Midsomer Murders Trivia
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47 free Midsomer Murders trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Midsomer Murders has been killing off the residents of one small English county since 1997, and the body count is the joke everyone is in on: picture-postcard villages, a fete or a festival in every episode, and a murder weapon nobody saw coming. Two Chief Inspector Barnabys, a long line of sergeants and a rotating mortuary have kept Causton CID busy across more than two decades. These 47 questions cover the cast changes, the pathologists, the novels by Caroline Graham that started it all, the fictional geography and the real towns and pubs that stand in for it, the theme tune and the unusual way it is played, the guest stars who turned up before they were famous, how far the show has travelled, and the most outlandish deaths the writers have dreamed up. Most are pitched for anyone who has watched a few episodes with a cup of tea; a handful are for the completists who know which village is which. Play on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for a pub quiz, a fan night or a rainy Sunday.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which dairy product, the pride of Midsomer Pastures, is the murder weapon in 'Schooled in Murder'?
A wheel of cheese
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.
Q 02Which electronic instrument gives the Midsomer Murders theme its eerie, wavering voice?
Theremin
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.
Q 03Midsomer takes its name from Midsomer Norton, a real town in which English county?
Somerset
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.
Q 04Which future film star played village thief Peter Drinkwater in the 2000 episode 'Judgement Day'?
Orlando Bloom
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.
Q 05The 100th Midsomer Murders episode took Barnaby to which Nordic capital, in a nod to crime dramas such as The Killing?
Copenhagen
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.
Q 06Which writer adapted the 1997 Midsomer Murders pilot from Caroline Graham's first Barnaby novel?
Anthony Horowitz
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.
Q 07Which actress has played Causton pathologist Dr Fleur Perkins since 2019?
Annette Badland
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.
Q 08Which Midsomer Murders regular, an experimental cook, longed to swap Causton for a picturesque village?
Joyce
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.
Q 09What full-time job does John Barnaby's wife Sarah hold, keeping her clear of most of his Midsomer cases?
A head teacher
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'.
Q 10In 'Death and Dust', Tom Barnaby and Ben Jones follow a case out of Midsomer into which country?
Wales
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.
Q 11Which future film star played Simon Mayfield in the 2003 Midsomer Murders episode 'The Green Man'?
Henry Cavill
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.
Q 12Which Midsomer Wellow society, fresh from a £30,000 horse-race win, is picked off one by one in a 2002 episode?
The bell-ringers
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.
Q 13'Destroying Angel', in which heirs to the Easterly Grange Hotel die one by one, takes its title from what?
Q 21Tom Barnaby's final case, 'Fit for Murder', opens with a Swavely Manor spa client found dead in what?
A flotation chamber
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.
Q 22Before 81 episodes as Tom Barnaby, John Nettles spent the 1980s playing which TV detective?
Jim Bergerac
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'.
Q 23Which Oxfordshire market town, east of Oxford, has often doubled for Causton in Midsomer Murders?
A poisonous mushroom
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.
Q 14Which Midsomer sergeant, arriving in series 19 alongside a new Barnaby family dog, is the longest-serving by tenure?
Jamie Winter
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.
Q 15Which Causton pathologist joined the Midsomer Worthy choir in 'Death in Chorus'?
George Bullard
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.
Q 16A film crew shooting which swashbuckler at Midsomer Magna's Manor House loses its director to a prop guillotine?
The Scarlet Pimpernel
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.
Q 17In 'Small Mercies', a body tied down in the Little Worthy model village echoes which classic book?
Gulliver's Travels
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.
Q 18In 'Death of a Hollow Man', an amateur actor's stage death turns real in the final act of which play?
Amadeus
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.
Q 19In Caroline Graham's first Barnaby novel, Emily Simpson's autopsy finds red wine mixed with which poison?
Hemlock
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.
Q 20'Secrets and Spies' reveals that Tom Barnaby once worked for which agency, long before he ran Causton CID?
MI6
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.
Thame
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.
Q 24Wallingford, one of the towns that plays Causton in Midsomer Murders, was long home to which crime writer?
Agatha Christie
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.
Q 25Which four-time BAFTA winner, who also scored the UK House of Cards, composed the Midsomer Murders theme?
Jim Parker
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.
Q 26Midsomer Murders has passed 140 episodes, but how many Barnaby novels did Caroline Graham write?
7
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.
Q 27Which actor, a former Midsomer Murders sergeant, went on to play Queen's guitarist in Bohemian Rhapsody?
Gwilym Lee
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.
Q 28Which producer was suspended in 2011 after calling Midsomer Murders 'the last bastion of Englishness'?
Brian True-May
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.
Q 29Cully Barnaby's unusual first name comes from a honeymoon village on which lake?
Geneva
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.
Q 30Which seaside city links John Barnaby's old posting, Ben Jones's promotion and Dr Kate Wilding's professorship?
Brighton
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.