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Midsomer Murders Season 14 Episodes
Season 14 Episode Guide
8 Episodes 2011 - 2012
Episode 1
Death in the Slow Lane
93 mins
DCI John Barnaby arrives in Causton on his cousin Tom's retirement. Jones misses his old boss and the two men do not gel, especially as Barnaby seems dismissive of Jones' efforts to restore a vintage car once driven by local racer Duncan Palmer for a classic car competition hosted at her school by frosty headmistress Harriet Wingate. Palmer faked his death in the 1960s but was actually found dead in Midsomer some years later. His old team-mate Peter Fossett is judging the contest and the entrants include Peter's brisk, bossy daughter Kate Cameron and her ex-husband Jamie, now in love with Harriet's shy daughter Jessica. Kate will do anything to win, enlisting the help of the other judge, radio D.J. Dave 'Doggy' Day, who is found murdered. Soon after another young man is killed, who turns out to be involved with Kate's precocious schoolgirl daughter Charlotte in drug dealing. After Barnaby has discovered that Duncan Palmer was Jessica's father, he confronts the killer, but has cause to show respect for Jones who rescues him from being another victim of death in the slow lane.
Episode 2
Dark Secrets
93 mins
Barnaby's wife Sarah arrives to take up her job as a head mistress at Causton School. Officious social worker Gerry Dawkins has an awkward encounter with an artists' colony run by horse whisperer Maggie Viviani after a fruitless visit to elderly recluses William and Mary Bingham. Two days later his corpse is fished from a river. Through the offices of their bitchy daughter, stable owner Selina Stanton and her roguish husband Eddie, a prospective Euro M.P. Barnaby visits Mr. and Mrs. Bingham, who are hospitable but vague. Mary, however, furtively asks him to return to see her but is killed soon after. Thirty-five years earlier the Binghams' son and daughter, Robin and Jennifer, died when their car plunged into a river. Robin's body was recovered but Jennifer was never found and has forged a new identity for herself, reuniting her with Selena. Once more Jones comes to Barnaby's rescue when he confronts a killer whose family, unsurprisingly for Midsomer, has dark secrets.
Episode 3
Echoes of the Dead
93 mins
Dianne Price is drowned in the style of the Brides in the Bath murders of almost a century earlier. Blessed Be the Bride is scrawled in lipstick on her bathroom mirror. Her grieving flatmate Jo, who works at a donkey sanctuary run by hard-drinking Liz Tomlin and her antagonistic son Sam, takes the opportunity to escape her voyeuristic landlord Bernard Flack to move in with vet Fran Carter but Fran too is killed, also in a copycat murder from the 1930s, again bridal-related. Pub landlord Matt Rowntree, an ex-cop, is married to Nikki, a former madame whose girls specialized in dressing up fantasies, which arouses Barnaby's suspicions but then an elderly couple are slain, with Just Married daubed on their car and Bridal Suite on the door. Bernard's voyeurism actually saves Jo's life as he calls the police to arrest the murderer, out to claim a fifth victim.
Episode 4
The Oblong Murders
93 mins
Dr. Bullard asks Barnaby to investigate when friends' daughter Lucy Oliver goes missing after joining the Oblong Foundation,a new age group leasing a house from Ruth Lambert,whose parents died in an explosion on their boat. Ben Jones goes undercover as a new inductee and hears group leader Dominic Segal take a call implying there has been foul play. Local publicans the Powells tell Barnaby that Lucy argued with Oblong's directrix Freddie Raft before leaving but Ruth denies this. However it is discovered that Ruth's parents loaned a large sum of money to somebody,leading Barnaby to believe that they may have been murdered by the payee. If having his dog trained by Dr. Bullard's formidable sister was not enough he once more finds himself confronting a killer,the perpetrator of the Oblong murders.
Episode 5
The Sleeper Under the Hill
93 mins
Alex Preston is murdered and his corpse placed in the Crowcall stone circle in a field on his land. He was intending to plough the field, setting him at odds with the New Dawn druids, all of whom have alibis. His wife Eleanor was two-timing him with her fencing instructor, and local cop Trevor Gibson destroys her alibi but when Leticia Clifford, a leading druid, is killed in the same way as Alex, crimes of passion are ruled out. As Barnaby and Jones disagree over the possibility of Gibson's involvement Barnaby seeks the advice of local historian Caradoc Singer, hoping to discover if the killings were motivated by greed or bound up with popular superstitions such as the Sleeper Under the Hill.
Episode 6
The Night of the Stag
92 mins
Whilst temperance campaigners, led by fervent ex-alcoholic parson Norman Grigor, protest against the Midsomer Abbas May Festival, the body of Peter Slim, a revenue inspector investigating illicit stills, is found dumped in a cider vat. The murder weapon, an apple tree harvester which shook him to death, belongs to boozy cider mill owner Anthony Devereux, a man with something to hide though he denies murder. Then Barnaby discovers a secret connecting Slim to a village girl and a party to that secret is murdered. As pub landlord Samuel Quested leads the villagers in the revival of an old fertility custom Barnaby and Jones find themselves in peril during the night of the stag.
Episode 7
A Sacred Trust
93 mins
At Midsomer Priory, home to a small group of nuns, Mother Thomas Aquinas is strangled and, shortly afterwards, a set of silver worth £60,000 is found to be stolen from the safe. Sister Catherine, the most recent member of the order, turns out to be descended from Sir Anthony Vertue, who donated the priory to the nuns two centuries earlier and Barnaby learns that if the order is ended she will inherit the land and buildings. Father Behan, who heard the nuns' confessions and had long exhorted Mother Julian, the prioress, to sell the premises, is also killed and the missing silver turns up, not stolen but sold by Mother Thomas Aquinas. Then Barnaby learns of an atrocity in Africa thirty years earlier where Mother Julian was a missionary, which could help him solve the case but also put an end to the sacred trust.
Episode 8
A Rare Bird
92 mins
When bird-watcher Ralph Ford claims to have seen a blue-crested hoopoe--thus winning him the year's list contest--other members of the Midsomer-in-the-Marsh ornithological society are angry, especially society chairman Patrick Morgan who, later that night is lured to his death by a call on Ford's stolen phone. Morgan was generally unpopular in the society, and farmer George Napier benefits by the death as Morgan intended to save wetlands he intended to drain; meanwhile, his Russian widow Nina, a former ballerina, is pregnant, and since her husband had a vasectomy he is not the father. The real father is the next victim--will a third person meet death at the hands of one who has killed two people as well as a rare bird?
