Midsomer Murders

As imported British television series go, this is one of the best – and perhaps better still, with eleven seasons and counting available on DVD in the colonies, it’s good for months of nights when there’s nothing on the tube… or on the telly. Set in an imaginary English rural county – wherein someone is always bumping a few of the locals off in particularly sinister and mysterious circumstances – it chronicles the sleuthing of Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby and his several sidekicks as they try to out-think the mad old ladies, deranged attorneys, homicidal undertakers and malevolent tenant farmers who spring up like lethal prize vegetables in each episode.

Television for viewers with a few functional brain cells still left to them, Midsomer Murders entangles itself in really quite tricky plots, nicely rounded and thoroughly peculiar characters and beguilingly peaceful scenery – I’m certain that even as you read this, there are a few overseas tourists driving hired Ford Focuses around the midlands looking for signs of Midsomer.