For anyone who loves cozy detective series with minimal gore and sex scenes, don’t sleep on what Acorn TV and Britbox have to offer. Case in point, there is a reason Midsomer Murders is such a beloved crime drama with 24 seasons under its belt.
Viewers are drawn into the show’s scenic Causton villages and hamlets for sure, but behind those neatly trimmed hedges with its charming thatch-roofed cottages there is always someone lurking, driven to murder. Yes, DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) and DS Jamie Winter (Nick Hendrix) will be back to solve the crimes. However, the news comes pleasantly two-fold but missing something relevant to fans.
Midsomer Murders will return with season 25 and 26
Season 25 began production in March 2025 and wrapped up filming the four-commissioned episodes over the summer. So, is it too far-fetched to expect a premiere set for late 2025 or early 2026, considering four episodes of season 26 will be on its heels? Twenty-six seasons of Midsomer Murders means a total of 148 episodes, which is officially more than Columbo or Poirot. Quite a feat for a series that made its debut nearly 30 years ago.
Returning with DCI John Barnaby and DS Jamie Winter will be Fiona Dolman as Barnaby’s wife Sarah and Annette Badland as the county’s witty pathologist Dr. Fleur Perkins. While no one knows the exact dates for the seasons premieres, it should be safe to assume that it could be a matter of a few months, at least for Season 25. So, stay tuned.
Why the series is so loved
Characters aside, and there have been many quirky ones, the creative methods for murder are just as quirky. Over the decades, bodies have piled up on Midsomer Murders due to electrocution by a truck connected to a power transformer, a man killed by a shotgun that was elaborately rigged with a wire leading from his foot to the trigger, a dairy worker getting crushed by a giant wheel of cheese, one person drowning in a mess of soup and another boiled in a beer vat.
Again, scenes of the English countryside are appealing to viewers with places like Wallingford, Dorchester-on-Thames, and Henley-on-Thames serving as film locations. Midsomer Murders is based on the Chief Inspector Barnaby book series by English author Caroline Graham. Her first novel, The Killings at Badger’s Drift (published in 1987) was the first episode, also called The Killings at Badger’s Drift and aired on March 23, 1997.
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