Life Without The Boring Bits

by Colleen McCullough

  Mansions in parklands, sadly devoid of verdure around the house itself, which must be seen. Thatched cottages galore, with gardens in bloom. Pubs, pubs, and more pubs. Social activities having an Olde Worlde feel, from World War II dances to drama society Shakespeare or Shaffer. Receptions at the Big House. And — how could one forget them? — fairs, fetes and festivals on the village greens or in the grounds of a manor.

  The plot, Mr. True-May surely decided, was best kept utterly implausible. Who wants to be reminded of reality, equally bitter on both sides of the Atlantic? Therefore, over-the-top situational plots replete with larger-than-life characters are the thing.

  The characters are either stock, or wildly eccentric. You know from his or her occupation and appearance what the personality is going to be. A farmer, for example, is foul-tempered, boozy and irascible, and may have a totally intimidated son. His scenes are always shot in a horribly primitive kitchen to show the American viewers how primitive a kitchen can be. At the other end of the scale is the execrable cook Joyce Barnaby’s kitchen, wasted on her. Few British kitchens are so fine.

  Everything thus far is mere window dressing.

  Window dressing? you ask. Yes, window dressing for the dead bodies, almost all of whom have been murdered.

  A boring episode features two miserable corpses, whereas a real rip-snorter of an episode will have up to five or six corpses, including one or two you prayed feverishly wouldn’t die. I best remember the poor woman who was left utterly alone in the world, even her beloved son murdered — and in such a cavalier way that you know the silly scriptwriter forgot there was a dead son. I detest the persons who perish screaming in hellish flames, and wish the scriptwriters were less addicted to this most horrible of all deaths.

  It does occur to me from time to time that the death rate in Midsomer County should prompt a socialist government at least to call for a Royal Commission, after which it could declare the soil of Midsomer County toxic, and evacuate the Midsomerians to Welsh Snowdonia or Scots Orkneys and set them up in a cottage industry, Murder Inc., provided their victims are not too close to home. I can see some valuable export figures if the project were managed with True-Mayan efficiency.

  It’s on about the fourth episode and the nineteenth corpse that the viewer realizes the ultimate purpose of everything: to harbor a dead body. Village greens are for dumping dead bodies on or around — poor material compared to woods, wherein schoolkids can take short cuts to discover dead bodies, couples can frolic nude to discover dead bodies, couples can have sex on blankets and wind up dead bodies, as well as hang, strangle, stab or shotgun blast other people into dead bodies. Streams are wonderful — lots of trout fishing as well as dead bodies. Ponds and lakes allow skinny dipping and serenely sailing swans as well as dead bodies. Tumbledown barns are more than just picturesque: they contain disused farm equipment to reward the viewers with the grisliest dead bodies. Someone drove a car full tilt into a tractor trailer loaded with logs. Occasionally horses are framed for heavy, hoofy murders that were done by the village blacksmith with his hammer and/or anvil. That nightmare booth called Punch & Judy can hide more than police puppets.

  However, the best venue for murder is undoubtedly the lovely old Norman village church, God’s gift to a scriptwriter befogged by plotter’s block. The belfry is useful for chucking persons off of, or donging to death with a bell, or squashing by the two-ton bell, or strangling with a bell rope, or breaking the neck in a fall down the winding stairs. Either apse or aisle is ideal for a blunt instrument death or flaming phosphorus or being suspended from the rafters in a copycat The Silence of the Lambs murder.

  And when all else fails, there is always the baptismal font for drowning in, as they are the size of bath tubs. Nowadays they’re mostly kept empty and have a dinky wee basin in their bottoms for the babies; however, if someone demands the full Henrician immersion, it can be done: just fill the font.

  Which led to Episode 3,708 of Series 23, the only case that DCI Barnaby never solved. The worst of it was that in the very next episode, 3,709, he got his promotion to superintendent by drawing England, Scotland and Wales freehand and marking in every public toilet from Peebles to Lower Slaughter.

