Chocolate Box". Barnaby and Jones enter a room to find the elderly Lord Holm assaulting a woman. Lord Holm drops in a boxing stance:
  Lord Holm: I used to box at Eton!
  Sgt. Jones: Yeah? I did karate at Causton Comp! (immediately grapples and immobilizes Lord Holm)
• I'll Take Two Beers Too: The episode "Judgement Day" had Joyce (who's a judge in a Perfect Village competition) in a bar with a fellow judge who ordered two large whiskies and soda, then asked Joyce if she wanted anything.
• Idyllic English Village: The titular county of Midsomer is filled with numerous villages, perhaps most famously Badgers Drift, all of which invoke this trope to varying degrees. The series overall severely plays with the image, as this idyllic front is usually presented as merely a cover for hotbeds of corruption and petty rivalries, which often result in numerous murders.
• Impairment Shot: Happens when the first Victim of the Week is poisoned in "The Killings of Copenhagen".
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • The third Victim of the Week in "The Ballad of Midsomer County" is killed by having a beach umbrella thrust through his chest.
  • One victim falls from a sawed floor onto a farming device, sending three or four spikes through his torso.
  • The first Victim of the Week (A pre The Lord of the Rings fame Orlando Bloom) in "Judgement Day," is done in by a pitchfork to the chest. Within the first 10 minutes.
  • The second Victim of the Week in "A Vintage Murder", is pushed out of a hotel window and lands onto the pointed wooden stake that is holding up the flower trellis, killing him instantly.
• Implausible Deniability: One guy is caught in bed with a young man. His next words during the interrogation are "I'm not gay".
• Impoverished Patrician: The Inkpen family in "Garden of Death", which had to sell their manor (which had been in the family since the reformation) 25 years earlier (but were able to buy it back five years before the episode). They got the money to buy back the manor from the father of a bishop, which (unknownst to the bishop) had a illegimate child with Elspeth Inkpen-Thomas.
• Improbable Weapon User: The murderer in "Murder on St. Malley's Day" turns out to use a giant decorative spoon as a bludgeoning weapon to crack open the skulls of his victims.
• Incompatible Orientation:
  • Rosemary from "Dance of the Dead" was in love with Carol. The murderer couldn't stand the sight of the murder victim being someone else, especially someone of the opposite sex. Unable to handle the heartbreak, the murderer attempted to carry out the opening murder by knocking the couple out, placing them in the car, and suffocate them with toxic fumes. She reveals as Tom is interrogating her that she brought Carol's body back to her house and buried it so that they were still together.
  • It's implied during his first episode as Tom's replacement that John has a gay neighbor who was trying to pick him up. When John mentioned his wife would be moving into their new house in a few days, the neighbor laughs in embarrassment. It's unknown if John knew his neighbor was interested in him or was just being friendly.
• Inescapable Net: In "A Rare Bird", the killer uses birding nets to entangle his first two victims before killing them. Justified as birding nets have a very fine, almost unbreakable mesh, and the killer only needs them to hold long enough for him to deliver the killing blow/shot.
• Inheritance Murder: One episode had a rich Jerkass tell two or three people they'd be the sole inheritors of his fortune (without informing the others), just so that they'd show up to the reading and discover they got nothing. Since he's episode's first victim, and some of the claimants follow him, there is naturally suspicion about this trope being in play.
• Instrument of Murder: The first Victim of the Week in "The Curse of the Ninth" is a violinist who is strangled with one of his own violin strings. The second is a violist who has the strings of his viola covered in powered strychnine, causing him to inhale a lethal dose as he plays.
• Intoxication Ensues: In "Faithful Unto Death," Barnaby unwittingly eats some cake laced with marijuana. Hilarity Ensues.
• Irish Priest: Father Behan in "A Sacred Trust". Being Catholic, however, does not spare him from the same fate as so many of his Anglican counterparts.
• Iron Maiden: In "Talking to the Dead", one of the victims is murdered by being shoved in an iron maiden that has a mechanism that automatically extends the spikes.
• Is This Thing Still On?: In "The Ballad of Midsomer County", a murderer is accidentally Caught on Tape when he commits a murder in a recording studio; not realising that the victim had been recording at the time.
• It Always Rains at Funerals: In "Four Funerals and a Wedding", it is raining heavily at the third eponymous funeral. So heavily that the rain washes away the dirt in the grave that is concealing the body of the next victim: the woman who was supposed to be officiating at the funeral service.
• It Tastes Like Feet: While drinking bad coffee in "Down Among the Dead Men", Barnaby wonders if he is drinking coffee or silt.
• Jack the Ripoff: In the episode "Echoes of the Dead", Barnaby recognises the murders as recreations of famous murders of the early 20th century, except for the last one, which he's not able to place. When the murderer is caught, Barnaby asks about it, and the murderer shrugs and says, "I was in a hurry and I couldn't think of anything".
• Javelin Thrower: In "Written in the Stars", the second Victim of the Week is done in with a thrown spear using a stolen Bronze Age spearhead; which is unusual even for Midsomer.
• Joggers Find Death: In "Murder by Magic", the second Victim of the Week is discovered by one of the suspects out jogging in the woods.
• Jurisdiction Friction: When the UK's secret service gets involved in a case involving an ex-spy, Barnaby's job becomes infinitely more difficult, as they can cut off his investigation at any time, with no reason required or given.
• Kid Detective: The two kids in "Worm In The Bud," who think that trying to investigate a murder will be fun. Their parent's are not amused, and try and talk them out of it, by telling them it's dangerous. However a couple of clues they find do help one villager put the pieces together, and they actually work who the murderer is before Barnaby does.They end up shooting the murderer themselves in front of Barnaby.
• Kids Are Cruel: A reoccuring trope where the now-grown bullies are targeted due to bullying a peer when they were children, as in "Left For Dead," when the bullies torment, beat and almost drown a boy who wanted to join their friend group.
  • The villain in "Bantling Boy" manipulates his mentally-challenged uncle into three murders and tries to go for a fourth.
  • The Moore siblings in "Death and Dreams" remorselessly murder four people, including their own father.
• Killer Outfit: In "Till Death Do Us Part", the first Victim of the Week is murdered when the killer tightens the laces of the corset to the point where her chest cannot expand enough for her to breathe and she asphyxiates.
• Kinky Spanking: There is an episode where three women offer specific roleplaying sex scenarios, one of which involves the woman finding the guy in her stables and deciding to punish the thief then and there with her riding crop. Crosses over with Comedic Spanking when Barnaby finds a client while holding the crop. The client, unaware the dominatrix is unavailable due to the murder investigation, sees nothing wrong and bends over, giggling all the while.
• Knife-Throwing Act: In "Death in Disguise", Barnaby is puzzled by how the Victim of the Week was stabbed while all of the suspects were on the other side of the room. After a "Eureka!" Moment while watching a game of darts, he realises the victim was killed with a thrown knife, and then learns that one suspect had been a knife-thrower in a circus.
• Knights and Knaves: In "The Death of the Small Coppers", DS Winter, who hates riddles, is captured by the killer who places him in a Death Trap and offers to let him live if he can solve this puzzle in five minutes. Ironically, one of the suspects had offered to tell him the answer to this earlier in the episode.
• Lady Drunk: Felicity Gamelin (mother of Suhami and ex-wife of Guy Gamelin) in "Death in Disguise". Her first scene has her passed out on the couch, with a opened bottle of champagne at the table.
• Lead Police Detective: Inspector Barnaby, who eventually retires and passes the baton to Inspector Barnaby.
• Letterbox Arson: In "Murder of Innocence", a murder is attempted by pouring petrol through the letterbox of a cottage and following it with a flaming rag.
• Life-or-Death Question: In the episode "Death of the Small Coppers", the killer of the week attempts to pose one to DS Winter, by asking him the riddle of the two guards. He ends up giving the correct answer (with the assistance of several bystanders), only for the killer to not stick to his end of the bargain. DS Winter gets saved in the nick of time by one of the bystanders, nevertheless.
• Life's Work Ruined: In "Orchis Fatalis", someone takes revenge on an orchid collector by pouring weedkiller over his priceless orchid collection.
• Lights Off, Somebody Dies: In "Written in the Stars", the Victim of the Week is part of a gathering observing a total eclipse. As the hill is plunged into total darkness by the eclipse, he is bashed over the head by a rock. A bystander screams as the sunlight returns and she sees the body.
