'Midsomer Murders' Season 24 Sets Acorn TV Premiere

Among the British mystery TV set, only Silent Witness currently beats out Midsomer Murders for the longest-running series still producing episodes today. However, Silent Witness, for whatever reason, never really caught on in the States, partly because it wasn't based on a preexisting novel and, therefore, not picked up by PBS at the time. (A shame, really, the pathologist-based series, which has been on the air since 1996, is over on BritBox.) Midsomer Murders, on the other hand, which arrived all of a year later, had the literary cred of being adapted by Anthony Horowitz and Douglas Watkinson from the Chief Inspector Barnaby series by Caroline Graham, and wound up on many a local PBS station in the early aughts. By the mid-2010s, it was on Netflix and BritBox, before finally becoming an Acorn TV exclusive, where it resides today.

Since the 2020s, Midsomer Murders arrival has been an end-of-the-year event, especially since the episode count dropped from six installments a year after 2019 to four. Acorn TV has confirmed that 2023 will be no exception, as the show's 24th season is set to debut the first week of December and run through the holidays. The show's current star, Neil Dudgeon, returns for his 12th season as DCI John Barnaby, officially bringing him one season away from tying original star John Nettles, who led the show for 13 seasons before passing off the baton. Nick Hendrix, who plays his current sergeant/bagman DS Jamie Winter.

Acorn TV has not yet released a trailer, but we have a happy holiday from the cast that never gets old.