Midsomer Rhapsody
Retired music teacher Arthur Leggott is battered to death with a torch in his cottage in Badger's Drift after sneaking out of the Cedar's care home to search for a missing document. Arthur taught the late composer Joan Alder, famous for Midsomer Rhapsody, and Barnaby and Scott wonder if Arthur owned a valuable musical score.
Arthur left all his possessions to the Joan Alder Society run by Owen Swinscoe and Alan Thorpe, husband of Joan's sister Melody. The society has restored Joan's family home as a living museum, but Swinscoe claims Joan's husband Michael Maybury hates the museum because it might stir up interest in the car crash which killed her.
Scott carries out a painstaking search of Arthur's effects but finds nothing. After the auction, however, dealer Harvey Crane unearths an early version of Midsomer Rhapsody among his purchase of box files. He offers to sell it to Joan's agent and former lover Laura Crawford for £50,000 before reaching a deal with Swinscoe for £120,000, subject to authentication.
An excited Swinscoe believes handwriting on the manuscript shows Joan was working on the score while still a schoolgirl taking lessons with Arthur, shortly before meeting and running away with her first love, John Farrow.
At the opening of Joan Alder House, Laura stuns the crowd by introducing a young woman, Sarah, as Joan's long-lost daughter. Reeling in shock outside, local vagrant Hedge is hit by drunker builder Joe Smeeton's car. Barnaby realises Hedge is John Farrow, thought to be dead, and Sarah is his daughter.
Bullard finds evidence of another composer's hand in writing the Rhapsody, while John sells Swinscoe a love letter from Joan in order to get cash to buy Sarah dinner. As Swinscoe examines the letter, he spots something that makes him realise the musical score is a fake. Then, after a drunken and argumentative evening in the pub, he is pushed from a bridge.
As another villager meets a gruesome end and Joan's mother Peggy prepares for her wedding to fellow pensioner Charlie Speight, Barnaby and Scott must probe bitter family feuds and long lost love affairs. Can they discover what is real and what is fake and who is the killer trying to rewrite the past?
Facts about the people in MIDSOMER RHAPSODY
Episode thoughts by JUNE WHITFIELD
Episode thoughts by TREVOR PEACOCK
CAST
Peggy Alder- June Whitfield
Charlie Speight- Trevor Peacock
Valerie Smeeton- Julia Deakin
Joe Smeeton- Richard Vanstone
Owen Swinscoe- Stephen Boxer
Melody Thorpe- Belinda Sinclair
Alan Thorpe- David Lyon
Arthur Leggot- Nicholas Amer
Noah Farrow- Frank Middlemass
John Farrow- David Burke
Laura Crawford- Claire Higgins
Michael Maybury- Oliver Cotton
Sarah Douglas- Kate Fleetwood
Harvey Crane- Christopher Benjamin
Written by:
Richard Cameron
Directed by:
Richard Holthouse
Produced by:
Brian True-May
| Victims | How? |
| Athur Legott | Battered to death with torch. |
| Owen Swincoe | Thrown off bridge and drowned. |
| Harvey Crane | Decapitated by trip wire whilst on motorcycle. Head fell off. |
...and the murderer was: Alan Thorpe.
"Midsomer Rhapsody " was filmed in:
Islip, Oxfordshire
Great Haseley, Oxfordshire
Little Haseley, Oxfordshire
Swallowfield, Berkshire
Watlington, Oxfordshire
Which village (fictional)?
Badger's Drift
When?
March 2005
It was shown in the UK:
2nd October 2005