After a wonderful start to the first third series of Midsomer Murders, where many of the first thirteen episodes have been classic episodes, "Garden of Death" turns out to be a decent episode. It is not a bad episode, it is just that other episodes have been written a lot better, and some of the other episodes have had a much more interesting and intriguing story. Let us see what the plot says about "Garden of Death".
"Garden of Death" starts as the body of an uknown woman is dumped in a grave, five years prior to the episode. In present day, Tom and Joyce are visiting the public gardens owned by Elspeth Inkpen-Thomas. Elspeth plans to dig up a much-loved memorial garden, replacing it with a tea shop, which has caused a lot of resentments amongst the local residents. A village meeting is later being held that night and heated exchange of words start to occur between Jane Bennet and Elspeth Inkpen-Thomas. Jane Bennet is very fragile and turns out to be quite sad about Elspeth's decision, as it is revealed that the memorial garden belonged to her father. When Elspeth says Jane Bennet and the other's can open a memorial garden elsewhere, Jane Bennet runs out from the meeting. Susan Millard is walking her dog the following morning and the body of Fliss Inkpen-Thomas is found in the middle of the memorial garden. Elspeth is leaving Inkpen Manor after an argument with her mother, Naomi Inkpen, and stays at the vicarage. While she enjoys her bath, someone sneaks in the vicarage. They go to the kitchen and dump a jar of Pesto into a dish. They take the dish upstairs to Elspeth's room. Elspeth goes to her room and sees the pesto. She takes a bite, but do not like it. She sets the dish on the floor, and says that Crispin the dog can have the rest. Shortly after, she starts to have pain and breathes heavily. Someone holds the door shut as Elspeth tries to get out. She collapses on the floor and the murderer comes in and pushes more pesto down her throat. Elspeth dies and the murderer lock the door and leave through the window.
It turns out that Hilary Inkpen is the murderer. She was noen as an illegitimate child, daughter by Elspeth Inkpen-Thomas and Richard Deverell. Hilary realised the truth that she was never loved and never wanted, not by her sister, not by her mum, and nor by her grandmother. The woman that was buried at the start of the episode turns out to be Cynthia Bennet, Jane Bennet's mother. She was seeing other men and was infaithful towards Jane Bennet's father. Jane had had enough of her mum's action and strangled her. She was then buried in what would turn out to be the memorial garden, so when people walked there, they would walk over her just in the same way as she had walked over Jane's father.
I do agree that the plot about the missing woman who later is revealed to be Cynthia Bennet, was a bit more interesting than the main plot in this episode. I personally loved that plot, but I do wonder about her murder and the connection between the murder of Cynthia and the murders of Fliss and Elspeth. I believe that the episode would have been a lot more intriguing if the murders were connected. At a point, Barnaby and Troy are dealing with two different murder cases, which sometimes can be a bit confusing, and it takes your mind of the actual murders happening in the episode with Fliss and Elspeth. But with that being said, Cynthia's murder happens five years prior to the episode, and the purpose of that was perhaps to let it go a bit under the radar, and that her murder was not meant to be at the centre of attention, but somehow, I feel that her murder got more attention than the murders of Fliss and Elspeth. If you look at it from that point of view, these two stories could have been made into two episodes instead of one, even though Cynthia's murder five years prior to the episode, suits the story and episode very well.
"Garden of Death" is a good, but a decent start of the fourth series of Midsomer Murders, but as always, the story contains its dark scenes, and environments that are suitable for a crime drama. The story takes a bit of time to get going, and it has been other episodes where the characters have been more colourful. Hilary turning out to be the killer was not that hard to figure out, but with that being said, I can not imagine Hilary being a killer. I can not imagine in my head, that it is her wearing the dark gloves she wore when she killed her mum. Hilary's brutal murder method killing her mother is one of the murders that I still remember very well.
Anthony Bate, Simon Chandler, Anna Calder-Marshall, Kate Duchene and Victoria Hamilton leaves the best impression. On the other hand, Sarah Alexander as Fliss Inkpen-Thomas, Belinda Lang as Elspeth Inkpen-Thomas and Margaret Tyzack as Naomi Inkpen, all play characters that get me annoyed and they did not add a lot to the story, even though a good story needs characters like this to get the story interesting.
Neil Dudgeon, who later would replace John Nettles in the lead role ten years after "Garden of Death", does an okay appearance as Daniel Bolt in this episode. I would have loved to see a different side of his character's personality and a more interesting character. I may say so because I am so fond of Neil Dudgeon and the character of John Barnaby that he plays now in Midsomer Murders, that our first glimpse of him, in another role that it, could have been a lot better.
Overall, "Garden of Death", is a good, but decent start to the fourth series of Midsomer Murders. The episode is enjoyable and indeed interesting, but compared to the many classic episodes from the first three series, "Garden of Death" is a step down in quality. 7/10 Hossy Christie.
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