If dramas like Adolescence are the rough televisual equivalent of whoever won the latest Turner Prize, then Midsomer Murders (ITV1) is David Hockney. The first category embodies the kind of worthy, tormented, agenda-pushing stuff we’re supposed to like; the second represents the sort of thing we actually like: undemanding, unpretentious, easy on the eye and brain.

The deaths serve as a plot device and as a source of macabre comedy but are most definitely not there to cause you any emotional distress

Even though Midsomer Murders has been going since 1997, I only saw my first full episode this week. Though I quite enjoyed it, I don’t feel any compelling need to catch up with its 140 odd predecessors because I think I’m now an expert on the formula: the person who committed the murder in the nice country house is the very last person you suspected; meanwhile, all the people you did suspect at various stages end up being murdered, one by one.

The genial detective who solves the murders used to be Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby (John Nettles). But when he retired in 2011, there was a remarkable stroke of nepotistic luck whereby his similarly genial cousin DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) became available for........

© The Spectator