Midsomer Murders: "The Sting of Death" (Bentley Productions. All3Media, ITV, American Public Television, PBS, 2019)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Thursday, April 4) at 10 p.m. I put on a fascinating Midsomer Murders episode called “The Sting of Death,” a title they chose because the story centers around an eccentric beekeeper named Ambrose Deddington (Griff Rhys Jones) and his sister and business partner, Tamara Deddington (Imogen Stubbs). There’s a third sibling in the mix, their older sister Melissa (Jacquetta May), who’s crazy and given to rattling off long stretches of Shakespearean dialogue; and her son Jude (Jack Fox), who wants to take over his uncle’s bee-keeping operation and modernize it. For that transgression against family tradition Ambrose has exiled Melissa and Jude to a tumble-down shack on the estate grounds, and has started an affair with local doctor Serena Lowe (Renée Castle), who treated Ambrose during his bout with cancer, which he claims to have survived through a preparation he made himself from his bee farm’s designer honey. Ambrose is hoping to marry Dr. Lowe and father a child with her, which if it’s a son will enable him to disinherit Jude Deddington because the law allows the Deddington estate to pass only to the closest living male heir. Also in the mix are Jude Deddington’s assistant in maintaining his share of the bees, Cyrus Babbage (Bryan Dick); his mother, Deddington family servant Lynda Babbage (Wendi Peters), who explains that 200 years before one of the Deddington men impregnated one of the Babbage women, he refused to marry her and so they were done out of a share of the estate that should rightfully have been theirs; Cal Ingalls (Aaron Anthony), a Gay man whose recently deceased partner was Ambrose Deddington’s oncologist, and who ended up in the manor house that had been promised to Jude Deddington; and Noah Moon (Ben Starr), a yoga teacher who showed up in town and started offering classes, much to the disgust of Reverend Nigel Brookthorpe (Derek Griffiths), who in one big scene throws a yoga class out of his church basement.

The episode begins with a nocturnal attack on one of Ambrose’s beehives and snowballs after that to a series of murders: Dr. Lowe, who’s found dead with her head surrounded by escaped bees; Cal Ingalls, who’s knocked out with a water bottle and covered in melted beeswax; and a third would-be victim who’s spared because the cops – detective chief inspector John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon), his wife Sarah (Fiona Dolman) – who, much to his disgust, enrolls John in a yoga class – and detective sergeant Jamie Winter (Nick Hendrix) – uncover him in time and spare Ambrose’s life. The killer is [spoiler alert!] Noah Moon, whose real name is Noah Lister and who was motivated by revenge. It seems his mother caught cancer and died, and instead of doing conventional treatments she used Ambrose Deddington’s super-strength (and super-expensive) designer honey even though Ambrose never had cancer at all. It was just a mistaken diagnosis by Cal’s late partner Justin, only instead of publicly acknowledging that he’d never had cancer, Ambrose used his supposedly successful recovery to sell his honey treatment nationwide. Noah’s mother bought into the hoax and so Noah determined to take his revenge against the doctor who’d corrected the mistaken diagnosis but had covered up for Ambrose; the partner of the man who’d mistakenly diagnosed Ambrose in the first place; and ultimately Ambrose himself. Written by Julia Gilbert (based on characters created by Caroline Graham) and directed by Matt Carter, “The Sting of Death” made at least a bit more sense than some of the previous Midsomer Murders episodes, and luckily didn’t include so many criminal schemes being unraveled along with the main intrigue as to get too confusing in the ending, but it had the same quirky appeal that’s caused me to like this show and watch it whenever I can (which means whenever there aren’t new episodes of the Law and Order series I’d rather watch instead).