March 23, 2011
SIGN-UPS FOT THE BOX ARE CLOSED, BUT WE HAVE SOME INVITES:
The cult of 'Midsomer Murders' (Stuart Husband, 23 Mar 2011, The Telegraph)
The show was briefly the top-trending topic on Twitter last year and it’s been sold to 230 countries, making it one of the most successful British television exports ever; in Norway, it’s been retitled Mord og Mysterier (Murder and Mysteries), while in Russia and Ukraine, it’s known as A Very English Murder.That title sums up the appeal of Midsomer Murders, according to the writer Anthony Horowitz, who penned the first batch of scripts for the show: “A producer called Betty Willingale brought me a series of books by Caroline Graham, which she memorably described as ‘Agatha Christie on acid’,” he says. “I read the books and totally fell in love with the utterly warped and twisted world they portrayed.”
For Horowitz, the genius loci is as fundamental to the programme. “The show was originally going to be called ‘Barnaby’,” he says, “but I convinced the producers that the real hero was the setting; what Caroline Graham had tapped into was this archetypal notion of English decorum, exemplified by the well-kept village of lace curtains and thatched cottages and pansy beds, beneath which was this sort of volcanic wave of blood-spattered, perverse eccentricity, waiting to be unstoppered.
“One of my favourite scenes ever has this delightful elderly actress, Elizabeth Spriggs, wheeling a trolley into her parlour laden with teacakes and sandwiches on the top shelf, with a shotgun slung across the shelf below. To me, that sums up the world of Midsomer; demented old ladies, cream cakes and brutal murder.”
Horowitz and others drew up a set of guidelines for the show, known as the “Bible”, and still adhered to today; the setting – and the killings – would be spread across “Midsomer County”, comprising a vast slew of villages, including 19 Midsomers; Barnaby and his assistants would form a kind of still centre around which the mayhem and scenery-chewing, provided by a bunch of RSC stalwarts and other acting worthies, would revolve; and the action would take place in a perennial English summer thanks to camera filtering and computer wizardry.
Posted by oj at March 23, 2011 5:48 AM
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