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Midsomer Murders: The Killings at Badger’s Drift

Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Three stars 

 

For almost three decades now, composer Jim Parker’s foreboding theremin waltz has been an oddly comforting prime time telly fanfare that has opened the door to millions of viewers on what may or may not be regarded as rural middle England’s answer to Twin Peaks. So it goes as well for Guy Unsworth’s stage version of Caroline Graham’s very first Inspector Barnaby novel that gets behind the hedgerows and into the deceptively sleepy killing fields of the fictional county of Midsomer.

 

As long term fans and subscribers to ITVx will already know, this involves the quietly determined Inspector Tom Barnaby and his wet behind the ears Sergeant Gavin Troy dispatched to the even sleepier hamlet of Badger’s Drift to investigate the death of an 80-something local called Emily Simpson. 

 

In a village peopled by a roll-call of dotty eccentric spinsters, Freudian mummy’s boys, wannabe artists, posh girl gold diggers and illicit trysts that won’t stay secret for long, our dynamic duo have plenty to investigate. Throw in serial blackmail on a grand scale, a pirate themed brothel, and a rapidly increasing body count, and Barnaby and Troy's beat gets stranger by the minute. 

 

Unsworth’s own production brings the population of Badger’s Drift to life with a heroic seven actors, who gamely double up with some swift costume changes and the odd body double. This is led by a suitably stoic Daniel Casey filling John Nettles’s boots as Barnaby. Given that Casey appeared in the first seven series of the TV version, not as Barnaby, but as Troy, his promotion is a knowing piece of casting that sees James Bradwell pick up Casey’s mantle as the new Troy. 

 

Unsworth, Casey, Bradwell and co don’t take things too seriously in a yarn that at times sees things delivered so archly that one begins to wonder if we’ve landed in the League of Gentlemen’s Royston Vasey rather than the rural idyll things initially look like on David Woodhead’s tastefully chintzy set. The main feature of this is a giant round window at its centre, behind which assorted flashbacks are played out. 

 

Fans will already know who bumped off dear old Emily, and those who couldn’t work it out should probably join forces with Sergeant Troy and simply enjoy the garden gnomes and the scrubs clad forensic team dance routine. And if anyone ever risks a move to Midsomer, if a theremin is heard just before a passing octogenarian keels over on your lawn, rest assured Inspector Barnaby’s got your back.


The Herald, February 20th 2026

 

Ends

 

 

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