• Like Brother and Sister: DS Nelson and Kate Wilding. They're best of friends, but Kate eventually worries she's stifling him and ships him with a junior policewoman.
• Little Dead Riding Hood: In "The Ghost of Causton Abbey", Barnaby is reading Little Red Riding Hood to his daughter. As he reads, the scene cuts to a female suspect wearing a long red scarf/cape being stalked by the murderer through the overgrown gardens of the abbey at night. Barnaby's narration of the story continues over the top of the action as the woman is killed.
• Loan Shark: In "The Dogleg Murders", Whiteoaks Golf Club steward Eileen Fountain has loaned huge sums of money at exorbitant interest rates to many of the club's members to cover illegal gambling debts; if they fall behind on their payments, she sends her son Colin after them to beat them up.
• Locked in a Freezer: In "The Lions of Causton", the first Victim of the Week is shut in a cryo room intended to treat soft tissue injuries. Patients are usually subjected to -60 degrees for 5 minutes. The killer sets the temperature to -150 degrees and leaves the victim in there overnight.
• Long List: At the start of "The Killings of Copenhagen", Sarah unfolds the instructions for assemble the crib; which just keeps unfolding till it reaches the floor.
• Long-Runners: Twenty-two years and counting.
• Lost in Character: Revealed to be the case in “Blood On the Saddle.” Originally the killers outlaw persona of Billy the Kid for the Old West show was simply a form of escapism from there otherwise dull life. However, following committing several murders in the role, by the end he honestly believes he is Billy the Kid. In the episode’s climax, he hallucinates that the Fincher farm is a saloon and believes Inspector Barnaby is Marshal Wyatt Earp.
• Love Makes You Crazy: The motive in "Breaking the Chain". The killer sets out to eliminate everyone they see as standing between their lover and success; including his brother.
• Luck-Based Search Technique: In "Faithful Unto Death", Troy is searching an attic when backs into a wall, and falls straight through the secret door he was searching for.
• Madwoman in the Attic: As alluded to in the title "Left For Dead", a kid who was seemingly killed 19 years prior turns out to be alive, brain-damaged, and locked in a cellar convinced by a couple that he was their lost child. When he finally figures out his true identity, he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Magic Brakes: "Death and the Divas".
• Make It Look Like an Accident:
  • In "The Oblong Murders", one killing was committed by loosening the gas line to the stove on a boat, causing the boat to fill with gas. The killer then called the victim as she arrived back on the boat, knowing that she always lit a cigarette while talking on the phone. Result: one 'accidental' explosion.
  • In "Send in the Clowns", Terry Bellini is shot mid-performance with a hidden rifle, fired at just the right angle and time to give the illusion that Les Morrison accidentally killed him with a loaded gun during a prank Gone Horribly Wrong.
• Make It Look Like a Struggle: In "Dead in the Water", a jeweler conspires with some of his friends to rob his own store. The jeweler is left Bound and Gagged in a chair in the vault, but one of the robbers decides to make the scenario look more realistic by smacking him hard in the face.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: In "Death in a Chocolate Box", a woman who was cuckolding her husband in a big way was doing it by getting arrested on a Friday night, and then having sex with police officers in the cells.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: A plot point - and the motive - in Vixen's Run.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
  • The baby in "Second Sight", whose mother insists she can't possibly have psychic powers although her father's family claim they do, screams her head off every time she's in the vicinity of someone who means harm (or her mother thinks is a threat).
  • In "Talking to the Dead", Barnaby repeatedly accuses supposed psychic medium Cyrus LeVanu — who claims to be having visions of the Monksbarton Abbey massacre, where all the monks were hunted down and killed by Henry VIII's soldiers, and who has been poking his nose into the murder investigation of the week — of being a fraud who preys on people's anxiety and pain. It gradually becomes clear to the audience, however, that at the very least LeVanu's belief in his supposed abilities is real, and he has been having visions of the massacre — though whether he's actually seeing ghosts or just deluded is left ambiguous. At the end, LeVanu sees a ghostly soldier attack him and cut his head off, which causes him to die of fright.
• McGuffin: In "Shot at Dawn", Tom Barnaby has proof of who the murderer is in a box, and even refers to it as a "McGuffin" when Ben Jones asks him what it is.
• Meaningful Name: One Posthumous Character named Roger fathered at least four children, only one of them legitimate. As Scott so tactfully puts it, "Roger by name and roger by nature".
• Medication Tampering: The second Victim of the Week in "Death in Disguise" is killed when the murderer deliberately withholds their heart medication as they are suffering a heart attack.
• Mercy Kill: While still murder under UK law, the killer in "Blue Herrings" was actually performing one of these. The killer's aunt faced a slow, undignified and agonising death from her terminal illness, and as the closest thing to a daughter the older woman had, her niece couldn't bear to watch her suffer.
• Mistaken for Servant: Troy does this to a local lord in "Market for Murder".
• The Mistress: As likely as not, a mystery might involve this or adultery.
• Mockspiracy: In one of the episodes, a Conspiracy Theorist believes the Pudding Club (an association of college students and alumni, started when the students pooled their funds to afford desserts) is an Illuminati-esque organization that secretly controls the world. Naturally, this is dismissed by Barnaby, even when the theorist is murdered. It turns out the club is a conspiracy, but nothing so grand as world domination: the students tend to end up in diplomatic positions around the world, and use them to smuggle cultural artifacts back to the school, which sells them off to keep itself funded.
• Molotov Cocktail: In "Left for Dead", the murderer attempts to kill one victim by firebombing her house with a Molotov cocktail. The attempt fails, but only just, and the victim is hospitalized.
• Monochrome Casting: The producer, Brian Tru-May, voluntarily stepped down for telling the Radio Times that the series had no characters portrayed by non-white actors because the show was a "bastion of Englishness". When challenged about the characterization, Tru-May responded that he was simply "politically incorrect". The very next series after Tru-May left the show, a British Asian actor portrayed a lead role.
• Monster Clown: In "Send in the Clowns", Midsomer is terrorized by sightings of a scary looking clown roaming the streets carrying a bunch of balloons (or a lollipop) in one hand, and a machete in the other.
• Monster Protection Racket: In "Crime and Punishment", the neighbourhood watch in a remote village faces having its funding cut as crime has dropped 70%. The organizer of the watch bullies one of her subordinates into staging a series of burglaries so the watch can justify its continued existence.
• Mr. Fanservice: Winter, who seems to have a least one Shirtless Scene per series.
• Mummies at the Dinner Table: Honoria Lyddiard from the first series episode "Written in Blood" still keeps the corpse of her dead brother Ralph Lyddiard in her house, despite him dying several years earlier of aids. Honoria's sister in law (and Ralph's wife) Amy is understandably horrified of this when she discovers it.
• Murder by Cremation: "Secrets and Spies"
• Murder by Inaction:
  • There's one, "Hidden Depths," where a snobby wine lover is tied to his lawn while the murderer is catapulting wine bottles at him. His wife has been taken to the window and her wheelchair disabled in order to make her watch the whole thing (though the murderer remains unidentified). When she sees the bottle miss, she calls out corrections in aim to the murderer. The next morning, the police arrive but she of course didn't see anything.
  • The second Victim of the Week in "Death in Disguise" is killed when the murderer deliberately withholds their heart medication as they suffering a heart attack.
• Murder by Mistake:
  • The first victim in "The Glitch".
  • And the first victim in "A Sacred Trust". As Barnaby points out, one nun in glasses looks much like another in the dark.
  • The first victim in "The Maid in Splendour", who was in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong clothes.
  • The victim in "Death and Dust" is run down because he is driving the intended target's car.
  • The second victim in "Send in the Clowns" is killed due to a retractable sword used in a magic act as part of a circus being exchanged for a real one, resulting in him being stabbed during the act. Problem is, the person who was supposed to be doing the act (the intended victim) volunteered a friend of his to do the act instead as part of a publicity stunt, being none the wiser.
  • The third victim in "With Baited Breath" is killed because he is wearing the very distinctive hat of the intended target.
  • The second Victim of the Week in "Judgement Day" dies after drinking poisoned wine meant for another person.
• Murder by Remote Control Vehicle: In "Shot at Dawn", the murderer uses remote control vehicles several times, either by crashing a vehicle the victim is in or using a vehicle to chase someone down.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Many episodes feature people who think this.
• Murder Simulators: Discussed and played literally in "Bantling Boy".
