I’ve only been privileged to visit England once, and then I was limited to London. It was a five-day trip in April of 1990, for a conference that my law firm was co-sponsoring on doing business in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union — and I fell in love with the place. Most of my time was spent at the conference, of course; but there were still enough hours in the day, and evening, to manage a good bit of fun: seeing the sights, riding the Underground (or Tube, if you prefer), shopping, closing a disco in Piccadilly at 3 a.m., dodging the amorous advances of a portly, overbearing Soviet official . . .

Well, best to stop there. Suffice it to say, it was a memorable trip. I found London to be charming and civilized, and Londoners very much the same, except for the concierge in the Mayfair Hotel and one waiter in a restaurant, both of whom insisted upon correcting my American terminology. Even the food, contrary to what I had always heard, was quite good. And by some miracle, the weather held out for us as well. My only regret was that there wasn’t time to get outside of London; I never did see Oxford, or Stratford-on-Avon, or Stonehenge. Or any of those lovely little villages that are the locale of so much murder and mayhem on one of my favorite British TV shows: Midsomer Murders.

Aha! Do I hear people nodding in agreement? I thought I might. I still watch the re-runs, and I have to say, I did prefer Tom Barnaby to his cousin John. But I refuse to open the floor to a vote on who was the best Sergeant, because I thought each was wonderful in his own way, and I missed them all when they moved on. But what I loved most were the quirky villages and the . . . oh, what’s the best adjective here? . . . the bizarre characters. Those villages hid more psychopathic, sociopathic, murderous, bullying, polygamous, adulterous, fetishistic, incestuous, jealous, hateful, scheming, lying, covetous, simply miserable people within a few square kilometers than one would expect to find in the entire city of London.

What fun!

I believe the late Queen Elizabeth summed it up best when she met some of the cast members of what she said was her favorite TV show, and asked, “Tell me: is there anyone left alive in Midsomer?”

These were not simply one-and-done murder mysteries — every killer was a serial killer, often out of necessity, when he (or she) had to cover up one murder by then killing off a possible witness . . . or several. And the methods they devised to bump off those poor victims left one wondering about the sanity of the writers who dreamt up the concoctions. Such as:

– Shrink-wrapped, packaged in a shipping container of cookies, and shipped off to Denmark.
– Buried alive in wet concrete.
– Smacked in the head with various heavy, solid objects.
– Pushed off a roof.
– Scared to death by a fake ghost.
– Beheaded.
– Hung up on a meat hook alongside the fresh beef.
– Tied down and pelted with bottles of champagne launched by a conveniently handy catapult.

– Drowned in various liquids, some of them disgustingly viscous.
– Burnt to a crisp.
– Locked in a commercial freezer.
– Locked in a commercial clothes dryer.
– Locked in a room filled with gas fumes.
– Locked in an iron maiden.

– Garroted with piano wire, curtain pulls, or whatever was handy.
– Run through with a lance that happened to be sitting around.
– Poisoned with deadly mushrooms or little blue venomous frogs.
– And sometimes merely shot with a rifle, a shotgun, or a crossbow.

The British — particularly the aristocracy — seem inordinately fond of their antique weapons, don’t they?

*. *. *

And the characters themselves? With all of their manias, phobias, fetishes, and other psychological aberrations, they were beyond the imaginings of even a Dostoevsky or a Stephen King. There are too many to mention, but I do have a favorite pair: the Rainbirds. Featured in the very first season, they were a mother-and-son pair that would have made Sigmund Freud jump for joy. They met an unpleasant end — together, as they would have wanted it — but happily, the writers were able to bring them back from the dead in a later season. Well, not actually reincarnated, but cast as the nearly identical sister of the original Mrs. Rainbird and an equally obnoxious son, though not quite as evil.

If you have somehow missed this delightfully different series, I strongly recommend it. But be sure to begin at the beginning, with “The Killings at Badger’s Drift,” and say hello to the Rainbirds.

Yes, that’s the England I didn’t get to see . . . which is probably for the best. I was better off in the city, where my biggest worries were getting run over by a double-decker bus, or embarrassed to death by a very British concierge.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/20/24