The British Mysteries – The Body-littered Countryside
British mysteries. For years we’ve watched Saturday and Sunday evening airings of various crime and detective franchises. They range from Father Brown to Grantchester to Unforgotten. Most of them are murder mysteries and procedurals. Many of them take place in small English villages or their counties. After all these years, it’s surprising that those villages and counties aren’t totally depopulated. In recent times the mystery geographic scope has taken us to Ireland, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand and even Saint Marie, the fictional Caribbean Island locale of Death in Paradise, which has a mostly black indigenous police force, but which for some reason requires a white DCI from London to solve its crimes. The British model extends to Europe and Scandinavia as well.
In this series of articles, I’ll talk about a large number of mystery programs and series that take place somewhere in England and Scotland first, then travel to other locations in the world, with their own accents to parse.
Let’s begin our adventure.
Starring Mark Williams (Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter films) as the very Catholic bicycle-riding titular priest, this show has been in production since 2013, with over 130 episodes. In about 12 years, more than 200 people have been offed in Kembleford and given the last rites by Father Brown. The cemetery in the village seems far too small for its steady flow of murder victims, never mind for those lucky enough to have survived the mayhem and to have died on their own. Mark Williams, incidentally, is not himself Catholic. He is a non-practicing Anglican who greatly appreciates the moral values of Father Brown. As is the case in many English village mysteries, the amateur crime solver of the show is the bane of the local police inspector.
Sorcha Kusack, as Mrs. Bridgette McCarthy, played the parish secretary and rectory housekeeper and cook until 2022. Mrs. McCarthy is an arbiter of the proper, swearing she is not judgmental, while being an inveterate gossip, a characteristic she denies. Mrs. McCarthy and the younger, vibrant Bunty/Penelope Windermere (Emer Kenny) often assist Father Brown in his sleuthing, to the never-ending dismay of Inspector Mallory (Jack Deam). In 2022 Inspector Mallory left Kembleford, replaced by Chief Inspector Sullivan (Tom Chanbers), who, after his initial exasperation with Father Brown’s intrusions, begins to find the priest’s crime-solving instincts helpful. Always sympathetic to Father Brown and his entourage is the aptly named Sergeant Goodfellow (John Burton), the long-suffering gofer for Inspector Mallory. He enables no end of the good padre’s subterfuges and stratagems, providing confidential evidence and access to records the Chief Inspector would never divulge.
The show has a strongly faith-based moral center derived from the very nature of the main character. In almost every episode, either a miscreant or otherwise errant soul is counseled by Father Brown to consider her/his immortal soul and to show contrition. And the solution to every crime puts the universe back right again.
What could possibly be strange about a Catholic nun (what is it about injecting detecting Catholics into Anglican England?), a wine maker who hares about the terribly aptly named village of Great Slaughter on her sidecar-equipped Vespa and who is, to boot, a forensic scientist of the 1960s? This spin-off of Father Brown, which takes place in roughly the same time period, is in its newly launched fourth season. It dispenses with the antagonism between the amateur sleuth and the local DCI, instead making Sister Boniface’s convent lab the police CSI unit. Lorna Watson plays the canny Sister, whose knowledge of the worldly far exceeds what we might expect of an ostensibly cloistered religious woman. She is particularly adept at detecting unusual toxic substances concealed in unexpected places.
Where religion strongly peppers Father Brown, in this series the convent, its residents and its practices mainly present comic relief.
Completing our trifecta of clerical detecting, this series, also set in the 1950s, has been broadcast since 2014. Its eleventh and final season is currently in production. Different from the fictional settings of Father Brown and Sister Boniface, Grantchester’s locale is the actual historic village of Grantchester, just a short distance from Cambridge. The actual Grantchester Church of Saint Andrew and Saint Mary is the detective vicar’s church. Its provenance dates it to the 12th century, with pieces added in the 14th, 15th, and 19th centuries.
Apparently, something in the air of Cambridgeshire imbues the vicars of the Anglican church in Grantchester with powers of detection unheard of in the general population. The series has had three main clerics. The most recent is the very good looking and buff Alphy Kottaram, played by actor Rishi Kumar Nair, whose family is Hindu. Each of the three vicars in the series has worked with the local detective inspector, Geordie Keating (Robson Green), usually getting involved very soon after arrival with Geordie in solving a weird murder. The series quite openly tackles social issues that had, in the historic time of the series setting, impact different from what they have today. One of the main characters, Leonard Finch (Al Weaver), is a curate who loses his curatorial license and goes to prison when he is outed as homosexual, a crime in England in the 1950s. Upon his release he returns to Grantchester, where he is both welcomed and accepted in all that he is, even protected by Sylvia Chapman (Tessa Peake-Jones), the deeply religious vicarage housekeeper.
Midsomer is a small English county with its own Detective Chief Inspector. The show has been in continuous production since 1997 and comprises over 140 episodes. Two DCIs Barnaby have led the local constabulary: DCI Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) from 1997 to 2011; and DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon), Tom’s younger cousin. Both have been assisted by capable, often exasperated Detective Sergeants, the latest being DC Jamie Winter (Nick Hendrix). The series is set in the present but has a feeling of the past about it. The ongoing drama has seen many well-known guest stars, including Olivia Colman, Henry Cavill, Orlando Bloom, Hugh Bonneville, Julian Glover, Imelda Staunton, and Simon Callow. The series began filming its 25th season in 2024.
The fictional setting of the action has been pinpointed, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midsomer_Murders), as “the areas of Berkshire and part of northern Hampshire.” Wikipedia also notes that “Many of the villages and small towns of the county have the word “Midsomer” in their name; this is inspired in part by the real county of Somerset, and specifically, its actual town of Midsomer Norton, and became a naming convention within the show. Midsomer Wellow and Causton are derived from the names of real Somerset villages Wellow and Corston.”
This is a bloody show. Each episode seems to have not just one body lying in the grass by the river, but several brutal deaths, often perpetrated by one person, though not in typical “serial killer” mode; usually each successive murder has a purpose: to cover up the previous one. The mayhem is tempered by a gentle humor: the uncomfortable sight of a character doing something embarrassing, usually in an incongruous costume; or the interplay of DCI Barnaby with his wife or dog. Of late the medical examiner, Dr. Fleur Perkins (Annette Badland), has altered the show’s temper with her frank observations and her willingly discussed back history of multiple marriages and liaisons.
As is the case with other British murder mysteries, the sheer number of violent deaths in Midsomer County, in a relatively small area, would seem to require vast cemeteries just for the murdered. A map of body locations over 25 years would cover the countryside with dots.
Midsomer Murders is, incidentally, possibly the only British mystery with a title theme played on a theremin.
By the way, when one watches a lot of the British mysteries, one must be prepared to see actors from one appearing prominently in another, or even several. As an example, Annette Badland, who plays Dr. Fleur Perkins in Midsomer Murders, is the crafty, ruthless murderer in an episode of Agatha Raisin (Acorn).
Next: Neurodivergent Detectives