• Mushroom Samba: In the episode "Faithful Unto Death", straight-laced Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby tries some (special) brownies while interviewing a possible witness and subsequently comes over all giggly and walks along the top of an ornamental wall, all the while attracting confused looks from his Sergeant and the Coroner.
• Mutually Unequal Relationship: In one episode where a school headmaster telling everyone about how he was childhood friends with one of the school's board members, to his irritation (he seems to have viewed the man as The Team Wannabe).
• My God, What Have I Done?: The killer in "A Vintage Murder" has this reaction when she finds out who really killed her daughter in a hit-and-run, meaning she murdered two innocent people.

Tropes N-Z

• Naked Apron: "Destroying Angel". Barnaby arrives to question a middle-aged, male suspect only to find him doing a spot of baking wearing nothing but an apron.
• Never a Runaway: "With Baited Breathe" features a variation, the entire village of Solomon Gorge believes Lola Silverman ran away after she left with her suitcase following a major fight with her mother Isobel ten years ago. Isobel likewise regularly receives postcards from all over the world from Lola to tell that she's safely traveling. In reality Lola was killed in a road accident whilst coming back to her mother, with the killer hiding the body and writing the postcards to sell the illusion.
• Never Mess with Granny: Especially if she was a secret war hero.
• Never My Fault: The killer in "The Stitcher's Society" really takes the cake, blaming everything on the man she was attempting to frame. When Baranaby arrests her, she says that if her fall guy had just been found guilty and gone to prison like she planned, then she wouldn't have had to murder all of those other people, so the whole thing is really his fault if you think about it.
• Never One Murder:
  • A hallmark of the show, typically there are about three murders an episode, with Barnaby rushing to prevent a fourth at the end of the episode. The following examples are mostly noticable for being exceptions.
  • Subverted in "Painted in Blood," when there really was only one murder.
  • "Dead in the Water" is another exception, although there was a second attempted murder.
  • Also played with in "Blue Herrings". Though there are many deaths, most were natural or accidental. Only one was a murder, and it was played as a Mercy Killing.
  • "Country Matters" also has only a single murder.
  • "Sauce for the Goose" only has one murder as well.
  • Subverted in "Habeas Corpus" which managed to have no murders. At all!
  • Lampshade Hanging on this in "Bad Tidings":
  Sgt Scott: Sir, I just got here, and we already have three bodies.
  DCI Barnaby: It has been remarked upon before, yes.
  • In the atypical episode "Last Year's Model" there is only one murder and that happened ten months prior to to the events of the episode.
  • A BBC radio show called More or Less calculated that Midsomer County's murder rate was on par with Chile and Latvia per a year, and was three times higher than any similar rural English county with the roughly the same population.
• Never Suicide: "Dance with the Dead" begins with what appears to be a Suicide Pact gone wrong. Of course, being Midsomer, it is never suicide.
  • The first Victim of the Week in "Birds Of Prey" looks like he has driven his car into a local lake due to being depressed over his financial situation, but Barnaby is suspicious when he notices that he didn't appear to have washed his hair properly, and is bathroom is spotless clean in an otherwise untidy house.
• New Media Are Evil: "Picture of Innocence". The plot revolves around Digital vs Traditional Photography. Subverted in which both sets of photographers are as bad as each other.
• New Neighbours as the Plot Demands: Many an episode features characters whom Barnaby has known for years, but whom the audience has never seen before and for the most part will never see again.
• Night-Vision Goggles: In "The Christmas Haunting", the killer lures the person they intend to be their final victim into a set of caves, and then turns off the lights and dons a set night-vision so they can pick them off in the darkness. Nelso arrives and, realising what is happening, switches the lights back on, blinding the killer.
• No Badge? No Problem!: One episode has Barnaby be removed from a case because his wife is tangentially connected to it. His replacement being a perfectly intolerable little dipstick, Barnaby gets to the witnesses first without mentioning he's not on the case.
  • In "Picture of Innocence", he's removed because he himself is connected to the case by an attempted Frame-Up. Once again his replacement is intolerable (and seemingly preoccupied planning his wedding) so Barnaby proceeds to get to all the witnesses two steps ahead of the other inspector.
• Nobody Here but Us Statues: In "The Scarecrow Murders", a killer sneaks on to the grounds of The Vicar's mansion and hides by posing as one of the scarecrows set for the festival. When the vicar goes out to check the gate that night, the killer ambushes him.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: A positive example in "Point of Balance". A conman's one moment of genuine altruism, calming down a PTSD victim from a panic attack, is what outs him and prevents him from completing his latest scheme.
• Non-Indicative Name: The village of Upper Warden is down hill, while the village of Lower Warden is up hill.
• Not In My Back Yard: The title (and main theme) of an episode. Unpopular development plans often end in murder in Midsomer.
  • In "Country Matters" a group of locals was willing to go to the European Court of Human Rights in order to stop a supermarket from being built in a village.
• Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon:
  • In the episode "Death of a Hollow Man" where the killer removes the tape from the edge of a cutthroat razor being used in a suicide scene in a play.
  • And again in "The Magician's Nephew", where the fake spikes in a magician's 'Cabinet of Death' are coated in a quick acting poison.
  • And in "Send in the Clowns", the killer sabotages the retraction mechanism in a trick knife used in a sword cabinet routine, resulting in the volunteer from the audience being fatally stabbed. Subverted earlier in the same episode, where it appears that a clown has been shot dead as a result of a prop gun being replaced with a real one — but it turns out that this was only done to scare the victim, and the gun was loaded with blanks. The real killer, who had learned about this plan, used it as cover by shooting the victim with a rifle at the same moment.
  • Then there is "They Seek Him Here", where a film director dies via a guillotine being used as a movie prop, as does the second Victim of the Week.
• Not the First Victim:
  • "The Killings At Badgers Drift" in the very first episode whilst investigating a series of murders in the village, its established that the wealthy Henry Trace's first wife Bella died in a Hunting "Accident" two years previously. We're led to believe that she was killed by Phyliss Cadwell who was besotted with Henry in a moment of desperation. However, at the climax Inspector Tom Barnaby concludes that Phyliss's attempt failed, and Bella was actually murdered by the episodes killer who had their eye on Henry's money.
  • "Death and Dreams" sees Inspector Barnaby investigating a series of garrotings which appear to tie to a respected local psychiatrist who provides support for ex criminals. It's eventually revealed the murders were committed by her three children as the individuals were taking away their mothers attention. It at first seems they were motivated by the death of their father, only for it turn out they murdered him as well for the same reason.
• Obfuscating Disability
• Obfuscating Insanity: In "Talking to the Dead", the murderer pretends to have gone gibberingly mad; having been driven into a dissociative state by something he encountered in the woods. His act is very convincing, and it takes Barnaby some time to rumble him. By the end of the episode (after the murderer confesses), Barnaby starts to think he may no longer be acting and may be genuinely going mad.
• Officer and a Gentleman: The phrase is used when Barnaby figures out one suspect had children not by her husband but his father. He won't tell, leading to her saying the phrase... and it's all moot since one of the daughters was listening at the door.
• Offing the Offspring: The murderer in "Days of Misrule". The kid was such a Jerkass that his dad still manages to be a Sympathetic Murderer.
• Off the Wagon:
  • In "The Creeper", the first Victim of the Week is an alcoholic writer (played by Rik Mayall) who falls off the wagon when his asshole publisher (and former friend) rejects his book idea, and the hands him a bottle of 65 year old brandy. He gets drunk, and several humiliations follow, ending in his murder.
  • In "Night of the Stag", the fanatical leader of the local Dry Crusaders is a recovering alcoholic. He falls off the wagon hard when the local Hillbilly Moonshiner leaves him a jar of the local hooch: an exceptionally powerful brew known as 'the Beast'.
• Off with His Head!:
  • In "Death's Shadow", the first Victim of the Week is decapitated by a single blow from an Indian sword.
  • In "Midsomer Rhapsody" a motorcyclist is decapitated by a length of piano wire strung across the road at neck height.
  • In "The Sword Guillaume", the first two victims are beheaded with a medieval longsword.
  • In "They Seek Him Here", the first victim and second victim are killed with a guillotine.
• Old Cop, Young Cop: Standard formula for a British cop show.
• Old-Fashioned Copper:
  • Inspector Barnaby and pretty much any other standard police detective in Midsomer county. Goes hand in hand with the very British attitude of Doesn't Like Guns.
