Midsomer Murders is the epitome of what you expect a British crime drama to be. There’s the charming and cunning old detective, the underplayed younger partner, the cases set in the picturesque European countryside, and the myriad of suspects, all of whom seem very, very guilty. It is, scene for scene, exactly what you would expect from a British murder mystery series. Despite that, it’s entirely enjoyable.
I picked out one episode from set seventeen of the series, titled “The Black Book,” to base my review upon. The story was, of course, quite fantastical, and though I was able to call who the murderer was before the first killing took place, the detectives went in an entirely different route than I did. No one was innocent in the story in the end, but they were all guilty in dramatically different (and interesting) ways. It was a riveting episode, something I can’t say about much television I watch.
If I’m doing my math right (and I might not be), “The Black Book” will be the sixty-sixth Midsomer Murders mystery released to DVD in America. It’s the second of Set 17’s four mysteries, and it was the one with the blurb that interested me the most (“a brutal murderer begins targeting the Midsomer art world”).
I’ll probably be revisiting the set soon enough, to keep me occupied on a rainy day if nothing else. Serious anglophiles undoubtedly already have the first sixteen sets, but if you’re a relatively new one like myself, set 17 is a perfectly fine place to start. It’s one of the most enjoyable pieces of legal drama fluff I’ve seen in a long time.
Bonus features for the four-disc set include interviews with the cast and crew, as well as Acorn Media’s typical on-screen features “fascinating facts” and “production notes.” The cast interviews are the most fascinating bits of the special features, but they’re not really integral to the enjoyment of the episodes.
Midsomer Murders, Set 17 is now available to own from Acorn Media. You can order it on Amazon for $34.99.
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