Killing them softly
DQ meets Midsomer Murders stars Neil Dudgeon and Nick Hendrix as they film the upcoming 25th season of the beloved crime drama, discussing their on-screen partnership and why suits and scents help them get into character to play the show’s lead detective duo.
On Midsomer Murders, characters have been stabbed, electrocuted, strangled and suffocated, not to mention one poor person who was famously crushed by a wheel of cheese.
But as the long-running crime series marks its landmark 25th season, it is still finding new ways to kill off its victims.
When DQ arrives on set – and interrupts rehearsals trying to find a parking space – filming is nearing completion on the fourth episode in the latest run. Titled Top of the Class, the episode is pitched as Midsomer meets Motherland. The parent-teacher association at Causton Grammar School is in turmoil: hard-hitting headmistress Estelle Harris has stirred controversy by excluding yet another pupil and has further upset parents by cancelling an event with a local author.
It’s then during a virtual meeting of the PTA that events turn murderous, with the episode breaking new ground with what will become known as Midsomer’s first ever online murder. DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) and DS Jamie Winter (Nick Hendrix) subsequently arrive to investigate the death, bringing them into contact with rebellious teens, a school secretary with a grudge and a colourful writer with a dark past.
Written by Helen Jenkins, the episode’s guest cast includes Mel Giedroyc as headmistress Estelle Harris, alongside Georgie Glen, Kenny Doughty, Dean Fagan, Lorna Watson, Lucy Gaskell, Denis Lawson and more. Viewers will get to see S25 – which also features episodes titled Treasures of Darkness, Lawn of the Dead and Death Strikes Three – from November this year, with the series airing on more than 200 broadcasters worldwide, including ITV in the UK, Germany’s ZDF, France Télévisions, Mystery Channel Japan, Sweden’s SVT, DR in Denmark, NPO in the Netherlands and Acorn US. The series is produced by Bentley Productions and distributed internationally by All3Media International.
Sitting at the end of a long, tree-lined driveway, Stoke Court in Buckinghamshire, west of London, has been transformed into Causton Grammar for the episode. Dozens of teenagers wearing burgundy blazers adorned with the school crest walk across the grounds, while a school minibus with similar decals sits outside the grand building.
“We’re just coming to the end of four long months of filming, so we’re probably all a bit exhausted, waiting to stumble over the finish line,” Dudgeon tells DQ during a break from filming. “It’s been pretty good. Everybody seems to be happy with it. What can go wrong in the last three days?”
Dudgeon has played the lead investigator on a number of baffling, often incredible murder cases since S14, after replacing original lead John Nettles (as DCI Tom Barnaby). For the past six seasons, he has been joined by Nick Hendrix, who plays DS Jamie Winter.
The actor praises the show’s writers for continuing to come up with new worlds in which to set the stories and a stream of increasingly “unlikely” or “bizarre” methods of murder. Yet each episode remains quintessentially Midsomer – a formula he describes as a death in a rural idyll, investigated by two detectives, and an ensemble of eccentric characters with motives for the murder.
“Beyond that, you can do anything you want,” Dudgeon says. “There’s been a couple of episodes, famously, that haven’t even had murders in.” Despite that, “it’s always about keeping the balance of that Midsomer tone and that Midsomer flavour, but within that you can go anywhere and do anything, and it’s very free. That’s a big part of its longevity. It can be darker, it can be funnier, all sorts of different things are in the mix. Then you’ve always got the new guests. I often hear from people that they find it consoling or comforting or escapist. A large part of the reason is its variety. It’s distinctly Midsomer, but it’s completely different every time.”
For Hendrix, part of the appeal of starring in Midsomer Murders is the array of locations he gets to visit, and the new guest actors who join the production every four weeks as filming on a new episode gets underway. The key to that, he says, is the show’s case-of-the-week format. “We’re never in one location more than a week, so you can’t ever really get tired of it, which is great,” he says. “There are lots of pros, obviously. It’s just a nice job and lovely people, and you get paid for a living and all those other good things. But as an actor, you want to keep excited, you want to keep interested and get up each morning and think, ‘What are we filming today?’ and standalone episodes are the key to that.
“That is really the key to the enjoyment of this job. One big part of that is the locations. But also the actors. Every episode, we get a new gaggle of actors to interview and see what they’re up to and what’s going on in the world. I also find it becomes a ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ situation where you either know someone or someone they’ve worked with.”
