“Whenever I go on on holiday,” he confesses, “I always take Proust, but I always end up reading Agatha Christie. The conceit of the Home Counties mystery – that behind every chintz curtain lurks a murderer or that there might be mayhem between the silk sheets – is lovely.” As Barnaby comments at one point in Midsomer Murders: “You wouldn’t think that one small village would have so much trouble bubbling under the surface.”A chirpy, expansive presence, Nettles is talking to me during a break from shoot- ing. He’s like Columbo with his `and another thing’.”All of which is true, but the burning question on every viewer’s lips must be: why, oh why are we on patrol with yet another small-screen copper? Even Nettles at one point sighs that “the last thing we need is another television detective.”Greenland mounts a defence of detectives. His wife cooks him candlelit, Delia Smith suppers, and he leaves work early to be with his family – what would Morse have to say about that?Pat Greenland, the associate producer on Midsomer Murders, takes up the theme.
“Barnaby is a good detective with a solid family background, as opposed to a detective with a dysfunctional background like Morse.”The producer, Brian True-May, emphasises that “there are many quirky characters in the village in Midsomer Murders Barnaby is the only sane person in the whole thing He stands out as a mild man who knows what he wants. I have to be quite ordinary – which is a special skill I’ve learnt. Barnaby is at ease with himself, and that makes a change.”Apart from the odd one-liner – he tells a colleague, “You’re as politically correct as a Nuremberg rally” – Barnaby is as straight as a Roman road. The audience was always ahead of him.”
“Mercifully, Barnaby has no such foibles,” he continues. “I’d been 11 years as Bergerac, and I’d bored the English public with my leather jackets and red cars He was such a dumb-dumb.
“`Whooo, there it is, he’s got the car or the drink problem’.”
One of the things that tempted Nettles, 48, back to the small screen after several years on stage was the fact that this new character, CI Tom Barnaby, was a ‘tec without tics. Any new TV detective becomes the subject of an amusing parlour game for viewers: Spot the Quirk. The museum’s assistant curator will talk about the decorative maps on 9 Apr (3pm) and a panel of experts, including the curator of the National Railway Museum’s poster collection, are all aboard for a Joy of Maps poster seminar (26 Apr, pounds 10/pounds 7.50). Youngsters can join in special map-reading trails round the museum (27 Mar-12 Apr), and attend workshops to create their own mobiles (28-30 Mar, 5-6 Apr), travel board (or bored?) games (31 Mar-1 Apr), and personalised maps (9 Apr). From Macdonald Gill’s pioneering By Paying Us Your Pennies (1913), to works from the 1920s and 1930s, the maps imaginatively combine how-to-get-there information with artistic detail.NEXT STOPTo compliment the exhibition, the museum has organised a series of map- related events designed to get the kids on the right track over Easter, and divert the grown-ups too. Their jolly “day out” posters – including an inspired one for the Tate featuring an unfinished underground map oozing out of a tube of oil paint – were preceded by the commission of decorative maps, and some of these will be on view at the London Transport Museum’s “Joy of Maps” exhibition, which opened yesterday. GOING NOWHERE FAST
The pop culture status of the distinctive, and totally topographically inaccurate, London Underground map has been affirmed by its replication as art: Simon Patterson’s The Great Bear, a faithful copy of the Tube diagram produced with the help of a signwriter, was part of the artist’s Turner Prize submission last year.
The syrup sponge, favourite in this tasting, comes from a fairly new range, including sticky toffee, spotted dick and strawberry jam and coconut.If there is a future for ready-cooked British dishes, it had better be sweet.. Safeway redeemed itself in this category which vindicates its decision to concentrate on puddings and rethink its other meals. “Overall, it’s impossible to tell which of the shepherd’s and cottage pies are lamb or beef,” and the stew, steak and kidney and venison pies “taste as if the meat’s been cooked separately from the sauce”.The puddings, of which Waitrose, for example, has 11 that are British, were better received. She thought the casserole and pies were made with poor-quality meat, not cooked for long enough; by the time the meat has cooked it has dried out. Yet, as one of our tasters, caterer Jane Lewis, said, stews and pies lend themselves to cooking in advance and reheating. Might we be less critical of lasagne since it’s not something our mothers had ready for us when we came home from school.
Can any of us claim to have had home-made chicken dhansak? Is the next generation growing up ignorant of a home-made stew, having only had hot dogs and stir-fries for school dinner?On the evidence of the meat dishes we tried, those who are more familiar with ethnic ready-meals might wonder why British dishes deserve much affection. We tasted everything blind, without knowing which came from where, and conferring was not allowed. All marks out of 10.Our tasters spanned three decades in age: a twentysomething, thirtysomething newly-wed professionals, and a just-over-40 caterer who also has two school- age children.Why, we debated, did these meals seem so unsatisfactory? Is it because we grew up knowing what they can taste like, even if, when we cook for ourselves, it’s not cottage pie or Lancashire hotpot that we turn our hand to. Would these, which ought to have been worth boasting about, be any better than the three common (let’s not say lowest) denominator dishes?Sadly, they weren’t able to erase the overall impression the shepherd’s and cottage pies had left us with.
