The aim of this thesis was to explore the nostalgic construction of Englishness in both the novel and the TV adaption of The Killings at Badger’s Drift, and I have suggested that this particular nostalgic form of Englishness has a universal appeal because it is rooted in a desire to escape aspects of modernity and return to an authentic life with better connections to community and environment. My contention is that the Midsomer Murders series portrays an idealised image of Englishness that is nostalgic in its nature. I have put forth a range of ideas that collectively help to understand the construction of nostalgia and identity, and suggested reasons that address the subjective appeal for a nostalgic vision of Englishness by contemporary audiences.
I firstly noted Hutcheon and Valdes’ observation that nostalgia is not an inherent quality of an object, but rather a subjective response to an object. I underscored the importance of a feeling of dislocation, as described by Nicholas Dames, as the basis for that subjective response and suggested that the nostalgic object projects something found in the object that is lacking from the present. While I noted that there are numerous typological variations for nostalgia, such as Boym’s descriptions of reflective nostalgia and restorative nostalgia, or Tiffany Bergin’s explanation of wilful nostalgia, a central concern of nostalgia is the idealisation of an object, which Aaron Santesso claims has very often been achieved in literature through the use of tropes, and I outlined the ways in which I believe the village of Badger’s Creek has been constructed as a nostalgic English trope.
An essential part of my contention has been that the identity of Englishness has been framed temporally and not geographically. The importance of this has been to understand that the conflict in identity is between the past and the present, and not between inside England and outside England. I suggest that the decline of the British Empire may have
contributed to English introspection, but that the radical changes that have been ongoing since the Industrial Revolution have been the driving force of a feeling of dislocation through mass urbanisation. While I noted that the English identity is often mired by racial identity, I have highlighted how the novel under study is heavily focused on class identity and suggests that social class is a reflection of innate qualities and traits that produce an apparently natural order of superiority and inferiority in much the same way that debates about race have been framed. This aspect is significant in idealising DCI Barnaby as a symbol of middle-class Englishness as he is contrasted against the working-class identity of Sgt Troy.
I noted the differences between the novel and the TV series, which are largely attributed to the nature of the different media, and noted that the discourse of class has been omitted in the TV series and class is instead merely projected as an artefact of Englishness.
The false upper-class performativity of the Rainbirds has been reconstructed as a caricature of English performativity, which in effect reinforces its status of Englishness. The class tension from the novel, between DCI Barnaby and Sgt Troy, is played as frustration with the inexperience of Troy and his political incorrectness in the TV series. The novel uses Barnaby as a bridge between the old world by, on the one hand, informing us of his childhood in a village, while on the other hand, showcasing his idealised suburban life that melds Christian and conservative values of the old and new worlds.
Miss Simpson is also a character who has been idealised in the novel, while in the TV adaption her character is used to stage the scene of an idealised village. The novel provides richer descriptions that develop her as a nostalgic symbol of Englishness. Her idealisation is also conveyed through the perfection of her house and garden, while the acknowledgement of her food production idealises the close connection to nature that is found in rural life. I also noted that her maidenhood was a way to venerate her character and suggest Christian purity in her nostalgic status.
I have argued that the texts apply the trope of the English village to Badger’s Drift to idealise the English village as a site for a past way of living that has largely been lost in the modern urban lifestyle. This is central to the idea that dislocation is the driving force of nostalgia for an authentic Englishness found in the past. I demonstrated that a connection to nature and a sense of community were two key features of Badger’s Drift, both of which correlate with important aspects of well-being according a nation-wide survey. Here again I have noted a differing emphasis in the TV series, because of its visual nature, where it utilises the physical landscape to convey Englishness more so than the novel.
The final point I made was that the novel employs a narrative device that mimics social gossip as a means of articulating transgressive behaviour according to Christian and conservative ideals. I examined research that supported the view that “gossip can be understood as an extension of observational learning” (Baumeister, Zhang and Vohs 120), and therefore, gossiping about a character is a method for demonstrating the hazards of transgressive behaviour and thereby promoting those Christian and conservative ideals.
While I have pointed out a number of differences between the novel and the TV adaption of The Killings at Badger’s Drift, both have nonetheless constructed a nostalgic sense of Englishness. The TV adaption is grounded in the visual displays of landscape and performativity, while the novel provides richer descriptions of characters and events that solicit more connections with past ways of living through the trope of the village. DCI Barnaby is central to the series and displays an idealised middle-class performativity that melds nostalgic elements of the past with the suburban reality of the present. Together, the characters and village setting construct a nostalgic sense of Englishness.
I noted McCaw’s observation that the political and cultural context of the series had changed by the time the TV series was produced, which likely factored into shift away from the class conflict of the novel. Given the lengthy run of the series, future research might
examine further changes to the series that are attributable to a changing political and cultural context. In particular, an examination of ethnic minority characters since the controversial comments of producer Brian True-May in 2011, might confirm or deny a continuation of the idealised village that I have characterised in this thesis.
Future research might also look at a comparison of Englishness within the detective genre, as Bergin among others noted the series’ evocation of the Golden Age of British crime fiction. The early part of the TV series was contemporary to other long standing and popular English detective series, such Inspector Morse and A Touch of Frost. Notably, the Midsomer Murders TV series has survived the retirement of John Nettles, the lead actor who played Detective Barnaby from the beginning until his retirement in 2011. A broader analysis of Englishness within this genre may reveal further insights and uncover other tensions that inform Englishness.
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