Rule, Britannia: My Favorite ‘Midsomer Murders’ Film Actors

Based on the novels by Caroline Graham, Midsomer Murders (MM) originally hit UK airwaves in 1997 and plans are in place for the 23rd and 24th seasons, which is a testament to its durability. For those who aren’t familiar with the show, it’s about Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby (there have been two), his assistants (six), and pathologists (five), who solve murder cases in the southern English county of Midsomer. Their families, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and suspects all figure in the rich tapestry of the show, which sometimes features weird and/or grisly means of death. The county is home to a wide variety of people, places, and activities including sports, arts, culinary, civic, and religious functions, which offer a wide variety of circumstances in which to kill or be killed. Folks don’t just get shot or stabbed in Midsomer. They get impaled on relics, beheaded, pelted by wine bottles, or smothered in concrete, to name just a few.

I’m a relatively recent convert to Midsomer Murders (MM), it was a welcome discovery in the early months of the pandemic. Aside from the idyllic beauty of the setting, the English eccentricity and pitch-black humo(u)r, and the lurid nature of the titular crimes, I love seeing actors turn up from other TV shows and movies. Whether they are on their way up or already established, Midsomer County attracts a lot of British thesps (and a few Americans). Since the Rule, Brittania Blogathon is about movies specifically, and I’m already breaking the rules by writing about a TV show (though in my defense its episodes are at least 90 minutes long), the following list focuses on 1) Brits who 2) I know and love from their feature films. The list is in no particular order and is by no means complete. In fact, it’s a tiny, completely arbitrary, sample of some of my favorite guest stars. Some plot points may be revealed, but I wouldn’t call them spoilers — MM is about the journey, not the destination. See who made the list after the jump!

Elizabeth Spriggs

1.1 The Killings at Badger’s Drift — Iris Rainbird (center)

9.2 Dead Letters — Ursula Gooding (right)

Spriggs, best known on this side of the Atlantic for her portrayal of Mrs. Jennings (left) in Sense and Sensibility (1995), was in the very first episode of MM, returning a few seasons later as Iris’ lookalike sister Ursula (whose daughter is portrayed by Sophie Thompson, sister of S & S screenwriter and star Emma). All three characters are incredibly nosy and one of them sees too much for a murderer’s comfort. To me, Iris Rainbird is symbolic of all of Midsomer: a daffy older lady, nice enough if a bit (a lot) eccentric, with plenty to hide. Spriggs earned a BAFTA nomination for Mrs. Jennings, a character she so perfectly embodied that I can’t imagine anyone else playing it. She also appeared in Impromptu (1991), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), and Richard’s Things (1980), among other films. Spriggs passed away in 2008 at the age of 78 after a lengthy and versatile career with a slew of roles on TV and on stage.

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Harriet Walter DBE

8.3 Orchis Fatalis — Margaret Winstanley (center)

15.3 Death and the Divas — Diana Davenport (right)

Walter plays a thirsty botany professor who becomes involved in a series of nasty murders in one episode, and in another, a famous film actress returning to Midsomer to reconnect with her estranged sister. Neither is as flat-out evil as her character in S & S, one Fanny Dashwood (left), a woman so horrible that she was voted worse than both Lucy Steele and Satan in a TCM Party poll — though to be fair, Lucy was a close second.

Seen in Ted Lasso, The Crown, Succession, and Downton Abbey, among a ton of other TV shows, Walter’s film work includes The Young Victoria (2009) and The Last Duel (2021), and she’ll appear in The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee, a doc about her most famous relative that is in post-production (she’s his niece). Of her role in The Force Awakens (2015), she told The Telegraph, “My six words in Star Wars got a better response than the rest of my career put together,” but that hasn’t stopped her from playing three of Shakespeare’s male protagonists in Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female trilogy of Julius Caesar, Henry IV, and The Tempest (the latter was set in a women’s prison), or writing a book, Brutus and other Heroines: Playing Shakespeare’s Roles for Women.

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While many players on MM have appeared in TV and film literary adaptations, S & S in particular is a hotbed of guests on the show; a majority of that film’s supporting cast has been on it. In addition to Spriggs and Walter, they are:

• Gemma Jones — Mum to the Dashwood sisters and Bridget Jones, and Madam Pomfrey in the Harry Potter series (among many other credits), she appeared in 5.3 Ring Out Your Dead.
• Robert Hardy and Imelda Staunton – Co-stars in MM episode 2.3 Dead Man’s Eleven, he played Cornelius Fudge and she was the diabolical Dolores Umbrage in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). They were also in a UK miniseries, Look at the State We’re In, together. Staunton is the current Queen Elizabeth II on The Crown…MM only needs Claire Foy to complete the trifecta (see Olivia Colman below).
• Imogen Stubbs — Miss Lucy Steele is a member of a shady beekeeping family in 21.3 The Sting of Death. Has anyone ever seen her and Tonya Harding in the same place?
• James Fleet — Tom in the OG Brit rom-com Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and spineless half-brother John Dashwood in S & S, he also appeared in 8.7 Sauce for the Goose and 19.6 The Curse of the Ninth. He is likely best known for TV — Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte are two of his many credits — but he’s been in a variety of films, including Love and Friendship (2016) and The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018).
• Oliver Ford Davies — One of the MM victims who truly deserved what was coming to him (in 8.6 Hidden Depths), Davies played Doctor Harris, who got Marianne through her illness.