  • One episode has Scott Cracking Up on learning they're dealing with an annoying suspect. Barnaby stops the car and makes it very clear he won't tolerate that sort of behavior.
• One-Track-Minded Artist: In "Picture of Innocence", one of the photographers' entire body of work consists of photographs of every meal he has eaten. When Joyce comments on how similar all of his photos are, he says that he has eaten the same meal every day for more than a decade.
• Orgy of Evidence: In "Fit for Murder", Barnaby and Jones find a large amount of incriminating evidence when they search the house and vehicle of a pair of suspects. Barnaby points out the murders were methodical and carefully premeditated, and scarcely the work of someone who'd leave incriminating evidence (that they had no reason to keep) where any search would reveal it.
• Paid-for Family: One episode has a woman paid by her clients to act as a loving wife.
• Parental Favoritism: Regularly, especially in upper-class families where the Heir Club for Men is in effect. A particularly sad example is the family in "Habeas Corpus," where the mother clearly favours her son over her daughter...to the point that she let her daughter 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 her son 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.
  • Another sad example is "Garden of Death", where Hilary, the illegitimate daughter of the Inkpen family (who was given up for adoption) is treated like a servant by the other members of the family, including her half-sister. Turns out they only brought her back into the family to use her DNA to blackmail her wealthy paternal grandfather, who wouldn't want people finding out his son had fathered an illegitimate child. When Hilary found out, she snapped and started wiping out the Inkpens in revenge.
• Parental Incest: Heavily implied between the Rainbirds in the pilot.
  • "Master Class": An elderly piano virtuoso takes a talented young girl under his wing. It turns out that she is secretly his daughter from an incestuous relationship, and that he wishes to conceive a genetically superior child with her to save Britain from degeneracy.
  • Played with in "Death in the Slow Lane". A scene between Kate Cameron and her father, Peter Fossett, heavily implies they're sleeping together. They are, but he's not her real father, and they both know it. That said, he did raise her, so there's still the same unhealthy dynamic involved.
• Parental Marriage Veto: In "Vixen's Run", it's mentioned that Lord Freddy forbade his son to marry the housekeeper's daughter. Turns out he had a valid reason: she's also the illegitimate daughter of Freddy's brother, and her mother wanted it to stay a secret.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": In "Market for Murder", the password on the Reading Group's secret share market account is 'Gerald'; the name of the late husband of the group's founder (whom she could not go five minutes without mentioning in conversation). Somewhat more acceptable than normal, given that she was borderline obsessed with his memory and probably could not help herself in using his name as her password.
• The Peeping Tom: In "The Great and the Good", the first victim of the week is a peeping tom who is spying on the attractive local schoolteacher. As his turns out, his voyeurism is only tangentially connected to the reason for his murder, but it does serve as a useful Red Herring.
• The Pen Is Mightier: In "Death by Persuasion", the first Victim of the Week is stabbed in the neck with a poisoned quill pen.
• Phoney Call: In "The Oblong Murders", Jones gets trapped in a bedroom while conducting an undercover investigation. He calls Barnaby to rescue him but — because he cannot let the person he is with know that he is a cop — he pretends to be calling a friend. Calling Barnaby 'matey' initially confuses the Inspector, but he soon figures out what is going on.
• Phony Psychic: In "Things That Go Bump in the Night", one of the suspects is a spirit medium who gives bereaved people messages from Beyond. Barnaby takes it for granted that the whole thing is a con job, and considers the matter settled when he uncovers an arrangement with the local funeral parlour to provide personal details of the recently deceased.
  • Subverted in the episode "Second Sight" when Barnaby shows up one family of faking ESP but then members of a different family in the village are shown to be able to predict many things that come to pass. The fact that this psychic talent seems to be In the Blood helps solve the parentage of one of the murder victims.
• Phony Veteran: A very convincing 'walt', claiming service in an elite unit in Afghanistan, appears in "The Point of Balance". A mistake concerning the nickname of helicopters, and not wearing a decoration he should have been entitled to, arouse the suspicion of a genuine veteran. Afraid of being exposed, and having his schemes exposed, the 'walt' blackmails an ally into killing the veteran for him.
• Pick a Card: In the episode "Ghosts of Christmas Past", a boy who wants to be a magician when he grows up does an actually-quite-clever version of the trick while being interviewed by Barnaby and Scott about the murder, and his explanation of how he did it (including the fact that he arranged matters to have his own choice of card come up at the end) inspires Barnaby's later "Eureka!" Moment.
• Pinned to the Wall:
  • The first Victim of the Week in "Blood Wedding" is pinned to the wall with an antique sword.
  • The second Victim of the Week in "Last Man Out" is nailed to a tree with a cricket stump.
  • The first Victim of the Week in "Death of Small Coppers," is pinned to wall mural of a butterfly (He was a butterfly collector) and then run through with an industrial drill.
• Pizza Boy Special Delivery: Fiona Conway does this (literally with the pizza boy) in "Not In My Back Yard".
• Playing Sick: In "Days of Misrule", Tom attempts to get out of a team-building exercise by claiming to have tendonitis:
  Tom: I think my tendonitis is flaring up again.
  Joyce: It was your other arm before.
• Plot Allergy: In "Red in Tooth & Claw", someone places rabbit fur in the ducts of Cleo Langton's car. Turning on the A.C. system with the windows closed triggers her allergy to rabbits, and someone has removed the allergy medication from her purse, so she dies by respiratory failure.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Troy is homophobic, and his language reflects it. Barnaby doesn't normally let such comments slide (and Troy is usually punished by the plot gods), but even he has his moments.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: DS Winter totally fails to get a Hamlet reference in "The Ghost of Causton Abbey":
  Sylvia Winters: There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.
  DS Winter: It's Jamie actually.
• Pop-Star Composer: Famous English folk singer Seth Lakeman wrote the titular song in "The Ballad of Midsomer County". It was even available to download at one point.
• Pop the Tires: Happens in an episode to Troy. Troy repays the favor at the end of the episode, preventing the murderer from escaping.
• Prisoner's Dilemma: Barnaby uses the trope in one episode to get two individual murderers not to confess, but to witness that they saw the other committing a murder.
• Produce Pelting: Jones gets pelted with tomatoes while he is is undercover in a cult in "The Oblong Murders".
• Prongs of Poseidon: In "Small Mercies", the second Body of the Week is done in with a trident that was part of a Neptune costume.
• Protest by Obstruction: In "Left for Dead", a group of protestors protesting a new bypass use tactics like sitting in front of the excavators, chaining themselves to a tree and to a cottage that is scheduled for demolition, etc.
• Pursued Protagonist: "The Night of the Stag" opens with the first Victim of the Week being chased through an orchard at night.
• Put on a Bus: Sergeant Troy is promoted and transferred up north. He returns for the episode "Blood Wedding".
  • Similarly, Sergeant Scott goes on a Long Bus Trip — Barnaby mentions that he "called in sick" but the character is never heard from again.
    • This was more a case of Real Life Writes the Plot. The actor playing Scott was ill and couldn't film one episode, and Jones was written in as what was meant to be a temporary replacement. However, when Scott's actor ended up seriously ill in hospital with pneumonia, it became obvious that he wasn't going to be able to return to finish the filming of that series, and thus Jones became a permanent character instead.
  • Sgt. Jones leaves identically to Troy, with a promotion and transfer, but like Troy returns for the episode "Last Man Out."
  • Sgt. Nelson is recruited for a long-term undercover operation.
• Railroad Tracks of Doom: In "Death in a Chocolate Box", the murderer attempts to escape from Barnaby by hitting him while the car is stopped at a set of boom gates waiting for a train to pass. The murderer leaps out of the car and attempts to dash across the tracks ahead of the oncoming train. They don't make it.
• Rain of Blood: A church bellringer starts pulling on a rope during bellringing practice, only to be splattered with blood dripping through the ceiling from the belfry.
• Raised Hand of Survival: As the first Victim of the Week is being Buried Alive in "Saints and Sinners", her hand thrusts up through the earth in a desperate attempt to escape. But it is a futile gesture, and the hand collapses even as the next scoopful of earth buries her completely.
• Razor Floss: In "Midsomer Rhapsody", a piano wire is strung across a road at head height and decapitates a motorcyclist.
• Real After All:
  • At least two episodes featuring somebody taking advantage of or inventing a place's haunted reputation have ended with indications that the place really is haunted.
