Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Neil Dudgeon, Nick Hendrix, Fiona Dolman, Annette Badland, Keith Allen, Lizzy McInnerny, Colin Murtagh, Manoj Anand, Raj Awasti, Nimmy March, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd. Peter De Jersey, Michael Nardone, Sirine Saba, Natalie Simpson, John Thompson, Harriet Thorpe.
A heart attack is a life changing moment, a point of reckoning, a path that splits in two, and depending on how you recover, can lead to decisions being made that have ramifications down the line, and which, like murder, can lead to others suffering for your spur of the moment actions.
There have been many tales entwinned with murderous intent where the victim is shown to have died with the belief of the natural cause of a heart attack, only to find later that it was induced by something other in the system that gave the death the appearance of anything other than foul play; and yet few have gone down the road of showing life after the moment of death, and how a group of people offered a second chance of life might find themselves on the wrong end of death’s embrace anyway.
Midsomer Murder’s The Stitcher Society is a good old fashioned whodunnit that would not feel out of place in the realm of Noir, but which sits quite comfortably in the sense of the British country-side tranquillity it has been written for, the same qualities abound, the misdirection, the femme fatale lurking in the background, the appearance of innuendo and sexual tension, and above all, the falsely accused still fighting for their life; and through it all Neil Dudgeon gives perhaps his finest performance yet in the role of DCI John Barnaby, and in which the ensemble, which includes Keith Allen, Peter De Jersey, the excellent Hannah Waddingham and Harriet Thorpe, plays to the absolute strength that the series has always demanded.
A heart, in the wrong hands, is easy to break, but in the hands of a murderer with issues and one who is concerned only for their position, well the heart becomes a bomb waiting to explode and take all who stand its wake out of the picture for good. It is to this end that the episode perfectly satisfies the desire of the armchair detective, for rather than the case being about greed or lust, it comes down to feelings, the complexity of emotional turmoil and the ability to weave the narrative in your favour as others search for the killer in plain sight.
Too much emotion will eventually cause the heart to break, but emotions are also what reminds us that the world is real, and for good or bad, the heart breaks down eventually, and it is how we respond to the granting of a hopeful second chance that sees us reveal our true colours.
A superb episode, one of true detection and intent.
Ian D. Hall