Midsomer Murders: The Complete Series One and Two [DVD]

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The investigation's goal is to find out which person has the greatest wishes to be at the centre of attention. Bucolic settings harbor macabre crimes and eccentric characters that are no match for Detective Tom Barnaby (John Nettles, Bergerac); his assistant, DS Ben Jones (Jason Hughes, This Life); and his cousin, DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon), who succeeds Tom upon his retirement.The series focuses on various murder cases that take place within small country villages across the fictional English county of Midsomer, and the efforts of the senior police detective and his partner within the fictional Midsomer Constabulary to solve the crime by determining who the culprit is and the motive for their actions. When Sergeant Scott falls ill, Barnaby and PC Ben Jones (Jason Hughes, "Killing Me Softly") investigate a series of murders linked to the death of a beauty queen which occurred several years previously.

Note that episodes 1 to 100 were originally released as 25 "sets", which are now discontinued, and have been re-released as "series" 1 to 16 in redesigned packages. The Buckinghamshire tourism authority announced in 2021 the launching of three themed tours of locations in the county that have been used to film the series.

Despite this, the culprit is almost never a serial killer—very frequently the murderer is driven by circumstance to compound his or her crimes, and keeps killing to cover up the original murder.