  The scriptwriter had been going well, his setup that the dear old vicar had asked the filthy-rich Squire for the money to put a new roof on the church; the Squire had refused with dreadful rudeness — so much so that the entire village of Midsomer Marsh is ready for murder. When Squire is discovered drowned, the list of suspects is a mile long. The next scene, as yet unwritten, is meant to show the Squire’s horror when he finds out that unless he has been baptized in the Henrician tradition, he loses the manor and all his money. So he has to go to the dear old vicar and demand a secret Henrician baptism.

  But the scriptwriter, a Muslim, is flummoxed. He doesn’t know a Henrician baptism is the full immersion jobbie. To go on with, he has another scene already written: it takes place in the Causton morgue with carefully Americanized dialogue.

  “Did he drown, George?”

  “Yeah, sure he did, but where?”

  “The brook at the end of the graveyard, I guess.”

  “Nope, nah. The diatoms say that’s a negative. The water he drowned in contains tiny fragments of faeces, quite a lot of urine, a hint of someone’s bedtime mug of cocoa, fourteen cups of strong oolong tea without milk or sugar, and an American gallon of dirty old flower water. It’s a bitch, Tom.”

  “The urinal in Causton Upper High Street? I had that on my superintendent’s exam paper — Jeez, it was hard!”

  “Nope, nah. No scrumpy or other home-brewed cider.”

  “Where did the diatoms come from, George?”

  “Nowheresville. There weren’t any.”

  “Bath water!”

  “Nope, nah. No dead skin, no methane from farts.”

  “Then where —?”

  “No idea, except you’ll never guess what else I found in the cadaver’s left lower lung lobe.”

  “What, George? For Pete’s sake, tell me!”

  “An imposing nodule of shed nasal mucosa — for our esteemed American viewers, a booger.”

  “Then where —?”

  “No idea, Tom. The where is your department. I’m just a Home Office pathologist whose role has gradually increased until it looks like Mr. True-May might give me my own crime series, so piss off, you antiquated has-been!”

  In a frenzy because he thought Henrician referred to a fowl roost, the scriptwriter leaped from the belfry just before he wrote the scene where the dear old vicar toils to fill the font, so desperate in the end that anything liquid he can find goes into it. When the disgusting Squire appears at midnight for his secret Henrician baptism, the dear old vicar holds his head under and drowns him, then manages to drag the body to the brook at the bottom of the graveyard. The font is covered, the dinky wee basin put on top, and the dear old vicar forgets all about the events of the night.

  Going back now to real life, the scriptwriter is dead at the foot of the belfry. As they were running late that year and a cameraman’s toddling child had eaten two beads off the abacus Mr. True-May was using as a calendar, the episode stayed in. No viewer noticed that DCI Barnaby failed to divine the drowning; the new scriptwriter covered it up by having another body discovered in the bottom of a freshly dug grave. As it was two series since they had used this ploy, it worked a treat and Mr. True-May was ecstatically happy. No one ever learned why the original scriptwriter leaped from the belfry, but the word “bats” was bruited broadly in Badger’s Burrow and Baron’s Bantling, so the (imported) M.E. put the death down to viral encephalitis.

  Dr. George Bullard never did get his own series, as the British term, SOCO, doesn’t have the right ring to it unless it becomes, as the True-May Think Tank wanted, Socko the Socos! in heavy Roman type. The police unions felt that it was too demeaning and the covey of chief constables felt it was too American. Dr. Bullard protested by burning his scrubs on Midsomer Marsh green and goin
g into private practice as a phrenologist. His discovery of and papers on Bullard’s Bump, a certain indication of a killer, have led to fame and considerable wealth. He gets $150,000 for an hour-long lecture, as he speaks perfect American.

  I have deliberately left the central characters until last, on the premise that, in order to know your enemy exceedingly well, it is best to know his stamping ground from the adult video shops of Causton to the ladies’ sewing circle of Midsomer Mere.

  Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby looks like a German U-boat commander — blond, icy-eyed, pink-skinned, on the short side. The two-metres-tall types are hard to find jobs for in an armored army or a navy comprised of toothpaste tubes. Tom is not handsome and he exudes no sex appeal; were he or did he, he would not be a suitable hero. His solve rate is phenomenal, but the viewers have to take his word for it, as little happens to explain the why. He has an offsider, a detective constable or sergeant, to whom at times he behaves with gross rudeness, thus contributing to the U-boat commander image. He’s very fond of his homely no-hoper daughter but less fond of his pretty wife, whose very stupidity can cut him down to size.

