I remember hating this when I first saw it, but upon further viewing it does have a certain charm and lots of humour, there is some great cricketing comedy with Barnaby as the umpire and Jones playing for the village team. But, and it's a very big but, I just can't get over the revelation that Barnaby was once a spy himself. It's totally preposterous and it's even more ludicrous that he tells Joyce about it.
So, if you can look past that monstrous piece of tosh, there are things to enjoy here. The performances of some of the guest stars, Anna Massey, Alice Krige, Benjamin Whitrow and Peter Davison are wonderful, and has there ever been a more eccentric character in Midsomer than Sir Malcolm Frazer? I mean, rehearsing your own funeral over and over again, priceless! There was also plenty of fun to be had at the expense of Glen Jarvis, I'm sure mine wasn't the only household rooting for him to get his comeuppance. The idea of Barnaby resigning was good, but as another reviewer mentioned, that was over all too quickly and could have been made more of, as could the subplot about the Beast of Midsomer and Jones' flirtations with the museum curator.
The ending, however, was preposterous. The killer's motives were weak and it was an over elaborate way to try to do away with someone.