Upon British author Caroline Graham’s books about the British investigator Inspector Barnaby enjoying great popularity among readers, BBC picked up on the news and began adapting the books.

 

The pilot episode The Killings at Badger's Drift was broadcast on the British channel ITV on March 23^rd 1997. The novelist also wrote the screenplay for one of the first episodes of the series. The series was so popular with viewers that it was continued even after the filming of the seven novels by Caroline Graham was completed.

 

Caroline Graham’s novels are so-called whodunit thrillers, which means that the reader is to track down the perpetrators through traces and evidence presented in the course of the episode. Thereby the author sometimes also sets false trails, at times tempting for the reader to follow.

 

The television series Midsomer Murders, which originated from these publications, however, does not focus on the murder and the subsequent clarifications. The series describes in detail the English countryside with its villas and manicured cottages and sketches its people as lovable and sometimes eccentric residents of the county.

 

The viewers accompany Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby (played by John Nettles) and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Gavin Troy, (played by Daniel Casey) in their investigations all over the fictional Midsomer County, where Tom Barnaby and his wife, Joyce, also live.

 

Barnaby's wife, Joyce, and their daughter, Cully, are often tied into the individual stories, so that the viewer sometimes takes part in the most amusing events in Barnaby’s family life.

 

To capture the aura of the quintessential English countryside, the film was shot in different towns and villages, including the counties of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

 

Even if the murder is not the focus of the individual episodes, some bizarre acts are depicted nonetheless. Who would have ever heard of, for example, that a murderer transports an unloved victim into the afterlife with the help of a bar.

 

Just like Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot’s constant companion, Captain Hastings, it always by his side, Barnaby's assistant, DS Troy, is also his loyal friend, though the instructions of his superior may sometimes drive him mad.

 

Troy, lacking both the ingenuity and empathy of DCI Barnaby, reaches his own conclusions quickly, just like Hastings. After Troy's promotion to inspector, he is sent to Middlesbrough, so Barnaby needs a new assistant. This is Sergeant Dan Scott (played by John Hopkins), who, coming from London, is not at all thrilled by his transfer in the rural province.

 

In episode 44, Inspector Barnaby appears without his assistant at a crime scene, supervised, among others, also by Constable Ben Jones resident (played by Jason Hughes). Barnaby, convinced of Jones' talent as a police officer, spontaneously takes on Constable Jones as assistant. Although Jones initially worked as an assistant though a Constable, he is promoted to Detective Sergeant a few episodes later.

 

John Nettles, who has been playing the role of DCI Barnaby played for 13 years, has expressed the wish of leaving the series after the 13^th season. At the beginning of the 13^th season, the role of John Barnaby (played by Neil Dudgeon) is introduced, who is a cousin of Inspector Barnaby. John Barnaby becomes the main character in the series Midsomer Murders starting from season 14.