Midsomer Murders: The Black Book starts as an elderly lady named Felicity Law (Ann Firbank) walks into an antiques shop run by Anthony Prideaux (David Bamber) with a previously unknown painting by famed Midsomer landscape artist Henry Hogson. The painting called Bishop's Drift is put up for auction & Texan art collector George Arlington (Gavan O'Herlihy) wins it for £400,000 amidst fierce competition. After the auction Felicity announces that she is going to donate the money from the painting to a local art school for troubled teenagers called the Arnold Simms School of Art run by her close friend Matilda Simms (Susannah Harker), however that night Felicity realises that her house has been broken into & phones Matilda shortly before she is murdered. DCI Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) is on the case & becomes a bit of a Hogson expert & uncovers an elaborate forgery scheme that centers on a black book that it seems Felicity was murdered for...
Episode 2 from season 12 this Midsomer Murders mystery was directed by series regular Peter Smith & is strictly average, not the worst episode out there for sure but yet again another pretty ordinary one with little to distinguish it. The Black Book revolves around around the shadowy world of art collecting & forgery where big money is to be made although I don't really understand why the forger would create a black book that would expose him & his forgeries if it was ever discovered, the series has featured this sort of plot before & here it just feels like it's there to pad out time between the murders. None of it is particularly interesting, there's an insurance scam that goes nowhere & the Midsomer Murders mainstay of blackmail which is what the whole episode boils down to, it's all about the money & very little else in the end. The later seasons of Midsomer Murders has the unwelcome trend of toning down the bizarre & memorable motives that once graced the series & certain episodes with The Black Book a good case in point feeling rather mundane. At over 90 minutes you need to listen carefully as there's lots of exposition & while it all comes together reasonably well at the end the final ten minutes are a little hard to take seriously as a two million pound ransom drop in a library goes wrong & the entire Midsomer police force are outwitted by an old woman.
The Black Book is one of those episodes where there isn't a murder until after the twenty odd minute mark & as such there's a lot of exposition & character set-up to get out of the way first which gets a little dull as I tend to sit there waiting for something to happen. There are three murders in this one, none that graphic but the third murders crime scene is pretty bloody as they have had their throat slit. In the space of one afternoon Barnaby becomes an art expert & in particular a Henry Hogson expert, in fact he becomes so much of an expert he notices a couple of forgeries himself that the worlds foremost art experts have missed for years. This guy is just good. WPC Steven makes her final appearance in the series as a uniformed officer as during the next episode Secrets and Spies she is promoted to plain clothes. There's no real atmosphere to this episode, there are no dark woods or creepy old houses & the cinematography is unusually quite flat & bland here.
The Black Book is a below average Midsomer Murders episode, it's slow with a forgettable killer & motive & the idea that in an afternoon Barnaby exposed two Hogson fakes that have fooled the worlds foremost art experts for years stretches credibility.
Episode 2 from season 12 this Midsomer Murders mystery was directed by series regular Peter Smith & is strictly average, not the worst episode out there for sure but yet again another pretty ordinary one with little to distinguish it. The Black Book revolves around around the shadowy world of art collecting & forgery where big money is to be made although I don't really understand why the forger would create a black book that would expose him & his forgeries if it was ever discovered, the series has featured this sort of plot before & here it just feels like it's there to pad out time between the murders. None of it is particularly interesting, there's an insurance scam that goes nowhere & the Midsomer Murders mainstay of blackmail which is what the whole episode boils down to, it's all about the money & very little else in the end. The later seasons of Midsomer Murders has the unwelcome trend of toning down the bizarre & memorable motives that once graced the series & certain episodes with The Black Book a good case in point feeling rather mundane. At over 90 minutes you need to listen carefully as there's lots of exposition & while it all comes together reasonably well at the end the final ten minutes are a little hard to take seriously as a two million pound ransom drop in a library goes wrong & the entire Midsomer police force are outwitted by an old woman.
The Black Book is one of those episodes where there isn't a murder until after the twenty odd minute mark & as such there's a lot of exposition & character set-up to get out of the way first which gets a little dull as I tend to sit there waiting for something to happen. There are three murders in this one, none that graphic but the third murders crime scene is pretty bloody as they have had their throat slit. In the space of one afternoon Barnaby becomes an art expert & in particular a Henry Hogson expert, in fact he becomes so much of an expert he notices a couple of forgeries himself that the worlds foremost art experts have missed for years. This guy is just good. WPC Steven makes her final appearance in the series as a uniformed officer as during the next episode Secrets and Spies she is promoted to plain clothes. There's no real atmosphere to this episode, there are no dark woods or creepy old houses & the cinematography is unusually quite flat & bland here.
The Black Book is a below average Midsomer Murders episode, it's slow with a forgettable killer & motive & the idea that in an afternoon Barnaby exposed two Hogson fakes that have fooled the worlds foremost art experts for years stretches credibility.