A Midsomer murder mystery weekend becomes a gruesome reality when an actual killer strikes in this week's Midsomer Murders mystery called Happy Families, which starts on Sunday Oct. 3 on ITV at 8pm. The episode is written by Nick Hicks-Beach.
Here, Midsomers' main guest star Adrian Edmondson, gives us a taste of what to expect...
Adrian on what happens in Midsomer Murders episode Happy Families?
In this Midsomer story, the murder mystery party is thrown by Eleanor Karras (Hollington Drive star Rachael Stirling) who is the pregnant wife of Victor Karras (Stuart Milligan), the head of prestigious board game firm Karras Games. She sees it as a fitting way to celebrate her husband’s 70th birthday.
Guests gather for the occasion at Hulton Manor, a sprawling stately home on a private island, and among them are Hugo Welles, played by Adrian Edmonson.
"Hugo’s an unsuccessful actor who’s found a niche in presenting murder mystery weekends. He always plays the detective,’"explains Adrian, aka Ade Edmondson, who became best know for co-writing and starring in the BBC's cult student comedy The Young Ones in the 1980s before starring as Daniel Cook in EastEnders in recent years and the BBC1 drama The Pact earlier this year.
"Hugo Welles is bumptious, pedantic and vain, and believes his sleuthing abilities are much better than any real-life detective. He’s an idiot in a clever person’s clothing"
A storm rages adding to the atmosphere of the murder game, but the proceedings come to abrupt halt when man-of-the-hour Victor tumbles down the stairs and is impaled on a life-size Egyptian figure, killing him for real!
But after Midsomer duo DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) and DS Jamie Winter (Nick Hendrix) arrive on the island to investigate, they discover that Victor had been poisoned and was dead before he fell!
With the storm getting worse and the only means of transportation off the island - a chain ferry -washed away, Barnaby and Winter are trapped with Victor’s family and friends - one of whom is the killer! High on the list of suspects is Hugo’s wife Helen, played by Caroline Quentin (see our main picture above).
"Bizarrely - as we have worked in the same business and in similar parts of that business for 40 years, Caroline Quentin and I hadn’t worked together before," says Adrian. "But we have a very similar sense of humour so we made each other laugh a lot."
Adrian's thoughts on Midsomer and storms...
Adrian is pretty sure he wouldn't like to live in a place like Midsomer... “Midsomer is an anachronistic, 1950s idea of what Britain is like, or was like. It’s fun to look at it, like it’s fun to look at old postcards, but I wouldn’t want to live there. However I did once stay in a cottage that had been used as a location – there was a steady stream of people lining up outside to have their picture taken with the cottage in the background.”
So has Adrian ever been stranded somewhere due to freak weather, as happens to the murder mystery party in Midsomer this week? “I live on Dartmoor and have often been cut off during the winter, sometimes without electricity. The longest period was three days — it was just myself and my youngest daughter — and we huddled round the fire and had a rather jolly time of it. We eventually had to drive the quad bike through the snow drifts down to the village for supplies. It felt like a proper adventure.”
