"Midsomer Murders" has been one of my most beloved shows for many years now, but I haven't had the time to review episodes when the show was at its best. But now I do. I am going to start with the 5.season, which is a consistently good series with "A worm in the bud" being a pretty good episode overall.
Let's start with positives first:
. The production values are wonderful as always with nice direction by David Tucker and amazing music by Jim Parker in the background.
. Most of the script is well written as "A worm in the bud" has a lot of colorful characters, compelling subplots and very tense solution that I didn't see coming.
. The acting is also very strong. Gillian Barge, Wendy Craig do particularly well with their roles. Of course, I love John Nettles as Tom Barnaby, who brought so much warmness to his character. Let alone Barry Jackson or Daniel Casey who are just as good.
. There is also some lovely humor there and then, which is always charming :)
But....
. In the latter middle the pacing of this episode does suffer from a children detective subplot which doesn't bring much as it could had. Also agree that most of "A worm in the bud"s clues are fired of bit too quickly from the writer, which left me wondering: where else is to go?
. There are some untied endings at the end. For example, why was the first victim in the bushes six hours before she is found in the pond? That is never answered, though the murder mystery is built on this fact...
Overall, very good, but not great episode.
8/10 HK
Let's start with positives first:
. The production values are wonderful as always with nice direction by David Tucker and amazing music by Jim Parker in the background.
. Most of the script is well written as "A worm in the bud" has a lot of colorful characters, compelling subplots and very tense solution that I didn't see coming.
. The acting is also very strong. Gillian Barge, Wendy Craig do particularly well with their roles. Of course, I love John Nettles as Tom Barnaby, who brought so much warmness to his character. Let alone Barry Jackson or Daniel Casey who are just as good.
. There is also some lovely humor there and then, which is always charming :)
But....
. In the latter middle the pacing of this episode does suffer from a children detective subplot which doesn't bring much as it could had. Also agree that most of "A worm in the bud"s clues are fired of bit too quickly from the writer, which left me wondering: where else is to go?
. There are some untied endings at the end. For example, why was the first victim in the bushes six hours before she is found in the pond? That is never answered, though the murder mystery is built on this fact...
Overall, very good, but not great episode.
8/10 HK