When Barnaby arrives at the murder scene – a juxtaposition of a terrible crime in a chocolate-box location – “he always starts slightly baffled,” Dudgeon says of his character. “As the policeman, you always turn up and think, ‘Oh, what can we deduce from this?’ and you start piecing that together. Then, happily, in Midsomer, you will find not only a murderer at the end of it but you’ll also find another 10 or 12 of their neighbours who were doing something they shouldn’t be and that they’re lying about very ferociously. That’s always part of the fun for Barnaby and the audience – just about everybody is lying, but only one of them is lying about not being a murderer.”
With a new murder to solve in each feature-length episode, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for on-screen character development between Barnaby and Winter. Instead, that work takes place behind the scenes as Dudgeon and Hendrix spend 12 hours a day together across a four-month shoot. “You are seeing significantly more of one’s crime partner than you are of your own family,” Dudgeon jokes. “Obviously it brings a closeness to it. Certainly from my point of view, it makes it more comfortable when you’re working with somebody that much and you get used to playing with and off somebody. That’s a very nice relationship to have.”
“Most of the time, you come in for three days on a thing, you don’t know anyone’s name, you shoot some hectic scene and then you leave. There’s no relaxing there. It takes years,” says Hendrix, who enjoys a second career as a motoring journalist and has also set up his own production company, Irene Pictures. “What we’re lucky with is that the relaxedness of me and Neil is so palpable because we’ve worked together so long. We’re like an old married couple. So in every scene we do, they get better because we’re just increasingly relaxed and prepared. We know what we’re doing. We’ve always known we’re doing well, but we know it so well. It’s in our blood.”
Notably, Barnaby, like his cousin and predecessor Tom, doesn’t come with the typical hangups or complications other TV detectives must deal with. “Everybody else is tormented and tortured and broken. John’s Barnaby and my Barnaby, they just get on with their job, and they’re affected by it but they don’t turn to drink, they don’t leave the wife and they don’t have affairs or have to drive a particular model of car from the 1930s,” he says. “That was a very deliberate thing from Betty [Willingale, the show’s original producer], which is the thing I’ve always liked about it. It’s very much about the characters, their relationships and their stories, and then police come in and analyse that. But it doesn’t then come back on them.”
When it comes to getting into character, slipping into Barnaby’s classic blue suit always helps Dudgeon achieve the right state of mind. “The only time I dress like this, really, is when I’m being Barnaby,” he laughs. “When we return to filming and I go into my trailer and I put on the suit and the outfit, I look at myself in the mirror and go, ‘He’s back.’
“There are occasions when the costume departments say, ‘Oh, for this scene where you’re having the barbecue, we thought this would be at the weekend, so you’d be in jeans and a shirt.’ And I go, ‘Are you sure it’s not after work? Are they going to know who I am if I’m not wearing the suit?’”
External cues also help Hendrix get into character as the equally sharply dressed Winter. But in his case, it’s a smell rather than just his three-piece suits. Inspired by fellow actor and former Midsomer guest star Shaun Dooley, who picks out a new aftershave for every character, Hendrix went to his collection of Hugo Boss fragrances to find one that he now wears every time he suits up to play DS Winter.
“I’ve always worn the classic Hugo Boss, and everyone in my family knows I wear Hugo Boss so whenever it’s Christmas or my birthday, people think, ‘I’ll get him Hugo Boss.’ But what happens is I’ve been bought every single Hugo Boss scent they make, because no one remembers which one,” the actor says. “So I’ve got this drawer full of the entire Hugo Boss range. Then I was like, ‘Well, I’ll pick one of these and one of these is just going to be Winter,’ so I’ve got one I wear. That’s my little way in. Thank you Shaun Dooley. They didn’t teach me that at drama school.”
The collection of episodes in S25 – the school-set episode with an online murder is joined by stories about a group of mudlarkers, a lawn bowling club and one set on a private estate playing host to a carpentry festival – leads Dudgeon to describe it as a “very good season,” full of the quirky humour and eccentricity for which the show has become known since its debut in 1997.
“But you’ve got to keep the right tone,” he says. “People have been murdered here, and this is all terribly serious. Whether they’ve been drowned in chocolate or they’ve been turned into a giant candle, they’re serious and real things with the eccentricity and the human woven through it.”
He adds: “If you ever think, ‘Oh, look what we’re doing. This is outrageous and funny, isn’t it?’ then you’re not taking it seriously enough. Then you just become a bit smug or knowing. It’s got to remain, first and foremost, a serious mystery drama with the humour in it.”
tagged in: All3Media International, Bentley Productions, ITV, Midsomer Murders, Neil Dudgeon, Nick Hendrix