ONE of ITV’s best-loved murder mystery series, Midsomer Murders is now a successful stage show, and the premiere productions of The Killing at Badger’s Drift is at Bath Theatre Royal from Tuesday 9th to Saturday 13th June. The cast is headed by Daniel Casey as DCI Tom Barnaby, the role first made famous by John Nettles.
It’s a well-deserved promotion for Daniel Casey – after playing DS Gavin Troy on Midsomer Murders for six years, he is now back in what is humorously known as the UK’s most dangerous county (fictionally speaking) in a rather more senior position: “So it’s a massive promotion, going from a detective sergeant to a chief inspector. I’ve certainly earned my spurs,” he says.
John Nettles and Daniel Casey starred together in the hugely successful show from the pilot episode, which aired in March 1997, through to Daniel’s departure in 2003.
Published in 1987, The Killings at Badger’s Drift was the first of Caroline Graham’s Chief Inspector Barnaby books and formed the basis of the first Midsomer Murders episode. Adapted for the stage and directed by Guy Unsworth, the play revolves around the death of well-loved spinster Emily Simpson in the picturesque village of Badger’s Drift.
Her friend Lucy Bellringer (played by Julie Legrand) refuses to accept that Emily’s death was an accident, so DCI Tom Barnaby and DS Gavin Troy (James Bradwell) are called in to investigate – uncovering a world of hidden passions, long-buried secrets and deadly rivalries.
The play offers “a night of murder and mystery, full of theatricality and intrigue, with the central partnership of Barnaby and Troy, a whole host of English eccentrics and this really dark undercurrent of secrets and lies going on,” says Daniel.
Daniel believes Midsomer Murders has been successful, not only in the UK but internationally, because: “It’s set in the modern day yet it has a kind of 1940s or 1950s feel to it. It’s a wonderful form of escapism. Apparently a lot of clerics like it because it’s like a modern day morality tale. It’s good versus evil, right versus wrong. The beautiful countryside is another part of its appeal and it’s full of eccentrics, which British actors play so well.”
Photographs by Manuel Harlan