47 Fun Facts About Midsomer Murders

Which dairy product, the pride of Midsomer Pastures, is the murder weapon in 'Schooled in Murder'?

A wheel of cheese kills Debbie Moffett at the dairy that makes the prized Midsomer Blue, and the case exposes secret plans to modernise it. The episode was DS Ben Jones's last as a regular.

Which electronic instrument gives the Midsomer Murders theme its eerie, wavering voice?

Theremin players never touch it: hands moving near two antennas set the pitch and volume. It grew out of Soviet government research into proximity sensors.

Midsomer takes its name from Midsomer Norton, a real town in which English county?

Somerset's Midsomer Norton lent its name to the fictional county, and the show then put 'Midsomer' in front of dozens of invented villages, from Midsomer Mallow to Midsomer Parva.

Which future film star played village thief Peter Drinkwater in the 2000 episode 'Judgement Day'?

Orlando Bloom's thief and lothario ends up stabbed with a pitchfork, nearly two years before The Fellowship of the Ring made him famous as Legolas.

The 100th Midsomer Murders episode took Barnaby to which Nordic capital, in a nod to crime dramas such as The Killing?

Copenhagen hosted 'The Killings of Copenhagen' in 2014, in which biscuit tycoon Eric Calder is killed by strychnine in a tin posted from Badger's Drift. Scenes were shot at Nyhavn and inside the police headquarters.

Which writer adapted the 1997 Midsomer Murders pilot from Caroline Graham's first Barnaby novel?

Anthony Horowitz, later the creator of Foyle's War and the Alex Rider books, scripted the pilot and five more early episodes. The third episode went to Caroline Graham herself, adapting her own novel.

Which actress has played Causton pathologist Dr Fleur Perkins since 2019?

Annette Badland took over the Causton mortuary from Manjinder Virk's Kam Karimore in series 20, years after playing Margaret Blaine, an alien in disguise, in Doctor Who.

Which Midsomer Murders regular, an experimental cook, longed to swap Causton for a picturesque village?

Joyce was always put off by the grisly murders in the villages she fancied, and Tom took every chance to dine out rather than face her cooking.

What full-time job does John Barnaby's wife Sarah hold, keeping her clear of most of his Midsomer cases?

A head teacher at Causton Comprehensive, Sarah has a career of her own and so features far less in the plots than her predecessor did. She and John marked their fifteenth wedding anniversary in 'Schooled in Murder'.

In 'Death and Dust', Tom Barnaby and Ben Jones follow a case out of Midsomer into which country?

Wales is the former home of the intended victim's fiancée, and the detectives must stop a second attempt on his life during a walk on Snowdon. It is one of only a handful of cases set outside Midsomer.

Which future film star played Simon Mayfield in the 2003 Midsomer Murders episode 'The Green Man'?

Henry Cavill's Simon, one of a gang of youths tormenting a woodland recluse, is caught in a trap and shot dead, a decade before the actor first played Superman.

Which Midsomer Wellow society, fresh from a £30,000 horse-race win, is picked off one by one in a 2002 episode?

The bell-ringers are hoping to win the annual striking competition when a grudge from the past resurfaces, and the first victim is found in the belfry. The episode, 'Ring Out Your Dead', aired in 2002 in the fifth series.

'Destroying Angel', in which heirs to the Easterly Grange Hotel die one by one, takes its title from what?

A poisonous mushroom of the all-white Amanita genus goes by that name, and hotel chef Tristan Goodfellow eats a meal of mushrooms that includes it. The episode aired in 2001, in the fourth series.

Which Midsomer sergeant, arriving in series 19 alongside a new Barnaby family dog, is the longest-serving by tenure?

Jamie Winter, played by Nick Hendrix, has outlasted every predecessor, and his romance with pathologist Kam Karimore was written in from his first series. Hendrix is a nephew of the newsreader Alastair Stewart.

Which Causton pathologist joined the Midsomer Worthy choir in 'Death in Chorus'?

George Bullard, played by Barry Jackson, served from the pilot until 2011, when he told John Barnaby he was taking some time off at the end of 'The Oblong Murders'. Jackson was in the first fourteen series.

A film crew shooting which swashbuckler at Midsomer Magna's Manor House loses its director to a prop guillotine?

