I expect the Midsomer Constabulary scores very highly in the police performance charts, given the ‘always get their man’ attitude that has prevailed there for nearly twenty years.
But the force’s zero tolerance policy towards unsolved murders has not always been so rigidly followed – and ‘The Incident at Cooper Hill’ revolves around a murder victim buried in a shallow grave in the woods outside Midsomer Stanton back in 1984, where it has lain undiscovered until now.
Regular viewers will be reassured to know that after last week’s impressive but murder-free season opener we are back to normal this week. Viewers will probably also be reassured to know that, despite initial indications to the contrary, none of the murders is actually down to extra-terrestrial involvement.
“You’re ruling out a UFO?” asks DS Nelson (fine performance from Gwilym Lee, getting his lines out without even a hint of a giggle); “I didn’t think I’d ever ruled it in,” says Barnaby drily.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. There are two things going on this week – the first is the suggestion that alien spacecraft are visiting the Home Counties, and one particular village in particular; and the second is the plot. A neat, if occasionally bonkers, script deftly merges the two into a surprisingly cohesive whole.
Fundamentally ‘The Incident at Cooper Hill’ is about parents and children, and it is this underlying theme that knits the ‘whodunnit’ and the ‘little green men’ strands together. Chief among the UFO-hunters is Carter Faulkner, who thirty years ago saw a mysterious craft in the sky.
We never really believe aliens are involved and yet full credit to actor Steve Evets for almost convincing us as he recollects the moment: “I was never more alive than in those two minutes – nothing since has come remotely close.”
That “nothing since” of course carries a whole life story in it, and his dishevelled appearance and battered old caravan underline the fact. The mysterious craft he saw was actually a top secret RAF test craft and it is the same craft lighting up the skies over Cooper Hill now.
This time, though, it’s been unofficially revived by Faulkner’s son, who despite not really believing in his father’s story never allows anybody to mock him for it. And learning that his father is dying, he is using the mystery craft in a well-intentioned, if loopy, attempt to vindicate the old man.
The old man, sadly, ends up the third victim of Nathan Tonev who in turn has undertaken a well-intentioned, if homicidal, attempt to protect his mother. The body in the grave is his father, accidentally killed by his mother in 1984 while trying to prevent him running out on their marriage and his son. Abigail Tonev (Alison Steadman) has kept her secret all these years, just as Nathan has kept his secret: that he saw her.
He kills, and kills again, to hide the discovery of his father’s body and (with slight shades of last week’s bodysnatching extravaganza) removes the body to try and maintain the secrecy. Alas, the grave and sufficient indications of its occupant remain to allow new forensic guru Kam (Manjinder Virk) and the rest of the team to identify the missing victim.
While the idea of a secret government test plane being mistaken for a UFO is just about acceptable (it certainly worked very well in at least one episode of The X Files) it begins to fall about as the story progresses.
What starts off as a top secret, hush-hush, project gradually becomes something that everyone in the village seems to have known about. Long before the end they’re all dropping ‘Omega 4’ into the conversation so casually that it seems improbable that in thirty odd years as a Mecca for UFO-spotters nobody had thought to join the dots.
Even more unlikely is that the local RAF base, which were operating the craft in 1984 before abandoning it, didn’t check that nobody had stolen their research the moment strange lights began appearing in the sky again.
But it’s an error of logic that is revealed by mulling things over as the end credits roll, that is to say it’s only really apparent after the fact rather than as the story unfolds. And although the bizarre cocktail of UFO-spotters and ‘sins of the father’ tragedy might not suit some detective dramas, Midsomer Murders, with its idiosyncratic sense of ‘reality’ somehow manages to pull it off.
Aired at 8pm on Wednesday 13 January 2016 on ITV.
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