  • In "Things That Go Bump in the Night", one of the suspects is a spirit medium whose assistant turns out to have been buying personal details about the recently deceased from someone at the local funeral home, and is dismissed by Barnaby as a Phony Psychic. However, she genuinely believes in her own gift (as does her assistant, who insists the cribbed details were just to help things along, not the whole story), and a scene at the end of the episode — which Barnaby misses — suggests that her spirit guide is real.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: DCI John Barnaby gives a very furious and very deserving one to Hayley Brantner during their confrontation in "Schooled in Murder":
  John Barnaby: So... you've think you've won. Everybody got what they've deserved.
  Hayley Brantner: You don't know what they did.
  John Barnaby: I'VE MET YOUR TYPE BEFORE! Excuses for everything - every little failure in your life.
  Hayley Brantner: Oh, shut up!
  John Barnaby: (ignores her) And all because it's much easier to blame someone else for your own weaknesses. Isn't it?!
  Hayley Brantner: No! It was their fault, their choice. So they had to pay.
  John Barnaby: You'd all grown up.
  Hayley Brantner: Don't be lording it over me. Keeping secrets from me with my own husband; Beatrix still thinking she was much better than me; and Helen - if she could have found it in herself to say sorry. Nothing had changed... except me. I don't let people push me around anymore, like Greg. I told him six months, and no more. I didn't want to be here.
  John Barnaby: You were never wanted here, especially not by Miss Mountford.
  Hayley Brantner: She told me she'd given everything to this school. Now she really has.
  John Barnaby: Really? And you think you can win this time, because you weren't quite bright enough back then to keep her school at the top of the league tables? And I don't think anything's changed.
• Reassigned to Antarctica:
  • Sergeant Scott bemoans his transfer to Midsomer has ended him up in "the Sticks".
  • After the conclusion of the case in "Secrets and Spies", one of the characters, an Obstructive Bureaucrat, is sent to the Arctic to monitor shipping traffic in the Northwest Passage.
• Red Herring: All over the place — it's a murder mystery after all. Special mention must go to the aptly named "Blue Herrings", where the initial deaths are accidents, not murders: the sad but understandable reality of a retirement home. The only real murder is a Mercy Kill by a very Sympathetic Murderer.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: In "Down Among the Dead Men", two suspects are arguing over a shotgun when they slam it down on the floor and it goes off, blowing a hole in the ceiling. Particularly egregious as the gun in question is a Purdey, generally regarded as the finest shotguns ever made.
• Retired Badass: In "Sins of Commission", it turns out the three "victims" all tried to murder the same nice older lady - who happened to have been an agent with the Special Operations Executive during WWII.
• Retro Universe: Kind of. It's clearly set in the Present Day (mid 1990s-early 2000s), but the atmosphere is very rustic.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Dudley Carew in "Murder on St. Malley's Day" is a Conspiracy Theorist who believes that there's a secret and sinister purpose behind the Pudding Club at the Devington School, claiming they're an Illuminati-esque group responsible for murder and mayhem on a global scale. He's right about there being a sinister purpose, alright, but it's nothing so grand as that: it's art-smuggling under a guise of diplomatic immunity.
• Rising Water, Rising Tension: The final denouement in "Let Us Prey" takes place during a flood that is threatening to engulf the village, and in particular destroy the crypt that lies at the centre of the mystery.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The killer's motive of 'Ghosts of Christmas Past'. His sister Claire married into the family the story revolves around where she drew the suspicion of her sister-in-law, Jennifer, who hired a private detective to go into her past where it was revealed Claire had a criminal record of possessing drugs and stealing. To try and get her away from Lydia, Jennifer forced her mother to claim several family heirlooms were stolen and put on sale in auctions without her knowledge, causing Claire to be charged before she was Driven to Suicide. When her brother found out, he murdered both of them.
  • The motive for Death's Shadow, where the murderer wanted to avenge the accidental death of his illegitimate son by killing the boys who had accidentally killed him 30 years earlier.
• Rope Bridge: In "Dead Man's Eleven", a rope bridge across a mere is sabotaged to dump a group of walkers in the lake (although without murderous intent for once).
• Royal Bastard: "Bantling Boy" features a very dark example that is the explanation for the episode's murders. Peter Craxton is secretly the child of the former Lord Hartley of Bantling Hall, who raped his mother while she was his carer. Due to Ray Craxton's career being in making weapons and armour for medieval reenactments, Peter grew up obsessed with everything medieval. Thus upon discovering the truth of his parentage, he was overcome both with a belief in his own genetic supremacy and with shame at what his medieval codes told him was the ultimate disgrace. Together with his unusually high intelligence led to him manipulated his mentally disabled uncle into killing everyone who knew his secret.
• Running Gag: Barnaby's Once an Episode "Eureka!" Moment (usually interrupts whatever he was doing with his family, like dinner or his daughter's play). Also, Jones getting a call (either from Barnaby or related to the case) forcing him to interrupt his date with his girlfriend.
  • Apart from Troy and Scott, every other Sergeant seems to end up being transferred to Brighton.
• Sauna of Death: In "The Wolf Hunter of Little Worthy", a saboteur attacking a glamping site smashes the control on the sauna; causing the camper trapped inside to almost be cooked alive.
• Scary Scarecrows: In "The Scarecrow Murders", the bodies of the Victims of the Week are dressed up and posed as scarecrows and placed among the scarecrows on display the village's scarecrow festival.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: In "Sting of Death", the first Victim of the Week is doused in a synthetic pheromone that is used as a swarm lure, and stung to death by a swarm of honeybees. The bees are still swarming the body when the police arrive.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: In "Talking to the Dead", a dealer in stolen goods takes advantage of the reputation of the local woods for being haunted by playing eerie noises to keep the locals away on the nights when his deals go down.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Good cop he may be, but Tom Barnaby isn't above occasionally snooping around a suspect's house without a warrant or overlooking relatively minor crimes in exchange for information in the interest of catching murderers.
• Secretly Gay Activity: When John Barnaby moves to Causton in "Death in the Slow Lane", he is approached by a man from the local rugby club who tries to entice him into joining, and explains how several members get together to enjoy each other's company. He beats a hasty retreat when John asks if his wife would be welcome at these evenings.
• Serial Killings, Specific Target: In "The Scarecrow Murders", Barnaby and Winter investigate a series of killings were the bodies of the victims are left dressed and posed as Scary Scarecrows. The idea of a Serial Killer is floated, but Barnaby points out there are too many inconsistencies; including that serial killers refine their technique as they progress, but all three murder methods in this case were radically different. It turns out to be a case of Everybody Did It with three different killers working together to take revenge on an online gambling company that ruined their lives, and used the scarecrow motif in the hope it would taken as the work of serial killer targeting people randomly.
• Serious Business: Some of the murders have unbelievably ridiculous motives (to anyone but the murderers). One woman ends up killing three people because her driving drunk would bar her from joining the village social club for life.
  • Another episode, "Picture of Innocence," has the local photography club divided into love and hate of digital photography. Both sides take every single opportunity they can find to disparage the other, making even the Hatedom Serious Business.
  • Justified in "Small Mercies"; the murderess is mentally handicapped and fixated on the miniature village. She literally can't understand why it's not right to kill people for "messing it up".
• Shameful Source of Knowledge: Several episodes have characters not reveal information that could have prevented someone's death, as this would also force them to reveal that they're cheating on their spouse or involved in shady deals with other inhabitants of Midsomer.
• Shaming the Mob:
  • In "Night of the Stag", Barnaby has to talk down an angry mob that the murderer has whipped into a frenzy and is sending to kill Barnaby and Jones. By revealing the murderer's true motivation for the crimes, he is able to buy enough time to regain control of the situation.
  • One episode has a bunch of ex-military thugs brought in by a local landowner to scare Irish Travellers off the village commons. Barnaby is warned in time and points out that what they are doing is highly illegal, and threatens to have an Armed Response Unit sent in. The goons back off and Barnaby later tells an admiring Troy that Midsomer doesn't have such a unit.
• Shared Family Quirks: One episode has Barnaby figure out two women are related when both use the same bizarre Malaproper despite not living near each other, just in time to save the Asshole Victim.
• Shear Menace: In "The Made-to-Measure Murders", a large pair of tailor's scissors are used as the murder weapon.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: The second Victim of the Week in "Point Of Balance," who had served in Afghanistan, and lost a leg.
