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Midsomer Murders: Series 23
R0 - United Kingdom - Acorn Media Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (7th December 2024). |
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The Film
 Detective Inspector John Barnaby (Different for Girls' Neil Dudgeon) and his sergeant Jamie Winter (Suffragette's Nick Hendrix) are back for another season of Midsomer Murders with four new cases along with Barnaby's wife Sarah (Ultraviolet's Fiona Dolman), their young daughter, Paddy the dog, and spunky senior citizen coroner Fleur (Angels & Insects's Annette Badland). In "The Blacktrees Prophecy" (89:20), the murder of an extreme survivalist (Aran Bell) in his own high-tech shelter cast suspicion on his long-suffering wife (The Chelsea Detective's Sonita Henry) along with the other members of the survivalist group and their equally fed-up families. The investigation unearths secrets and betrayals with a touch of pseudo-incest – including a throwaway reference to the first episode "The Killings at Badger's Drift" – as a killer in a hazmat suit targets more victims by weaponizing their very own survivalist tools. Rather than stumbling across murders, Sarah keeps herself busy fretting over her mother's impending stay, and then annoys her husband by letting her California-living college friend stay over later in the series. In "The Debt of Lies" (89:17), the death of a retired police chief (Pride and Prejudice's Sabina Franklyn) in a car crash on the night of her going away part is revealed to have been a murder. With the dead woman having married a colleague (Cockneys vs Zombies' Gary Beadle) who left the force under a cloud of suspicion surrounding a major bank heist, her son (Grantchester's Lorne MacFadyen) and his family being threatened by an ex-con (The Bill's Alex Walkinshaw) who works for a land developer (Dog Eat Dog's Geff Francis) who has no trace of existence before the heist, and her accountant stepdaughter (Refugees' Diana Yekinni) suspecting financial misconduct at the police force's luxury retirement apartment, Barnaby would like to believe the culprit to be anyone but one of his retired colleagues – among them his training academy mentor (Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence's Tom Conti) who has an autistic son (aJules Robertson) with a destructive temper – who are also revealed to have grievances with the victim. In "A Grain of Truth" (89:57), someone is trying to sabotage the organic bakery of Chrissie Larkin (Rebecca Night) who has renovated her family's ancestral mill so they can mill their own flour with renewable energy from the waterwheel, not only putting a dent in the flour production of the surrounding mills but also overshadowing other local businesses when her business goes viral. While her husband Tom (Robert Gilbert) does not deem a cake filled with pig's blood enough of a threat, things turn potentially deadly when she and the guests of her high profile Midsomer's Eve celebration start hallucinating and getting sick. Is it the pesticides that grain farmer Nathan Duncroft (Geoffrey Lumb) is rumored to be using, or has someone poisoned Chrissie's bread rolls? "Dressed to Kill" (89:17), someone takes local complainer Lois Springfield (Clare Hingott) seriously when she says she would rather stick dominoes in her eyes than endorse a drag show underway at the local theatre. While the theatre is also hosting a dominoes competition, the stiletto to the temple points Barnaby and Winter in the direction of the feather boas and actor Nigel Bellamy (Nigel Lindsay) who seems to have fallen on hard times hosting the show. No one involved with the show, gay or straight, it seems was spared Lois' ire; but subsequent murders suggest that there may be another motive at hand than ridding the world of one particularly loud Karen.  Series twenty-two of Midsomer Murders was pretty uneven, which is to be expected with a long-running cozy mystery shuffling elements of familiar scenarios both for audience familiarity and the constraints of the format; however, series twenty-three is more miss than hit. "The Blacktrees Prophecy" really has little to actually say or satirize about the survivalist community other than revealing the ones here to be more interested in saving themselves than the world, but the case is not so much diverting as too cluttered with characters for their secrets to qualify to be effective misdirection; as such, it feels like the writers just reached into a hat and picked the killer. "The Debt of Lies", on the other hand, is all-too-obvious in its red herrings in spite of a solution that manages to incorporate two of the most-likely motives rather than making one turn out to be just a diversionary tactic to conceal the real culprit and their motive. "A Grain of Truth" feels like a retread of "The Ghost of Causton Abbey" from series twenty without a medieval legend for the killer to exploit, and the relationships between red herring characters and their various motives that misdirect Barnaby's and Winter's suspicions are less interesting, as is the real motive for the killings. While this reviewer would never charge any work with the tiresome accusation of being "woke" – especially due to this series elsewhere doing the umpteenth incarnation of "I'm secretly gay so I would have no motive to kill…" – the writers of "Dressed to Kill" seem to avoid the possibility of demonizing the drag community to the extent that the case has no "bite." Compare to the average episode of RuPaul's Drag Race – or even the drag case in series two of My Life is Murder – robs the viewer of the entertainment value of drag queen cattiness bordering on toxicity while the victim never goes full Karen in attacking drag queens as an extension of transphobia (despite their being a distinction in that drag actually is the "performance" of femininity that includes the bitchy banter as burlesque). The height of comedy comes from the third time this series that Winter gets objectified as a performer says he would be an ideal drag queen due to his "perfect bone structure and buttocks like coconuts." Viewers have likely grown accustomed after twenty-four series – series twenty-four is already available digitally and on physical media in the U.S. and series twenty-five has already been approved – to Midsomer Murders output being uneven and cannibalizing its own previous cases, so series twenty-three might be one they skip over in subsequent binges or revisit with a more forgiving eye. 
Video
Four feature-length episodes episodes are split between two dual-layer DVDS and the 16:9 anamorphic 1.78:1 widescreen encodes look more then adequate in standard definition, strongest during the daylight exteriors and well-lit interiors while some night exteriors are a tad noisy and some scenes darkened in post-production look a tad flat including a POV shot that is supposed to have a sense of depth.
Audio
The sole audio option for each episode is a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track that is dialogue-oriented with some exaggerated foley murder sound effects and scoring accenting the periodic deaths as turning points in the narrative. Optional English HoH subtitles are included. 
Extras
Although series twenty-three was released in 2022 and series twenty-four has already played on television, this set includes the "Midsomer Murders: 25 Years of Mayhem" (46:11) from 2022 narrated by actress Celia Imrie and featuring episode clips and new interviews with all of the major cast members from the current ones to original leads John Nettles (Tom Barnaby), Daniel Casey (Sergeant Gavin Troy), Jane Wymark (Tom's wife Joyce), Tamzin Outhwaite (Tom's daughter Cully), and Jason Hughes (Troy's second replacement Ben Jones). Disc two also includes a picture gallery (2:03), author Caroline Graham biography and broadcast dates. 
Overall
Viewers have likely grown accustomed after twenty-four series – series twenty-four is already available digitally and on physical media in the U.S. and series twenty-five has already been approved – to Midsomer Murders output being uneven and cannibalizing its own previous cases, so series twenty-three might be one they skip over in subsequent binges or revisit with a more forgiving eye.
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