  Barnaby has a large, very sleek black police car, even after it became obvious that the British police had down-sized to what I call pootling machines — they look like pregnant roller skates and pootle along. Clearly the pootling machine did not sit well with the American audience; soon, he and his sidekick were back in their sleek black town car.

  No snappy dresser, he wears off-the-rack suits and utterly boring ties; in Series 10, I note, he is suddenly becoming more casual in his garb.

  Barnaby never loses his cool, even when people slam doors in his face. Of course the truth is that a real British copper would have your guts for garters if you slammed a door in his face. Our man is not highly sexed; though his life with Joyce seems on the celibate side, he never succumbs to any of the thick-ankled temptresses who loll around the pages of a script. His main domestic woe is Joyce’s cooking, but as she appears to ruin expensive ingredients, he should have put his foot down years ago and had the family live on take-out food. As far as I have been able to work out, his patience in dealing with Joyce stems from his guilt at forever rushing off on a case. But a lot of that rushing isn’t necessary: Barnaby rushes off because he’s bored at home.

  I can understand this, as Joyce is no Mensa member, but he gives a wife (I am a wife) the impression that he wouldn’t be around when a wife needed him most desperately, like after hip replacement surgery or a long, debilitating illness. He’d leave looking after Joyce to Cully — handy, sometimes, to have an idle, no-hoper daughter. No, Barnaby is not a good husband.

  It’s Barnaby’s attitude to his sidekick I used to find the least likeable aspect of his personality. His first two sergeants he treated like dirt; any dog that strolled onto the set got a better reception. Candidly, were I either young man, I would have decked Barnaby if I fried for it. However, the change in attitude with the third opens up certain avenues of speculation.

  The first two were much taller and far handsomer than their boss, who gave them orders without a please or a thank you, and even, upon one occasion, snapped his fingers! But now that number three has arrived, it’s the smell of roses. Why? Could it be because the young man is a trifle shorter than his boss, and not handsome at all? I am intrigued. The new Tom Barnaby is even pleasant to his offsider! They have a chuckle together. They wear casual clothes together. Is Mr. True-May dealing with complaints? Certainly I used to have a few.

  In fact, the level of rudeness in M.M. is breathtaking. The lords of the manor are insufferably snobbish, the squires and their wives are arrogant, and almost everybody else has a vicious temper. I understand that in order to have so many dead bodies it is necessary to lard the storyline with lots of dreadful people, but this is one series can go too far. Some of the scripts are excellent, but most are cynical, exploitative and untrue to human nature. They actually fuel trans-Atlantic dislike, among other things.

  Scene: Midsomer Marshmallow green on a perfect day — the kind of day the poor Brits live for, yet (until recent climate change, anyway) hardly ever experience. The sun is shining, the sky is cloudless and the temperature warm in the sun, cool in the shade. Perhaps a hundred people are sitting in deck chairs or on folding steel chairs, women and elderly men in the main, with a few children thrown in for good measure.

  There is a definite dividing line between the upper-class women, clad in floaty frocks, and the lower-class women, whose garb is — well, more unsuitable.

  In a little club house on a table are thick china cups and saucers, a huge Salvation Army style teapot, several china milk jugs and sugar bowls, and plates of cucumber sandwiches.

  The Toffs Eleven, captained by Sir Eustace Uppity-Smythe, baronet, of Cad’s Hall, is playing cricket with the Oiks Eleven, captained by Ted Clodhopper, blacksmith, of Oiks Airfield, the last village before Midsomer becomes Oxfordshire.

  A total of twenty-three men are assembled, clad in long white trousers, white cricketing shoes, white shirts with their long sleeves rolled up and their collars unbuttoned, and vee-necked cable-knit white sweaters tied around their waists. Inexplicably, the Toffs’ Twelfth Man is missing.

  Stumps are set, and the long white pads of wicket keeper and batsmen are propped against a fence that marks the boundary. A massive roller is parked out of the way; a naked, bloody arm is poking out from under it, but no one takes any notice of this. Sir Eustace and Ted are taking the toss: a silver coin glitters in the air, falls to the pitch. The two men bend to see it.