• Shoot the Rope: In "The Death of the Small Coppers", a half-blind old woman with a shotgun shoots through the rope holding Winter in a Death Trap just in time for him to free himself before the crossbow triggers.
• Shot at Dawn: "Shot at Dawn" opens with a soldier being executed by firing squad during World War One for cowardice and desertion. His CO administers the Coup de Grâce, then throws up.
• Shout-Out: To the famous album cover of The Beatles' Abbey Road. An artist/forger hides errors in his forgeries as a joke. One landscape painting, which he claimed to be centuries old, includes four men in the distance who on close inspection are clearly John, Paul, George, and Ringo. ("The Black Book")
  • One of the murders in Night of the Stag is the murder of St Thomas Becket in all but name. The episode's Big Bad even orders the killing by asking his two henchmen "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?"
  • One of the suspects in "Strangler's Wood" is a creepy hotel owner, who is looking after his ill mother in the attic.He is later stabbed to death by an old woman while taking a bath.
  • In the episode "The Glitch", which centers around a potentially fatal computer glitch, the university choir sings the song "Daisy Bell", famously the first song to be sung by a computer. "Daisy Bell" was also featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey — a film about a fatal computer glitch.
  • The optician in "Blood on the Saddle" asks Barnaby "Is it safe?" while examining him, a Shout-Out to the famous torture scene in Marathon Man.
  • The bank in "Painted in Blood" is scheduled to be closed down and converted into a trendy wine bar, a nod to a famous Nat West advert of the early 2000s.
  • The Gilbert and Sullivan episode "Prepare for Death" has characters named Phoebe, Phyllis and Katisha. The latter two are deliberately named In-Universe.
• Sickbed Slaying: In "Drawing Death", the first Victim of the Week is a woman in a coma. The murderer enters her room and shuts off her life support. When the victim awakes and sits up, the murderer finishes the job by shoving a comic book down her throat, choking her to death.
• Significant Anagram: In "Blood Wedding", the cryptic inscription 'Cast no sin here' Barnaby finds on the back of an old photo, is actually an anagram for Catherine's son.
• Skeleton Key Card: One episode has Barnaby and Jones trying to get inside a closed building in a hurry (his daughter's wedding is coming up). Jones tries to open the lock with Barnaby's credit card, leading to a still-locked door and a very annoyed Barnaby.
• Slashed Throat: The method used by the murderer to dispose of his two victims in "The Great and the Good".
• Sleeping with the Boss: Shows up a few times, whether as "sleeping up the ladder" or actual romance.
• Sleepwalking: In "The Great and the Good", the killer takes advantage of the local schoolteacher's sleepwalking, combined a little strategic Gaslighting, to make her believe she might be the murderer.
• Slut-Shaming: "A Sacred Trust" involves some romantic liaisons, including one girl shamed by her involvement with a jock for telling the police about it.
  • A plot point of "Schooled in Murder" is that a victim's daughter was about to be expelled from school, as she was on a scholarship from her mother's employer, but the scholarship contained "moral terms" which the victim had broken by having an affair.
• Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: The gloomy vicar in "The Sword of Guillaume". Naturally (for this programme), he's given a sign just at that moment.
• Smug Snake: Most the dead people in Midsomer. In some cases it's a miracle that they weren't murdered long before that episode.
• Social Climber: Midsomer County is positively littered with people who would do anything to ingratiate themselves with the local gentry and become part of them... up to and including murder.
• Spice Rack Panacea: In "Sting of Death", a local apiarist claims to have cured his cancer through a regimen of honey and bee venom. He is now doing a thriving trade in selling honey and venom as an alternative medicine. It turns out he never had cancer. It was a misdiagnosis. However, by the time this was discovered, he was making too much money to come clean, so he paid off his doctors to keep quiet about it. The killer turns out to be someone whose mother had the same form of cancer and eschewed medical treatment in favour of the honey and venom and died.
• Spoiler Title: If you know the alternate name for the profession or the character's nickname, it's no surprise who the killer in "The Axeman Cometh" is.
• Staircase Tumble:
  • The first Victim of the Week in "Death in Disguise" suffers Death by Falling Over after being shoved down a staircase during a struggle (although this was more-or-less an accident).
  • The first Body of the Week in "Left for Dead" turns out to be a case of Accidental Murder; suffering Death by Falling Over after being shoved down a flight of stairs during an argument.
  • The first victim in "Ghosts of Christmas Past" is given fatal injuries as a result of being pushed down the stairs, but her family believe it to be an accident. Since someone has already made threats to the family, Barnaby is certain it was murder.
  • This happens to Joyce in "The Creeper" while chasing the titular burgular, although she obviously lives.
• Stalker Shrine: Revealed just before the climax of "A Rare Bird".
• Start to Corpse: Extremely varied, with some episodes starting with a murder (Death of a Hollow Man) and others taking almost 45 minutes before anybody is murdered (Faithful unto Death).
• Stealing from the Till: In "Happy Families", one suspect is the Victim of the Week's Beleaguered Assistant, who has been commiting fraud by charging extravagant purchases to his boss's corporate credit card, knowing that his boss never checks the statements. However, an insurance company check about why a purchased item was not showing up on the policy threatens to expose him, thereby giving him a motive for murder.
• Stepford Smiler: Chief Superintendent John Cotton, coupled with Beware the Nice Ones. Or vice versa.
  • Olivia Dent in "Dressed to Kill," forced to compromise hither and yon. She did it.
• Sticky Fingers: In "Down Among the Dead Men", one of the suspects is a kleptomaniac cleaning woman who is being blackmailed by one of her clients. When Barnaby discovers her secret, she shows him a room crammed to the brim with objects she has stolen from her employers.
• Stock Scream: In the beginning of one of the episodes, a statue was burned with a victim inside. A series of stock screams were played.
• Stopped Clock: Abused in at least one episode to make a murder look like a suicide.
• Stress Vomit: One character immediately starts vomiting when she learns the guy she's been banging through the whole episode is actually her nephew. He doesn't really react to that, given that he also just learned he's the product of Brother-Sister Incest.
• Stripping the Scarecrow: In "The Scarecrow Murders", a killer takes the clothing and hessian bag head from a scarecrow, and uses them to pose as a scarecrow to ambush and murder The Vicar.
• Stylistic Suck: The movies in "Death and the Divas". Complete with wooden acting and poor effects. This is justified, as they were supposed to be low budget horror films from the late '60s and early '70s.
• Suicide Pact: "Dance with the Dead" begins with what appears to be a suicide pact gone wrong. Of course, being Midsomer, it is Never Suicide.
• Surprise Incest:
  • In "The Fisher King", a man had 'spread his seed far and wide' — you could hardly turn a corner without finding one of his bastards. One couple didn't meet until they were both in graduate school in Canada and got married, only later realizing they were half-siblings; she was totally squicked, he lost his mind at the thought of losing her and tried to 'fix' the problem through religion. He ends up killed by his "official" father for unrelated reasons.
  • A character in "Dark Secrets" immediately vomits upon learning the employee she'd been having an affair with was her nephew, the nephew himself being the product of Brother–Sister Incest.
  • Inverted in "The Creeper." A young man and woman who were childhood friends clearly like each other a lot, but haven't acted on their feelings — later explained by the fact, while they were raised separately, they believe they share a biological father. (Sort of a long story, but basically, his parents wanted to conceive but couldn't due to his father's sterility, so they came to an arrangement with her parents so her father would be the biological father, but his father would be on the birth certificate. The kids were told when they were old enough to understand.) But, perhaps unsurprisingly, secrets are revealed and it turns out they're not actually related after all. They both note that they're relieved, and share a smile and a final scene together that strongly hints at a Relationship Upgrade.
  • In The Killings of Copenhagen, the son of one the victims is in love with his real half sister, who came to the town to met her real father. She does try and push him away knowing this, but after being questioned by the police she tells him. He is upset, but the problem was his fault not hers.
  • In "For Death Prepare", a young woman and and young man became attracted and plan to leave their village and travel the world together. But one of the problems they face is the man's father actingly like he's creepily attracted to the woman while also trying to prevent his son from leaving with her. At the end, the father explains what's really going on: he once had an affair with the girl's mother nine months before she was born and he always wondered if he was her biological father. Once his son became attracted to her, the father broke into the local medical clinic to learn her blood type which ultimately confirmed his suspicions that he is indeed. Hence why he'd being trying to break up their relationship and also get to know her.
