DARK harvest

NICK HENDRIX on sinister scarecrows, working with his wife, and 25 years of Midsomer Murders

-  STEVEN PERKINS

MIDSOMER MURDERS

NEW SUNDAY, 8PM, ITV DRAMA

Much-loved ITV crime drama Midsomer Murders may be celebrating its 25th birthday this year, but the show definitely isn't running out of inventive methods of death!

In a brand-new episode, The Scarecrow Murders (the fourth story in the ongoing 22nd series), the annual scarecrow festival in the picturesque village of Little Upton takes a terrifying turn when dead bodies are found staged like their creations.

As dynamic duo DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) and DS Jamie Winter (Nick Hendrix) investigate, a journalist, Caitlin Dawson (played by Nick's wife, Pennyworth star Jessica Ellerby), takes a keen interest in the case which makes things tricky professionally for Winter because she's also his ex-girlfriend!

Here, in an exclusive interview, Nick, 37, chats to TV Times about scary scarecrows, the joys of working with his wife and the secret of the show's success...

What can you tell us about this new investigation?

It's about a scarecrow festival - a very Midsomer-y concept! But there's also a background narrative of gambling, and a vicar [played by Peak Practice star Simon Shepherd] who's won the lottery, so there's quite an interesting moral question about people in religious positions winning lots of money and what they then choose to do with it.

Was it eerie being around all the scarecrows on set?

They are a bit spooky, aren't they? They have been used a lot before in horror movies and darker things than Midsomer, but I think it works really well for us.

I'm quite surprised we haven't done something with scarecrows before, but I know everything is checked against the archive after so many episodes, it is a challenge to come up with things we haven't done already!