The Scarlet Pimpernel is being filmed at Midsomer Magna's Manor House when the crew's arrival coincides with a known criminal lurking about the grounds. The trail leads to an elaborately planned robbery before the truth emerges.

In 'Small Mercies', a body tied down in the Little Worthy model village echoes which classic book?

Gulliver's Travels is the picture the scene evokes: model maker Bob Moss finds Richard Tanner pinned down like Gulliver on his early morning rounds. The model village belongs to the elderly Compton sisters.

In 'Death of a Hollow Man', an amateur actor's stage death turns real in the final act of which play?

Amadeus is being staged by the Causton Amateur Dramatics Society when Esslyn Carmichael cuts his own throat with a prop razor whose safety tape has been removed. Caroline Graham adapted the episode from her own second novel.

In Caroline Graham's first Barnaby novel, Emily Simpson's autopsy finds red wine mixed with which poison?

Hemlock proves Miss Bellringer right that her friend did not die of a heart attack, and the case became the 1997 pilot, 'The Killings at Badger's Drift'. The novel made the Crime Writers' Association's list of the top 100 crime novels.

'Secrets and Spies' reveals that Tom Barnaby once worked for which agency, long before he ran Causton CID?

MI6 was Barnaby's former employer, which is why the murder of ex-agent Geoffrey Larkin at a safe house run by retired spies draws him in personally. The 'Beast of Midsomer' gets the blame at first.

Tom Barnaby's final case, 'Fit for Murder', opens with a Swavely Manor spa client found dead in what?

A flotation chamber holds the first victim, and the mystery deepens when her husband disappears; the episode aired in the UK on 2 February 2011 and closed the thirteenth series. John Nettles had announced his exit two years earlier.

Before 81 episodes as Tom Barnaby, John Nettles spent the 1980s playing which TV detective?

Jim Bergerac kept Nettles on Jersey from 1981 to 1991, and he later left Midsomer saying it was 'always wise to leave people wanting more, rather than be booed off the stage'.

Which Oxfordshire market town, east of Oxford, has often doubled for Causton in Midsomer Murders?

Thame, set on the river of the same name, shares the job with Wallingford and other towns, so Causton's streets are stitched together from several real places.

Wallingford, one of the towns that plays Causton in Midsomer Murders, was long home to which crime writer?

Agatha Christie lived at Winterbrook House, just outside Wallingford, from 1934 until her death in 1976, and for 25 years she was president of the town's amateur dramatic society.

Which four-time BAFTA winner, who also scored the UK House of Cards, composed the Midsomer Murders theme?

Jim Parker scored hundreds of programmes, including Foyle's War and The House of Eliott, and died in 2023 aged 88. His Midsomer waltz has been reworked across several soundtrack CDs.

Midsomer Murders has passed 140 episodes, but how many Barnaby novels did Caroline Graham write?

7 novels appeared between 1987 and 2004, and only the first five episodes were adapted from them, so almost every plot since has been original to television.

Which actor, a former Midsomer Murders sergeant, went on to play Queen's guitarist in Bohemian Rhapsody?

Gwilym Lee's DS Charlie Nelson rented a room from pathologist Kate Wilding, and when the actor left in 2016 the character was said to be away on an undercover course.

Which producer was suspended in 2011 after calling Midsomer Murders 'the last bastion of Englishness'?

Brian True-May told the Radio Times the show had no non-white characters because he wanted to keep it that way, and All3Media suspended him. His successor Jo Wright promised a range of ethnic groups on screen.

Cully Barnaby's unusual first name comes from a honeymoon village on which lake?

Lake Geneva's village of Cully, in Switzerland, is where Tom and his wife conceived their only child, who grew up to take temporary jobs around Midsomer between acting roles. Laura Howard played her from 1997 to 2011.

Which seaside city links John Barnaby's old posting, Ben Jones's promotion and Dr Kate Wilding's professorship?

Brighton is where John Barnaby was introduced in 'The Sword of Guillaume', after a property developer was beheaded on a fairground ride. DI Jones and Dr Wilding later moved there, as a photo in 'Habeas Corpus' shows.

Which Midsomer detective, a Londoner unhappy to leave the Met, dismissed the county as 'the sticks'?

