Overview: Police detectives (John Nettles, Daniel Casey) are called to investigate the murder of a beautiful South American model. She is found with a necktie wrapped around her throat and a suspect's watch at the crime scene. The suspect (Nick Farrell) is found to be an unhappily married man with a mistress and a sexual fetish that meets the profile of a killer. It is also found that the crime duplicates another murder that took place nine years earlier.

DVD Verdict: They are amateurs and pros, London dwellers moving equally comfortably in international society as in that of their occasional forays into the English countryside, and lifelong inhabitants of those rural settings. They investigate crimes in the Thames valley and cities as large as Oxford, midsize towns like a certain Kingsmarkham, and villages with such all-English names as St. Mary Mead or King's Abbot.

And they have been portrayed by some of Britain's finest contemporary actors, from Jeremy Brett and David Burke/Edward Hardwicke (Sherlock Holmes & Doctor Watson) to Roy Marsden (Commander Adam Dalgliesh), John Thaw and Kevin Whately (D.C.I. Morse & D.S. Lewis), David Jason (D.I. "Jack" Frost), George Baker and Christopher Ravenscroft (D.C.I. Reginald Wexford & D.I. Mike Burden), Peter Davison and Brian Glover (Albert Campion & Magersfontein Lugg), Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter (Lord Peter Wimsey & Harriet Vane), David Suchet/Albert Finney (Hercule Poirot) and last but not least Joan Hickson as Miss Jane Marple, the grandmother of all English village detectives.

To that illustrious group, British author Caroline Graham in 1987 added another sleuthing couple, the middle-aged D.C.I. Tom Barnaby and his young colleague D.S. Gavin Troy, coppers in a cluster of villages which, collectively, make up an area known as Midsomer County, and which could easily rival Agatha Christie's very own St. Mary Mead in per-capita occurrences of treachery, crime and bloodletting. The series' first entry, "The Killings at Badgers Drift," was so successful that it won a Macavity Award for best first mystery and, for its author, an instant loyal following. Before long, the books spawned a television series, which at almost 30 episodes has long since outrun the number of its print originals.

Starring as Barnaby and Troy are Royal Shakespeare Company alumnus John Nettles, best known to TV audiences as Jerseyan Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac in the 1980s' series of the same name (based on the books by Andrew Saville), and Daniel Casey, whose most notable other roles to date have been appearances in the BBC's "Our Friends in the North" and the 1998 Catherine Cookson adaptation "The Wingless Bird." Nettles and Casey are an engaging team, not quite faithful to their characters' literary versions - which however works well to their advantage; particularly in the case of Daniel Casey's Troy, who is less brash and more goodnaturedly witty than in the books, and who presents a good foil for Nettles's emphatic Barnaby; in turn overall more reminiscent of George Baker's Wexford than of Nettles's own Bergerac, whose domestic bliss is spoiled, again and again, by the callings of his job; to his regret as much as to his family's; yet, he is to much of a professional not to heed those callings every single time.

With release of the series' episodes now into season eight, the wonderful (Brit-loving) Acorn Media have now brought us 'Midsomer Murders - Set Eight.' Now with a new, brash young assistant in the form of John Hopkins ('Love In A Cold Climate'), this new collection features the following episodes:

"The Maid in Splendour:" Midsomer Worthy’s beloved local pub figures in a case involving unrequited love, secret business deals, and passionate affairs.

"The Straw Woman:" Scott becomes bewitched by a village schoolteacher as he and Barnaby unravel a centuries-old mystery in Midsomer Parva.

"Ghosts of Christmas Past:" Barnaby escapes Christmas with his in-laws only to be thrust into the shadowy world and dark secrets of the mysterious Villiers family.

This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:
John Nettles Interview
Midsomer Map
Caroline Graham Biography
Cast Filmographies