I could go on, but a diagram of this group’s TV and film projects and their mutual casts would look like this…

…and I value my sanity.

You might think that S & S and MM share a casting director or maybe a producer, but they don’t. Both need a certain type of skilled actors, the ones that Britain seems to produce so prolifically. Like the Marvel franchise, it helps immensely to have trained thespians selling a series that can often be over-the-top.

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Orlando Bloom

12.3 Judgement Day — Peter Drinkwater (left)
Before Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean, Bloom played a thief and gigolo operating in and around Midsomer Mallow, who meets his end via stabbing by pitchfork. (Now famous Highlander co-star Tobias Menzies played Drinkwater’s accomplice.) Longtime MM co-star Jane Wymark (Joyce Barnaby) recommended him for MM after seeing him perform at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. By the time this episode was filmed in July and August of 1999, Bloom had appeared in Wilde and Black Hawk Down (both 1997), graduated from the school, and been cast in The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), which began filming in October 1999. Other films: Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Elizabethtown (2005), The Three Musketeers (2011), The Bling Ring (as himself, 2013), Red Right Hand (post-production)

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Samantha Bond

4.2 Destroying Angel — Suzanna Chambers (left)
11.1 Shot at Dawn (2008) — Arabella Hammond (center)
14.1 Death in the Slow Lane (2011) — Kate Cameron (right)
None other than the sauciest Miss Moneypenny from the Pierce Brosnan James Bond films has appeared on Midsomer three times as characters who are all disturbed (and disturbing) in some way. Nominated for a Tony award in 1999 for her role in the play Amy’s View, Bond does a lot of voice work and has her own podcast, “Acting for Others Presents…” which pairs up “the UK’s brightest stars of stage and screen for intimate conversations.” Films: Erik the Viking (1989), Goldeneye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World is Not Enough (1999), Die Another Day (2002)

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Olivia Colman

12.5 Small Mercies — Bernice (left)

Prior to her Oscar- and Emmy-winning stardom, Colman appeared on MM just once, in a standout role you’ll never forget. Her character Bernice is chipper, child-like, sly, and completely different from anything else I’ve seen Colman play, before or since. She’s portrayed three British royals: Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) in Hyde Park on the Hudson (2012), Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown (2016), and Queen Anne (right) in The Favourite (2018), for which she won the Best Actress Academy Award. Other films include Hot Fuzz (2007), The Iron Lady (2011), The Lobster (2015), London Road (2015), Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Empire of Light (2022).

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Martine McCutcheon

15.6 Schooled in Murder – Debbie Moffett (right)
Among MM’s most famous aspects is the unhinged nature of the deaths. McCutcheon’s character experiences one of the wildest when she is crushed to death with a wheel of cheese. As an actress, her best-known role is Natalie (left) in Love, Actually (2003). She has done a lot of British TV, where she kicked off her career with EastEnders in 1994. She’s also a popular singer in the UK and acts in theatre as well. In 2002, McCutcheon won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her work as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady at the National Theatre.

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Suzi Quatro

10.4 The Axeman Cometh — Mimi Clifton (right)
Detroit’s own badass rock ’n’ roll giri just missed appearing in the Clive Barker film Nightbreed (1990) — her character was cut. She is on this list because there’s no one cooler than Leather Tuscadero (left). Quatro is of course best known as a musician; her work was far more popular in Europe than it ever was in the U.S. She’s done a lot of TV and radio in the UK, including a cameo on Absolutely Fabulous and her short but memorable role as a doomed rock singer who loves her weed and cocktails on MM (not a spoiler, she’s killed around the 30-min mark). Quatro was the subject of a documentary, Suzi Q., in 2019 and released an acclaimed album, “The Devil In Me,” in 2021.

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Toby Jones

2.2 Strangler’s Wood
3.1 Death of a Stranger
3.2 Dead Man’s Eleven
3.3 Judgement Day — Dr. Dan Peterson (left)
An instrumental part of one of my favorite films of all time, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011 – right), Jones filled in for Midsomer’s regular pathologist in four episodes. The son of two actors, he got his start and continues to work extensively on stage, but he’s amassed 186 film credits, his first being Sally Potter’s Orlando (1992). He memorably portrayed Truman Capote in Infamous (2006 – the one with Sandra Bullock) and Capote’s agent Irving Paul “Swifty” Lazar in Frost/Nixon (2008). Jones successfully mixes arthouse projects like Berberian Sound System (2012) and First Cow (2019) with big tentpoles, appearing in both Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and The Hunger Games series. He was most recently seen as Basil Shaw in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023).

As I mentioned above, this list represents just a small fraction of the cinematic talent that has traipsed through Midsomer County in the past 26 years. If you watch the show, who did I miss, and who would you like to see check in at this welcoming yet dangerous locale? If you’ve never seen it, will you check it out, and who do you look forward to seeing?

This post is part of the 10th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon hosted by Terence at A Shroud of Thoughts. Check out the other posts here.