Midsomer Murders

The closing of what was once a very popular public garden in Midsomer Deverell sparks a series of murders that have Inspector Barnaby and Sgt. Troy stumped.

Following the funeral of local hotelier Karl Wainwright, his hotel's manager and a well liked Punch and Judy performer, Gregory Chambers, disappears unusually in yet another picturesque Midsomer village. Most people dismiss his disappearance completely but when he doesn't turn up, a search is conducted and a severed hand, confirmed to be Gregory's, turns up in the woods. Further deaths and a mushroom poisoning occur surrounding the beneficiaries of Karl Wainwright's will. All is not as it seems.

A man's naked body found under mysterious circumstances, within a crop circle on Sir Harry Chatwyn's wheat field, leads police to investigating how he wound up in the field after being electrocuted. While the nearby village of Midsomer Parva is abuzz with UFO mania, Barnaby is unconvinced by a local ufologist that the man's death was the result of alien activity, as he uncovers rivalries, theft and hatred during his investigations, soon after a well known burglar is found dead in another crop circle with identical injuries.

Returning home one night, in a drunken state, the local doctor of Newton Magna calls in the police after he had accidentally hit a man, yet when Barnaby and Troy arrive, the injured man is nowhere to be found. As they investigate the mystery, Barnaby encounters an old adversary who is working to help renovate the village and whose daughter is getting married to a local boy. Matters soon become complicated, when the body of the best man's father is found in a well that was being renovated, whom the detectives soon discover had disappeared on the day he was planning to run away with a local farmer's wife.

Dave Cutler, Goodman's Land's amorous postman, is found almost decapitated near the common early one morning. Newspaper girl Holly Reid (Kate Maberly) tells Barnaby that she heard music playing faintly nearby. Barnaby and Troy are aided in their investigations by local WPC Jay Nash (Gillian Kearney).

A woman is killed after receiving threatening letters, setting off a chain of murders for DCI Barnaby to investigate.