Midsomer Murders is undeniably the best British show that I've checked out this summer. With John Nettles starring as Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby, the show follows Barnaby and his sidekick, Detective Sergeant Ben Jones (Jason Hughes), as they tackle some of the strangest cases in little ol' Midsomer County. With the packaging out most recently, you'll receive four of the finest murder mysteries.

Someone tried to sell me on this being like Law & Order, but I thought it was more like an Agatha Christie murder mystery—the accelerated version, of course. Clocking in at one hundred minutes each time, the individual mysteries are intriguing, as well as the character interactions between Barnaby and Jones, as well as Barnaby with his wife and daughter, played by Jane Wymark and Laura Howard. But I digress momentarily—on with the stories!

In the very creepily sound-tracked "Dance with the Dead," Barnaby has plenty of suspects and not enough answers. But he can't get to the obvious murder until it is first ruled out as a suicide. Love and obsession come into play, and it's an interesting exploration of which one is which. Religion and faith doesn't come into play much, but the way that the various unsavory characters "love" is quite different from that of Barnaby and his wife. While one is manipulative and dirty, the other is quite affectionate, playful, and real, proving that real love does exist in the realms of Hollywood (or at least in Britain).

"King's Crystal" is easily my least favorite, as it seems to meander all over the story. To be fair, that's the standard modus operandi of these stories: loops and cross-overs that have you questioning whodunit and confusing the heck out of you. But "King's Crystal" seems unnecessarily loopy, even as the "grand twist" seems more obvious than any of the others. Fortunately, "The Animal Within" is significantly better, with various characters having motive (usually money) to have offed an old man whose long-dead (or thought to be long dead) niece appears suddenly.

And then, there's my favorite, "The Axeman Cometh," which finds the normally serene Midsomer County besieged by the crowds of music fans intent on catching the bands at the Midsomer Rocks Music Festival. But someone is stalking the members of the recently reunited Hired Gun, and one by one, they start to die. While the one bite of religion takes place in this story, as Barnaby asks the parish priest if he's worried about his parishioners' take on rock music and the priest says the money is going to a good cause, the episodes I saw didn't delve much into metaphysical issues.

Instead, questions about truth and lies, greed and corruption, lust and hate all come into play. Barnaby is a bulldog for truth and clearing up the subterfuge which the criminals have undertaken to get away with the murders. What he discovers isn't always pretty (crime rarely is) but the way that he saves others from the same fate is crucial. The people of Midsomer aren't as innocent as they seem, but they are sheep compared to the wolves who prowl about murdering, stealing, and corrupting. Midsomer needs a bulldog like Barnaby, and the real world would be better off with a few more detectives like him.