• Suspiciously Prescient Planning: In a season 2 episode, while investigating the Victim of the Week's murder, Barnaby learns that the Asshole Victim in question had a rough relationship with his stepdaughter, who'd been hoping to move to New York for a while to get away from him but lacked the funds. Later into the investigation, the stepdaughter announces she'll be going to Milan instead and that her flight's tomorrow. Barnaby soon realizes that she must be the culprit: she wouldn't suddenly change her longstanding plans to move to the States unless she was trying to leave the UK to avoid being arrested and needed somewhere that wouldn't require her to go through the lengthy process of arranging visas.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • When John Nettles left the series, DCI Tom Barnaby retired, to be replaced by his decades-younger and somewhat more energetic cousin DCI John Barnaby, who still looks fairly close in age. They did hang a lampshade on it in the episode where John Barnaby was introduced, but really, it's like they're not even trying. The name at least might be chalked up as an Enforced Trope due to the show being called "Inspector Barnaby" in certain other markets (France, Italy, Germany, and Japan according to The Other Wiki).
  • After Sykes the dog passed away between seasons, the Barnabys later got a new dog in the form of Paddy.
• Suspicious Spending: In "The Killings At Badger's Drift", Barnaby and Troy notice that Dennis Rainbird is driving an awfully fancy car, with Troy commenting that he didn't think undertakers made that much. They don't: Dennis and his mother have been routinely profiting from Blackmail.
• Sword Fight: "Blood Wedding" features attempted murder by mace, and the would-be victim grabbing a sword to defend himself.
• Symbolic Blood: In "Drawing Dead", the second Victim of the Week runs a print shop and is murdered by having his throat cut with a paper guillotine. As they do so, the killer knocks over bottles of blue and yellow ink that spill and pool under the victim's chair like blood.
• Tag-Along Actor: Cully's actor boyfriend rides along with Barnaby and Jones to research the role of a detective sergeant. It's a comment of his that gives Barnaby the "Eureka!" Moment.
• Tainted Tobacco: In "Happy Families", the first Victim of the Week is killed when the murderer spikes his vaping solution with a slow-acting poison.
• Taken Off the Case: One episode had a case where Barnaby was taken off a case because his wife was a witness. He investigated anyway, as his replacement was a jumped-up little jerkass more interested in planning out his wedding than handling the case and due to his using Barnaby's name at a restaurant, caused Barnaby to be stalked by the murderer who was obsessing over the asshole's fiance.
• Taking the Heat: In "Death of A Hollow Man", a father tries to take the blame for a murder after thinking that his son did it. The son had merely spread Vim on some cakes that the victim ate on stage.
• A Tale Told by an Idiot: One episode has a character for whom fly-fishing is Serious Business, and explains in great detail why she was entirely justified in assaulting another person for doing it wrong. Poor Troy is stuck taking down her statement with a completely bewildered expression.
• Tampering with Food and Drink:
  • The first crime in "A Vintage Murder" involves the wine being served at a wine tasting at a winery being poisoned.
  • The second Victim of the Week in "Wild Harvest" is killed when the killer swaps the wild celery for the soup they are preparing with highly toxic hemlock water dropwort.
• Tank Goodness: In a murder that is unusual even by Midsomer standards, the first Victim of the Week in "The Village That Rose From the Dead" is run over by a tank.
• A Taste of the Lash: In "Blood Wedding", Barnaby goes to question The Vicar only to find him flagellating himself in church.
• Taxidermy Is Creepy: In "A Rare Bird", one of the suspects is a vegetarian taxidermist. He regards his work as giving animals a second life.
• That Came Out Wrong: In "Schooled in Murder", Sarah is teasing John about his current case and the Stepford Smilers at the centre of it, claiming that she could be a perfect wife as well. He replies:
  "Why would I want perfection when I've got you. <beat> Um, that didn't come out quite right, did it?"
• That One Case: George Meakham's obsession with the original Strangler's Wood murders.
• That Poor Plant: In "Death in Disguise", Barnaby is given a cup of acorn coffee, which he surreptitiously tips into a plant. When he returns on a different day and is offered another cup, he declines, then comments to Troy that the plant looks a bit peaky.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Barnaby and his sergeant are apparently the only two officers in Causton CID capable of investigating murder, the only exception being the handful of occasions where Barnaby is booted from the case (and each time that happens he ends up solving the case before his replacement anyway).
• Theme Serial Killer:
  • "Echoes of the Dead" featured a killer who based his murders on old murder cases, such as George Joseph Smith.
  • In "Death and the Divas", the killer's theme is the horror movies of a particular actress.
  • In "The Ballad of Midsomer County", the killer leaves items associated with the eponymous folk song with the bodies of his victims.
  • In " Ring Out Your Dead," the murder kills the village bell ringers as per a local nursery rhyme.
• Theme Naming: Most of the villages are "Midsomer *blank*".
• They Have the Scent!: "The Night of the Stag" opens with a Pursued Protagonist being chased through an orchard at night by armed men with hounds.
• This Bear Was Framed: An episode has a killer use a saber tooth tiger skull to make marks on the body to hide the real cause of death.
• This Is a Drill: In "The Death of the Small Coppers", the first Victim of the Week is strung up on a wall and has a running auger plunged through his chest.
• Throwing the Fight: In "Last Man Out", a match-fixing ring is rigging the outcome of games in a semi-professional cricket tournament. The match fixers are initially suspected when two cricket captains are murdered, but the match fixing is a Red Herring and has nothing to do with the killings.
• Time-Delayed Death: The second Victim of the Week in "Birds Of Prey" takes a couple of hours to die after being hit by a car. Initially, it looks like he will be fine as he manages to walk back to his house, only for him to die from internal bleeding in his sleep.
• Train Escape: In "Death in a Chocolate Box", the killer attempts to escape from Barnaby by dashing across the railway tracks ahead of an oncoming train. They don't make it.
• Translation by Volume: Tom Barnaby once mentions that it used to be all you had to do to be understood by a foreigner: speak loudly and slowly or shout.
• Trapped in a Sinking Car: "Dark Secrets" opens with a flashback to 1975 where a brother and sister are involved in an accident where their speeding car runs off the road and into the river; leaving them both trapped in the sinking car. This accident proves pivotal to several murders that take place 25 years later.
• Troll: "The Animal Within" has Rex Masters, who promised to three separate people that he will make them universal heirs of his estate in exchange for their services. He also tells everybody that his niece died in a plane accident and the episode opens with her arriving to his house alive. None of this is the motive for his murder.
  • The landlord of the pub in "Breaking The Chain," who sent the local councillor a pig's heart, threatening letters and spray painted the monument she was due to unveil with the word murderer in an attempt to get her to confess that her mistake in the first cycle race meeting had led to the death of his wife years ago, and that she had covered it up save herself. He was even in a relationship with her as well at the time. It worked, he recorded the confession, and handed it over to Barnaby.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • This is generally a problem in Midsomer: apparently its residents are so used to murder and mayhem that they completely disregard personal safety, even when they know they may be a target. A knock on the door in the middle of night, or with nobody in view? Go outside and investigate! Hear the obvious sounds of a break in? Loudly shout "who's there?", giving away your location in the process, and go to confront them, unarmed. Have a phone in your hand when you're under threat? Don't use it — just drop it immediately or, if you can't manage to be that clumsy, leave a cryptic voicemail just before your imminent death. Suspect you know who the murderer is? Don't phone the police — go and talk to the possible killer privately, revealing that you know their identity as you do so.
  • The second victim is frequently someone who knows who the killer is and tries to blackmail him or her. Because what could possibly go wrong when you blackmail a cunning, ruthless murderer?
  • The first victim in "Blood will out".Rushing a person who is pointing a loaded shotgun at your chest? Not a good idea, Bridges.
    • Then again, it was never explained why Bridges had a loaded shotgun lying on his desk, and it is entirely possible that he was thinking of killing himself anyway.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour:
  • One episode has two primary school kids sneaking vodka and cigarettes.
  • This was a major plot revelation in "Left for Dead" (series 11). A group of four kids allow another kid to tag along while they smoke and drink. When that kid gets uncomfortable, they torture him, drown him in a river, and toss his body down a well.
• Trust-Building Blunder: DCI Tom Barnaby's (predictable) contempt towards team-building exercises is on display in "Days of Misrule" when he is forced to go on one by the new chief superintendent. Hilarity Ensues.
