Behind the Lace Curtains – Midsomer Murders as a Tale with Two Englishnesses

When people speak of Midsomer Murders, they tend to see it at once: a lane shaded by hawthorn, manor walls half-hidden by wisteria, the brass band on the village green where children run barefoot.

Caroline Graham’s Inspector Barnaby stories – the first five forming the bones of the pilot and the early series – draw deliberately on that image. They echo the interwar idea of Englishness, shaped in the quiet years between 1918 and 1939: a countryside that promised escape from soot and noise, a life where tradition was a comfort, not a cage, and the village a small, complete world where each person’s place was known, for better or worse.

Graham plants these villages with care: Village fêtes, foxgloves lean into the path… Yet she does not simply offer comfort.
Beneath the thatch and teacups runs another current — the sharp, self-reliant spirit of the 1980s. Thatcher’s years praised individual triumph and blamed personal failure. Prosperity was a medal; misfortune, a fault. Private enterprise drove the machine, while ‚community‘ was redefined as what each person owed themselves.

In Graham’s hands, the nasty effects of Thatcherite Englishness creeps into Midsomer like ivy between stones. Ambition and greed get Graham’s sharpest treatment. Thatcher’s gospel of the market gave acquisitiveness a moral gloss. In Midsomer, private gain stands where public duty once stood. Blackmail props up genteel lifestyles. Shady investments promise prosperity, then ruin the unwary. Inheritance becomes a blood sport. Self-interest wears the language of responsibility: I only look after my own.
Thatcherite morality upheld “traditional values” on podiums, yet quietly tolerated the indiscretions of the successful. In Graham’s villages, affairs are hidden behind curtains. Thatcher’s “no such thing as society” plays out as a theatre of masks — and no one dares to drop theirs.

When the novels reached television, the tension softened under a different political sky. Thatcher was gone; Blair’s New Labour spoke of renewal. The sharper edges dulled: incest hinted at in print was blurred; queer relationships shown more cautiously; greed became quaint eccentricity. Viewers could enjoy the lace and lavender without facing the social critique head-on. Yet the skeleton remained: picturesque villages hiding petty cruelties, jealousies, and obsessions with image. The enduring appeal suggests that audiences recognise, even relish, the discomfort — knowing that the past, however pretty, hid its thorns.

For all its murders, Midsomer Murders remains, for many, a gentle evening’s entertainment. But within its hedgerows runs a quiet argument between two Englishnesses. One, pastoral, self-contained. The other, brash, profit-minded, intolerant of weakness. Graham’s gift lies in letting both breathe on the page — and reminding us that behind any lace curtain, the spirit of the age will always leave its mark.