  SIR EUSTACE

  I say, hurrah! Oh, jolly, jolly D! Toffs win the toss. We’ll bat first, Ted.

  TED

  A sticky wicket, Squire.

  SIR EUSTACE

  Better sticky than dead in Midsomer, ha ha ha!

  TED

  Aye — ur — grr — um — vroom! You’ll be out for a duck, Squire, on our Bert’s googlies, hur hur hur!

  A rifle shot cracks. Lady Uppity-Smythe tumbles off her deck chair and sprawls with one leg sticking straight up like a U-boat periscope. Her Oiky rival, Moll Muggins, goes into hysterics. The other ninety-eight persons watching the match continue to watch.

  SIR EUSTACE

  Oh, bugger the missus, getting shot now! Carry on, Clodhopper. Post your fielders, you ignorant Oik.

  TED

  Aye — ur — grr — um — vroom! Ron, you’re in slips. Dave, you’re silly mid-on. Wally, you’re silly midoff —

  Clodhopper stops as an authoritative figure steps between him and Squire, hands up to call a halt.

  BARNABY

  Just a minute!

  TED

  Here, who do you think you are, in jeans, a sweat shirt, sneakers and a scarf that fails to hide your pot belly?

  SIR EUSTACE

  Quite so, Clodhopper! Who are you, to interrupt the annual Toffs versus Oiks cricket match when it’s been going on since 1940 and the arrival of the Spitfires on Oiks Airfield? We Toffs flew them, those Oiks kept them in the air!

  Uppity-Smythe and Clodhopper lift their faces to the flawless sky as the ghostly roar of propeller-driven engines sounds; the black shadow of a formation of Dornier and Heinkel bombers darkens the pitch; comes far-off flak, the pom-pom-pom of Bofors guns and the wail of sirens. Screaming noises of diving Spitfires in a dogfight with Me-l09s fills the air; the ninety-eight spectators jump and shiver.

  BARNABY

  I am Superintendent Tom Barnaby of the Causton Coppers, and there will be no cricket match today. Sir Eustace, stop buckling your pads and put your bat down. My pathologist informs me that Lady Cynthia was shot dead by a hollow-nosed Remington .307 bullet less than one minute ago. All that is left of her looks like a U-boat periscope, which makes me feel all funny inside. Where is the Toffs’ Twelfth Man?

  The cricketers are stiff with outrage.

  TED

  This is the first fine day in fifteen months, you clapped-out copper! You reckon we can’t play? Well
, on my watch we do! Ron, out of slips! Dave and Wally, out of the sillies! Billy! Bob! Eddy, Neddy, Freddy, Reddy and Ceddy, man your ack-acks!

  SIR EUSTACE

  Cholmondely pronounced Chumley! St. John pronounced Sinjun! Lord Gadzooks! Mellors the gamekeeper! Ralph pronounced Rafe! Adolph pronounced Dope! Gwmrullarufydd pronounced Gareth! To me in my hour of need!

  Twenty-three white-clad men converge on the lone, casually dressed figure of Superintendent Barnaby, blotted from sight as his trendy clothes come off. The cricketers forget cricket and form into a rugby scrum, out of which bloody chunks of plump policeman’s parts fly in all directions as the Toffs and the Oiks, united as they have not been since the Battle of Britain, tear Barnaby into bits about the size of flesh minced by a Spitfire’s cannons.

  Barnaby’s latest sergeant watches, smirking, from the plush interior of the Rolls-Royce they now drive, as it is the only car in the U.K. bigger than a breadbox. Smiling pleasurably, he tosses the Remington sniper’s rifle into the back seat and opens his door. The camera focuses on a white-trousered leg and a white cricketing shoe. Yes, the Toffs’ Twelfth Man is present on the field of victory after all!

  Sir Eustace will never need to know that Lady Cynthia’s unborn child would have been a Bantling — which saves a lot of work for everyone, as Sir Eustace thinks bantlings are baby bantam rooster chicks, and has no fowl run at Cad’s Hall. Just a series of foul runs when he left Moll Muggins’s bed through a window.