Dan Scott, played by John Hopkins, lasted two series and vanished abruptly: Barnaby simply reports that he has called in sick, and Ben Jones steps in for good. His love interest in 'The Straw Woman' was murdered.

Which rescue dog joined the Barnabys in series 19, after Sykes was written out with a graveside scene?

Paddy arrives by the end of the same episode, 'The Village That Rose from the Dead', which also introduces a new sergeant. Sykes had simply been retired by his real-life owners after five years on set.

In 'The Ballad of Midsomer County', folk festival organiser Toby Winning is found drowned in a bowl of what?

Eggs and live eels fill the bowl because the killing copies a ballad by the late musician Johnny Carver, and two more deaths echo the same song's lyrics. Toby had planned to move the festival to London.

In 'Hidden Depths', a solicitor's rival is killed with his own model of which medieval machine?

A catapult from the victim's own collection is turned on him: pinned to his croquet lawn, he is bombarded with bottles of wine while his wife is made to watch.

Whose real-life pregnancy was written into Midsomer Murders, so that Sarah Barnaby gave birth to Betty?

Fiona Dolman had a daughter in 2013, and her character spent series 16 pregnant before delivering in its final episode. Dolman had earlier been Jackie Bradley in Heartbeat.

In 'Death and the Divas', a film journalist dies as if bitten by what, in tribute to 1960s horror films?

A vampire appears to have punctured Eve Lomax's neck while she researched horror star Stella Harris, and each later killing copies a death from one of Stella's films.

Which now-famous actress played Bernice in the 2009 Midsomer Murders episode 'Small Mercies'?

Olivia Colman's Bernice is unmasked as the killer behind the episode's murders, a decade before the actress played Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown.

From series 14, the closing titles of Midsomer Murders switched the theme to which instrument?

Solo violin now carries a standardised version of the theme over the end credits, while the opening keeps its eerie electronic lead; a jovial clarinet version closed 'The Scarecrow Murders' for the 25th anniversary in 2022.

Which future film star had an early role as Katherine Lacey in the 1997 Midsomer Murders pilot?

Emily Mortimer's Katherine Lacey is secretly having an affair with her own brother, and the pair finally die together in a murder-suicide.

In the Midsomer Murders pilot, what is Emily Simpson searching for when she sees too much and is murdered?

An orchid called the spurred coral root is what Miss Simpson is after when she stumbles on a pair of secret lovers, who kill her to keep it quiet.

In a series 25 episode, Brad Furbank is killed by a booby-trapped what the night after his engagement party?

A cuckoo clock, a handmade gift to the bride's family from a newly revealed relative, kills Brad at Godley Manor, so Barnaby asks whether her father was the real target.

In 'The Village That Rose from the Dead', eco-minded Finn Thornberry is found crushed beneath what?

A tank fits Little Auburn, a village requisitioned by the army in the Second World War and abandoned until villagers fought over reopening it. The case is the first for DCI John Barnaby's newest sergeant.

DS Charlie Nelson's first Midsomer case, aired on Christmas Eve 2013, opens with a death during what kind of event?

A ghost hunt at the Manor House in Morton Shallows ends with the death of furniture maker Conor Bridgeman, and a tape of a young girl's voice deepens the mystery. The episode is 'The Christmas Haunting'.

Pathologist Dr Kam Karimore left Midsomer at the end of series 19 for a job in which city?

Montreal took her away just as her romance with the new sergeant was developing. Manjinder Virk played Kam for two series, and the character once said she grew up with four red setters and a Labrador.

John Barnaby's psychology degree, which earned him ribbing from DS Jones, came from which university?

Durham awarded the degree, and after a rocky start he and Jones made a formidable team; the son of Ned Barnaby, he transferred in from the south coast to replace his older cousin.

Neil Dudgeon's first episode as lead is disrupted by a death at what kind of event at Darnley Park Girls School?

A vintage car rally at Darnley Park Girls School revives the memory of a racing driver found dead there years earlier in an apparent suicide. Dudgeon had first appeared in the show eleven years earlier, as a gardener.

In 'Red in Tooth & Claw', an estate agent is found dead in a pet-show marquee surrounded by which animals?

Live rabbits surround Seb Huntington in the village of Bellville, and the motives range from animal-rights activism to the theft of a prize-winning pet. The episode aired in January 2017.