• *Twang* Hello: In "Blood Wedding" one of the suspects puts a longbow arrow into a tree next to Barnaby's head. He claims it was an accident, but there is every indication it was intended as a warning.
• Two Dun It: "The Creeper", where the killers turn out to be a mother and daughter-in-law killing to protect a family secret.
  • The murderers in "Point Of Balance"
• Two-Person Pool Party: In "Last Year's Model", a sleazy music producer and his mistress are getting in on in the Jacuzzi, discussing how his wife is about to go to prison. They are interrupted by the doorbell. They soon realise that it's Barnaby and that he is not going to go away.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Inspector Martin Spellman in "Picture of Innocence".
• The Unfavorite: In "The Dogleg Murders", golf club steward and Loan Shark Eileen Fountain has two sons; her older son Colin is a groundskeeper, while her younger son Darren is a golf instructor. Eileen dreams of Darren being accepted as a full member of the golf club and dating the owner's daughter (to whom he is giving golf lessons), and has blackmailed most of the membership committee into approving his membership while she drills him in which cutlery he will be expected to use at the ceremonial dinner. Colin, however, is the Dumb Muscle in her loan organisation, and he is treated with utter contempt and fed beans on toast while Darren eats the sort of food he will have at the golf club.
• Unwilling Suspension:
  • Happens to John Barnaby in "Death in the Slow Lane".
  • Also happens to DS Winters at the end of "Death of Small Coppers."
• The Upper Crass: A modern, realistic example: in the season 13 episode "The Noble Art", Gerald Farquaharson is the local lord of the manor, but (in stark contrast to almost all other gentry in the series) he is an affable man of the people with no pretentiousness or interest in status who loves nothing more than gambling and boxing, while trying to do what is right by the people of the village.
• Uranus Is Showing: In "Written in the Stars", Jones in researching astronomy as background to the case. He uses the opportunity to tell Barnaby "Did you know Uranus is 14 times larger than the Earth?".
• Vapor Trail: In "Crime and Punishment", the killer douses a barn in petrol and then leaves a trail of petrol leading away from the barn. The killer then ignites the trail to set fire to the barn.
• Vehicular Assault: In "Faithful Unto Death", the killer murders the first Victim of the Week by using their larger, more powerful car to force the victim's car to collide with a trailer full of logs, killing her.
• Vehicular Sabotage:
  • In "Death in the Slow Lane", one of the murders was committed by shearing through the steering linkage on a car, causing it to crash while going round a sharp bend.
  • And in the episode "Master Class", one couple's car has its brake-line cut, leading to a near-fatal crash.
  • The episode "Death and the Divas" from season 15 also had a death involving this.
  • In "The Flying Club", the fuel line on a stunt plane is cut during an airshow.
• The Vicar: Almost a prerequisite for any whodunit set in an English village, though dog collars appear to be the Midsomer equivalent of a Red Shirt. If you're a clergyman in Midsomer, chances are you'll either be horribly murdered or unmasked as a horrible murderer before the credits roll, to the point where you could probably fit all the names of the Vicar’s who were major characters and who turned out to be neither by the end of the episode on the back of the proverbial postage stamp.Of particular note is the Reverend Stephen Wentworth, played brilliantly by Richard Briers in the episode "Death's Shadow". Another honourable mention should go to Mark Gatiss's Giles Shawcross in "The Sword of Guillaume" and the Reverend in "Sting of Death".
• Violent Glaswegian: Midsomer tends to adhere to "if they're not from England, they're a bad 'un," but there's a particularly high chance that if you hear a Scottish accent, you've found the killer. Or at least an abusive spouse/con man/local thug. Which makes it mildly hilarious when an English killer adopts a Scottish persona because "everybody trusts a Scot."
• Vomit Discretion Shot: In "The Night of the Stag", John Barnaby ducks behind a stack of barrels before throwing up after drinking a pint of cider from a barrel with a body floating in it.
• Vorpal Pillow:
  • In "The Axeman Cometh", the second Victim of the Week is smothered with a pillow as he lies drunk in the back of his Cadillac. The killer then shoves the car into the swimming pool.
  • The first Victim of the Week in "The Creeper". This instance is more realistic than many examples as the victim was drunk, drugged and there were two people holding the pillow over his face.
  • In "Blue Herrings" a murder (the only one in the episode) is done with a pillow smothered over the victim's face as she is asleep.
  • In "Judgement Day" the killer is mercy killed after being given a large quantity of sleeping pills and then suffocated with a pillow.
• War Reenactors: Given the event takes place in Midsomer, it should come as no surprise that the annual Civil War recreation in "The Dark Rider" results in murder.
• What a Drag: One victim in "Blood on the Saddle" is killed by being lassoed and dragged along behind a horse.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Cully's husband, Simon, is rarely seen or heard from after their wedding.
• Who Murdered the Asshole: The victim in "Judgement Day" was sleeping with at least three different women (one of whom was paying him for it) until he got pitchforked through the chest in the first five minutes. He was also a petty thief and a vandal with a serious attitude problem, so there are plenty of suspects.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In the Circus Episode "Send in the Clowns", viewers learns that DCI John Barnaby suffers from coulrophobia (fear of clowns).
• Widowed at the Wedding: In "Till Death Do Us Part", a new bride is murdered when she leaves the wedding reception to change out of her wedding dress.
  • Also happens in "Ring Out Your Dead," where the bride is killed outside the church after saying her vows, whilst waiting to pose for the wedding photo's.
  • In "Left For Dead," a bride is murdered at her wedding reception after popping outside for a cigarette.
• Wife-Basher Basher: In "Crime and Punishment", it's revealed that Frank was killed because of his abusive nature towards Maxine. Barbara couldn't stand seeing her friend getting hurt by Frank and chose to run him over with her husband's car.
• Will They or Won't They?: Winter and Kam. They don't.
• With This Ring: In "Schooled In Murder", John Barnaby buys a ring for his wife for their 15th anniversary. However, while distracted by Jones, he accidentally feeds the ring to his dog Sykes. He then has to fabricate reasons to keep the dog with him till he can, um, retrieve it.
• Wolverine Claws: In "The Wolf Hunter of Little Worthy", the Wolf Hunter costume worn by the murderer includes a glove mounted with a set of silver claws which they use to slash their victims.
• Woman Scorned: Quite a few cases. Patricia Blackshaw in "The Black Book", for one.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: In "Faithful unto Death", a woman uses make-up to fake bruises and persuade her lesbian lover that her husband has been abusing her, and uses this to incite the lover into killing the husband.
• Wrench Whack: The first Body of the Week in "The Flying Club" is done in by a blow to the back of the head with a wrench.
• Writing Indentation Clue: In "Death in a Chocolate Box", Barnaby rubs a pencil over the notebook in the Victim of the Week's office to discover the last thing he wrote was a letter. Although Barnaby only gets the last part of the note, it is enough to tell him the letter exists and may have been the reason why he was murdered.
• Yandere: quite a few of the murderers in the 1st series.
  • In "The Ballad of Midsomer County", the murderer turns out to be one for his wife. He was jealous of John Carver who she dated and killed him so that he would have her all to himself. Decades later, he killed three more men under the impression that they were trying to take his wife away from him. When he confronts her, he claims that all his actions were done to "protect" her. When she reveals that she was planning on leaving her husband of her own free will, he pointed his gun at her with intent to kill her.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: In one episode with a medieval fair/tourney.
• You Are Already Dead: In "Destroying Angel", the look on the face of the physician when he learns that a patient has eaten not one but several titular mushrooms says it all. Naturally, the patient didn't survive.
• You Do Not Have to Say Anything
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Nonlethal variation: The wife of an aristocrat has been cheating on him with his brother, and several murder victims were trying to tell him this. Once the murderer (the husband, who truly loved her to the point of not wanting people to reveal her affairs) is caught, the brother is eager to continue the relationship in the open, only to be told that she's now very rich, and has no intention of going down in rank.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: In "Blood Will Out", the Victim of the Week (an Asshole Victim if ever there was one) is threatening to thrash the killer with his belt. The killer grabs the loaded shotgun that was laying on the desk to defend herself. The victim makes his final mistake by goading her that she doesn't have the guts to pull the trigger. Wrong.
• Your Days Are Numbered: In "Strangler's Wood", The first murder victim, Carla Constanza, only had a couple years left to live due to pulmonary emphysema she got from smoking.

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