'A Tale of Two Hamlets', Midsomer Murders (ITV, 24 January 2003)

When I tell you that ‘A Tale of Two Hamlets’ is the first episode of Midsomer Murders (1997-present) I’ve ever watched all the way through, I don’t mean to sound snooty. It’s simply that I’m not particularly bothered about cosy crime drama, even one distinguished by surreally comic death scenes and random celebrity cameos. But aside from Martine McCutcheon being crushed by a giant cheese, Midsomer is famed for its staying power (138 episodes!), for being a significant UK export, and – slightly less comfortably - for the race-row incident that led to its producer being suspended in 2011.

Watching this Plater contribution was something of a challenge for me, as my inexperience with the series makes it tricky to determine the extent to which ‘A Tale of Two Hamlets’, the fourth episode of the sixth series, deviates from standard Midsomer business. In a way, that was the mystery I wanted to solve, rather than the actual plot about members of an aristocratic family being bumped off in some kind of inter-village feud. Take the moment half-way through when a fairly unlikeable character is discovered in the manor kitchen, seemingly drowned in a vat of gazpacho. My guess is that this was the sort of gross-out comedy that Plater felt obliged to provide so as to maintain the house style.

The murder that kicks off ‘A Tale of Two Hamlets’ is that of a young actor called Larry Smith (Charlie Beall). His uncle is the lord of the manor, Rupert Smythe-Webster (Ronald Pickup), his father is the local vicar (Christopher Good), and another uncle (Jonathan Hyde)– and eventually second victim – is the producer of his recent film 'The House of Satan'. In the pre-credits sequence, we see Larry being coerced to don his movie costume as part of the opening of a sort of 'House of Satan' heritage experience that has been installed within the grounds of the family manor. During the proceedings, Larry is killed in an explosion in the grounds, which brings Midsomer’s detective duo Barnaby (John Nettles) and Troy (Daniel Casey) to undertake an investigation into Smythe-Webster family secrets, the story behind the movie adaptation, and the long-simmering tension between the neighbouring villages of Upper and Lower Warden, apparently feuding since the time of Cromwell.

Here’s the spoiler. The murderer is a young man employed at the manor who turns out to be the illegitimate son of one of the Smythe-Websters. I’ve re-watched the last ten minutes a couple of times, and checked some online synopses, but I still don’t think I’m entirely clear about the precise motivation of each of the three murders. But perhaps I’m over-thinking it: the idea with these kinds of shows is that you let the murder resolution just wash over you, right?

What’s far more interesting – to us, and clearly to Plater – are the background storyline elements relating, firstly, to class tension; and secondly, the commercial exploitation of literary heritage. In short, the plot hinges upon a middle-aged character called Sarah Proudie (Anne Reid), who happens to be the great granddaughter of the writer Ellis Bell. Proudie is not only the custodian of a rather dry-looking Ellis Bell museum, but was responsible for republishing the writer’s 'House of Satan' novel. She says whilst the Smythe-Websters deal in power, she deals in ‘truth’.

According to Proudie, 'The House of Satan' was an ‘old-fashioned socialist novel’, intended by its author as a satirical critique of the moral corruption of the Smythe-Webster family of the time. The good residents of Lower Warden have become mightily peeved at the way the author’s novel has been appropriated, bastardised and commercialised by the Smythe-Websters – who have effectively turned 'The House of Satan' into a schlocky, low-budget horror movie. It turns out that one of the murders happened indirectly because of an argument between Proudie and the movie’s producer about all this, and the fact that Proudie was powerless to stop production because the book was out of copyright. Furthermore, the local bookseller who came up with the idea for the movie, and drafted its first screenplay, is written out of the project – with the screenplay credit eventually going to a schoolfriend pal of the film-makers.

Plater’s satirical and self-aware take on the horrors of literary adaptation and exploitation can only be done with broadest of strokes here, but he’s definitely winking at his audience when telling the story of a socialist writer’s ideas being translated into popular genre entertainment. He’s also having some fun at the expense of the British film industry, via his scenario of the young actor Larry Smith reinventing himself as proletarian performer, despite his elitist, nepotistic background. There’s a throwaway line about him being known for his role in a show called ‘Diamond Geezers’, which we quickly surmise is some of sort Guy Ritchie gangster-type affair.

The cheap and scuzzy-sounding ‘House of Satan’ is represented here as the lowliest rung of British movie-making, although Plater’s episode went out in 2003, around the time when the UK horror film tradition was getting a shot in the arm through the likes of 28 Days Later (2002) and Shaun of the Dead (2004).

The episode also has some eye-catching set dressing. There’s a scene in the back of the bookshop where the town’s resident young Tarantino-wannabe film-maker (Leo Bill) lurks, and the camera lingers on some British film posters: there’s the spoofy Horror of Frankenstein (1970), Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965), The Man in the White Suit (1951) and – slightly out of place, perhaps? – Billy Liar (1963). I started to draft a paragraph here on what this curious selection could possibly tell us about UK film culture, but – to be frank – I’m not sure it’s in anyone's interest to read it.

More significant is the Soviet propaganda poster that seems to unsettle Detective Troy when he spies it on the wall in an Upper Warden pub pool-room. We also see the troublesome Sarah Proudie handling books about Marx and Engels in her tribute museum to the exploited writer. Detective Troy doesn’t seem charmed by this, even asking Proudie at one point whether her passion in life is ‘winning the class war’.

And this is where my limited knowledge of Midsomer Murders gets in my analytical way. How often you do you get posters of Lenin, prominently-placed books about Marx, or references to class war in the show? Which, let’s not forget, was being watched by almost ten million viewers at this point. What’s more, Plater’s script here, as ever, is highly allusive – from the title itself (shades of Dickens and Shakespeare), through to references to The Wind in the Willows and Emily Bronte (Ellis Bell being a pseudonym used by the author) – but how unusual is this for the series?

We also need to acknowledge the casting of Ronald Pickup as the show’s aristocratic patriarch, who had memorably starred in two earlier Plater projects: as the writer George Orwell in the biographical Orwell on Jura (1984) and as the scene (and possibly show)-stealing Yakimov in the Fortunes of War (1987) adaptation. The fact that Pickup’s character comes to stand here for the worst exploitation of artistic heritage is obviously ironic, given the actor’s association with literary-themed work by Plater that is widely regarded as the best of its kind.

Midsomer Murders is available on DVD and on the ITVX streaming service.