The body of a local troublemaker and lady's man is found dead in the model village which is the chief tourist attraction of Little Worthy.The body of a local troublemaker and lady's man is found dead in the model village which is the chief tourist attraction of Little Worthy.The body of a local troublemaker and lady's man is found dead in the model village which is the chief tourist attraction of Little Worthy.
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Did you know
- TriviaThe model village is Bekonscot Model Village in Beaconsfield, England.
- GoofsWhen DCI Barnaby inspects Christa's room, he goes straight to it without being shown, or given directions. But he would not know which room was Christa's. He has never been there before.
- Crazy creditsThe folk/dance band consisted of Chris Leslie on fiddle (Fairport Convention), Hugh Crabtree on squeezebox and Mike Sanderson on mandolin. Chris and Hugh still do an annual tour, Feast of Fiddles, which regularly includes Peter Knight (Steeleye Span), Ian Cultler and several other players well known in the world of folk music.
- SoundtracksAnd The Green Grass Grows All Around
Lyrics by William Jerome
Music by Harry von Tilzer
Performed by Emma Stansfield and Olivia Colman
Featured review
The miniature village was the star of the show.
As an American I've only recently become introduced to Midsomer Murders once I added a British streaming service. As a result I've been binging on these episodes and have noticed there's a definite pattern to how the shows are presented. We're shown the murders and there are specific suspects the writers want you to believe are the guilty parties. Then one of those suspects usually ends up being a victim or else there's increasing red herrings thrown out for particular people to be the guilty party. The killer's motivation is only really given in the last few minutes with very minor hints having been given as off hand remarks or actions that seemed irrelevant while initially watching.
This episode is no exception. The first victim is given almost no character information other than he "didn't like change" in the village. That's it. Once the second victim is revealed I quickly was able to narrow my suspect field to two people based on the fact that this character was also poorly developed and thus there really only seemed to be two suspects based on victim #2's relationship with victim #1. Thus the killer must be the one the show was not throwing suspicion at. We were also shown a suspect confessing but based on the amount of time left in the show it obviously had to be a false confession. Thus this episode was quite unsatisfying for me.
I'd like to also point out Olivia Coleman's performance in this. I've noticed a lot of praise, but if I'm honest I didn't like her portrayal. I don't know if that's an acting issue or a writing issue. The first third of the episode I thought she was almost overdoing her acting as a "simple minded" (one character's description) person who was obliviously happy. Time and time again she is called "child minded" and in an insult that was new to me, being "three tomatoes short of a salad." Her portrayal became more nuanced, but it got to the point that I felt uncomfortable watching due to the fact that she seemed to be in an intimate relationship with her boss who was 25 years her senior. With every new mention of her child like mind, I was wondering if she was mentally mature enough to have made the decision to get involved with someone. I do like Olivia as an actress so I don't know if I should put her performance down to it being earlier in her career or down to the script and directing choices.
The episode felt bogged down by a lot of sub plots that had nothing to do with the crimes or furthering the plot. They were essentially just time fillers. In all, this is an episode you don't have to pay a lot of attention to and can just watch as background noise while doing something else.
I also have to complain about how the writers wrote the killer's reasoning behind the murders. To me the character was displaying clearly psychopathic traits and reasoning during the reveal, and it was not due to the reasons the writers were trying to point us towards. When the killer is told the 3rd victim was not guilty of wronging the killer in the way the killer thought, the killer shrugged it off and said they didn't care and didn't feel bad. Then we find out the killer has coldly killed at least once before over the years, making them at minimum a quadruple murderer. Further pointing to a deep psychological imbalance.
Honestly the only reason I even gave this episode 4 stars was because the boat races were fun to watch and the model village was very interesting. As a matter of fact, I had much more fun looking up the real model village on the Internet after the episode and reading up on it than I did watching the episode.
This episode is no exception. The first victim is given almost no character information other than he "didn't like change" in the village. That's it. Once the second victim is revealed I quickly was able to narrow my suspect field to two people based on the fact that this character was also poorly developed and thus there really only seemed to be two suspects based on victim #2's relationship with victim #1. Thus the killer must be the one the show was not throwing suspicion at. We were also shown a suspect confessing but based on the amount of time left in the show it obviously had to be a false confession. Thus this episode was quite unsatisfying for me.
I'd like to also point out Olivia Coleman's performance in this. I've noticed a lot of praise, but if I'm honest I didn't like her portrayal. I don't know if that's an acting issue or a writing issue. The first third of the episode I thought she was almost overdoing her acting as a "simple minded" (one character's description) person who was obliviously happy. Time and time again she is called "child minded" and in an insult that was new to me, being "three tomatoes short of a salad." Her portrayal became more nuanced, but it got to the point that I felt uncomfortable watching due to the fact that she seemed to be in an intimate relationship with her boss who was 25 years her senior. With every new mention of her child like mind, I was wondering if she was mentally mature enough to have made the decision to get involved with someone. I do like Olivia as an actress so I don't know if I should put her performance down to it being earlier in her career or down to the script and directing choices.
The episode felt bogged down by a lot of sub plots that had nothing to do with the crimes or furthering the plot. They were essentially just time fillers. In all, this is an episode you don't have to pay a lot of attention to and can just watch as background noise while doing something else.
I also have to complain about how the writers wrote the killer's reasoning behind the murders. To me the character was displaying clearly psychopathic traits and reasoning during the reveal, and it was not due to the reasons the writers were trying to point us towards. When the killer is told the 3rd victim was not guilty of wronging the killer in the way the killer thought, the killer shrugged it off and said they didn't care and didn't feel bad. Then we find out the killer has coldly killed at least once before over the years, making them at minimum a quadruple murderer. Further pointing to a deep psychological imbalance.
Honestly the only reason I even gave this episode 4 stars was because the boat races were fun to watch and the model village was very interesting. As a matter of fact, I had much more fun looking up the real model village on the Internet after the episode and reading up on it than I did watching the episode.
helpful•13
- Amazon421
- Jan 2, 2024
Details
- Runtime1 hour 33 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1
- 4:3
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