Not a cludo...

I have to ask… just what is Midsomer Murders really about? It seems to me that most of the killings are a cosy kind of affair, not really much to do with murder at all. Tumbling piles of books and not at all accidental drownings, angst ridden lovechildren and messy thwarted mistresses. All jolly good fun set amidst the Oxfordshire villages where I grew up with murder leading to murder inside mellow stone cottages, country houses and large made-over farmhouses. Oddly I can’t remember a single real murder ever happening back in those far off days; so it must be a relatively recent thing, probably caused by all the incomer commuter types buying all the property.

Of course I suspect Midsomer Murders is no more meant to reflect reality any more than Johnathan Creek is. The murders don’t really seem murderous at all and I find myself watching shootings and stabbings, garrotting and fatal doses of poison with the same warm fuzzy sense of cosy as I do when sitting through an episode of Downton Abbey. Each Poirot or Miss Marple might just as well be a Mr Selfridge for all the blood and gore that isn’t shown. Well, perhaps there’s the odd trickle emerging from a nice clean entry point where that ornate Indian dagger pierces between the victim’s shoulder blades. All good clean fun really.

I wonder if murder is really like that, it can’t be can it? And is it okay to watch? People are dead here, made dead in various ways. Should I really be watching murder as an entertainment to lull me into nostalgic mood before watching the ten o’clock news? Ah, the news. So many real horrors laid out on our screens - but hardly a patch on the graphic detail of Silent Witness. There was a time when I couldn’t watch an injection being given, let alone a full autopsy with all that sawing and pulling back of fatty flesh. These days I can look at twenty real life shattered bodies, a hole full of dozens of beheaded corpses, rivers of blood on dusty streets with the same detachment from reality as I do a murdered Oxford don in Lewis.

All good clean fun really. No, I haven't a clue about murder despite all the whodunnits. Perhaps if I were to stand in the road and watch as the bullets rip through real flesh I might understand it all a little better.