Big gap between them finishing the last series and them starting making new eps for the next, actor out of contract decided not to come back.


Jones was cross with the headmistress because she was expelling cheese scholarship kids so she could make more money from high fee paying parents and so not wasting time and money and those she considered worthless one of whom was in fact the murderer.

Don't think I would like that!! It would turn into "Will they wont they" situation.

Maybe a man and a woman??! Are they auditioning??

This episode was dreadful. For a start I'd forgotten just how bad McCutcheon is, even by soapie standards. Thankfully the programme makers put her and the audience out of their misery pretty quickly.

Another dreadful 'actress' is Lucy Liemann who played Beatrix, unable to pronounce her words and delivering her lines in one gabbling, incoherent mess.

The show is also seriously under- rehearsed, if at all, with the cast frequently talking over each other

And, finally, instead of Barnaby getting his mates to search the school, we get his now customary psychobabble nonsense with the murderer.

Unfortunately this show has now become unwatchable in my view.

It was amusing that McCutcheon was killed off even before the opening titles announced she was in it. Even by Midsomer standards there were an awful lot of dead bodies about. Wouldn't it make Barnaby look better if he could solve a murder before half the village are killed .

So, last night was Jones' last scenes ? I thought he would have been written out too.

I am putting my money on an Asian or black person, and maybe I'll have a flutter on it being a woman too!

Leaving aside the inescapable fact that Dudgeon is in no way as competent in the role as his predecessor, why on earth do the writers, producers, whoever, persist in spoiling the story every time with that pointless hideous and totally irrelevant dog.

Making the show more like a farce these days - time to give up watching methinks.

We've done this before, the dog's and his wife are there, as were Joyce and Culley for the original Barney Bee, to make them appear less one dimensional.

This is a bit of harmless "multi-murder fluff" and enjoyed by many, hence its longevity as a series.

Martine must be so desperate for work and money if she had to take on a role which saw her killed off within 2 minutes of the show starting. Then being reduced to playing a copse really does take the biscut!

I only watch it for the dog .....I love that advert with Harvey and the blue rabbit.

It was never serious though surely...multiple murders involving the most bizarre weapons...anyone for a plough or pitchfork... in sleepy hamlets dotted round a large town with a disproportionate incidence of illicit affairs, fraud and family feuds. All solved of course by just two CID officers sometimes with the assistance of the wife and daughter of the senior. I liked John Nettles...I do prefer Neil Dudgeon's style though and Sykes the dog is a laugh amongst the brutality I guess.

I didn't think she was buried in woodland

I love MM and I love Sykes (if that's how you spell it). Last night episode was interesting.

At least we don't have to put up with the dreadful Joyce!

OK, maybe I shouldn't have watched this late at night after a couple of beers, but I am still unclear about some aspects of last night's 'cheesy' drama...

1) Are we meant to believe that a young woman who was bullied at school ends up so memntally unhinged as to become a serial killer exacting barbaric revenge over a period of a few days?

2) Why did she murder two men who were unconnected to the bullying (her hubby and the two-timing spouse who ended up with a maggoty meal)?

3) Why the 'cheese' theme to her modus operandi - cheese, cheese-wire, Sardinian cheese maggots, cheese-prod thingy and cows?

4) Given the above cheese obsession, why did the last attempted murder break the trend (gassed to death in a science lab)?

amd finally....

5) Why was the dog dressed in bandages when all that had happened was that he had swallowed a ring (the ring having been retrieved after nature had taken its course) and what was in fact hidden under the dressing?

As I said, maybe a sober, more alert viewing would have been better but I'm not prepared to watch it again so would be grateful for any light shone on the above-mentioned points!

I didn't understand the bandage and the collar nonsense. Unless he'd got a vet to surgically remove the ring.

Looks like Martine McCutcheon's acting career has now been reduced to playing these kind of 'grab the paycheck & run' roles...mind you, I bet her check wasn't huge enough to get herself some extremely expensive designer bag...poor thing.
Last edited by Flanno : 31-01-2013 at 17:27

I'll do my best and I'm sure others will correct me if I'm wrong:
1) Yes.
2) She killed her husband because he went back on the idea that they'd go back to London after six months and she couldn't stand anyone telling her what to do. The other husband - no idea, presumably she thought his wife and him were happy together and she was punishing her by killing him?
3) Her family had run the dairy for generations, so it was part of what she felt was imprisoning her, and she was put in that school because she was one of the children connected to the dairy?
4) I suppose the writer wanted to bring home how she'd been bullied, by recreating trapping her in a cupboard. I suppose the other deaths couldn't be school connected or that would have given everything away. That's why I always prefer it if the solution isn't that the killer is mad, because then none of it has to make sense.
5) I think the idea was that Barnaby wanted to keep the dog with him at all times, so he'd know when the ring 'returned', so he pretended the dog was injured. That is so silly I'm embarrassed to be writing it, but I think that's what they were saying. What Ben and Kate saw when they undid the bandages - no idea, but I'd be grateful if someone else can explain it.

I thought it was OK - I was fooled and thought Maggie Steed had done it. I thought they could have let the man save the woman from being trampled by cows. Sometimes the amount of nasty death gets me down in such a silly show.

I am gutted to learn from here that it was Ben's last story, and that presumably he won't get any kind of send off now. I don't blame the actor for feeling he's done enough - it's a pretty thankless part - but I liked him.

According to Radio Times this episode was postponed from 16th January hence no surprise that no reference to Jones' exit.

Re the new sidekick in view of the casting being so pc my money's on a gay,trannie,disabled ,mixed race (by which i mean 25% african,25% asian,25%pakistani,25% welsh) card carrying, liberal tree hugger.

The problem for him might have been for him as an actor was that he kept having extreme changes of levels of intelligence, to suit different plots, from competent at some times (effecting a rescue, "in the nick of time"),to at others being unbelievably thick. Any actor could get fed up with that.

Sykes is the best bit about the show!

take that Dudgeon .....

your stilted acting upstaged by a dog LOL

My heart dropped when I saw her on screen but lifted when she was killed

But! She go hit on the front of her head and not a bruise or cut in sight Unless it was soft cheese that killed her

that's my eye candy gone then Didn't know that.