I just bought several DVD sets of the British television series "Midsomer Murders", based on the Caroline Graham mysteries featuring DCI Tom Barnaby and his sidekick Gavin Troy. One of the episodes in set 8, "Ghosts of Christmas Past," deals with the suicide of a magician, and the effects on his family nine years later. [Spoiler alert] After being clued in by a boy magician, the nephew of the suicide, Barnaby uses the psychology of magic to solve the mystery. The young boy demonstrates a card trick and then explains to the police officers how he accomplishes it--by misdirection, by suggesting what they expect to see, and by producing not the cards one of them has chosen, but cards that are similar. I'm not sure whether the trick actually works--perhaps the writers are engaging in some misdirection themselves. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that Barnaby realizes that someone in the house is also doing some misdirecting, and some mastering stage managing. Previously, someone had tried to kill an elderly aunt by locking her in the garage and turning on a car engine; the keys were nowhere to be found. Yet when she was rescued, the garage turned to be unlocked and the car engine was easily turned off, the keys in the ignition.
Another episode, "Beyond the Grave", (Midsomer Murders, set 1)requires Barnaby and Troy, to investigate whether a ghost is responsible for weird doings and murders in a local museum and thereabouts. Barnaby is not a believer in the supernatural when the natural will do for an explanation, and he tracks down a living, breathing killer. These shows are well acted and well written, and since I generally like British "cosies" as a form of entertainment, I like this series.
I did have a few misgivings about the ending of "Beyond the Grave." I appreciated the police officers' matter of fact willingness to search for the down to earth explanations, in spite of the superstitious nature of much of the "evidence" offered up by some of the witnesses in this episode. What I thought weakened the script was the ending--showing a rocking chair, moving back and forth by itself in an empty room. Perhaps the writers were attempting to start a dialogue about alternate explanations about what we had just seen, but I didn't think it necessary. In addition, if I were writing such a script, I'd put in enough material to make such a dialogue necessary--offering evidence of both the natural and supernatural for each event. Suggesting the existence of a ghost at the end of an episode, especially when no one in the episode is there to witness it, and when every other appearance of the ghost has been satisfactorily explained is just pointless. All the writers are doing is suggesting it to the audience, and the audience is outside the action of the story. That's breaching the fourth wall for no "earthly" reason.
Other "supernatural episodes" include "The Straw Woman" from set 8, featuring a village woman accused of witchcraft and "The Electric Vendetta", from set 3, in which DCI Barnaby and Sergeant Troy investigate the supposed existence of alien and the creation of crop circles.
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