Drawing Dead is the third episode of the twentieth series of Midsomer Murders and was first aired through Acorn TV streaming service to the U.S. on 3rd May 2018. It was later transmitted in the UK on 19th May 2019.
Carver Valley's seventh comic festival is in full swing when the village is shocked by the murder of former supermodel Francesca Lounds. With a scathing comic magazine shaming several villagers as the only lead, DCI Barnaby and DS Winter are left trying to separate fact from fiction, as nothing is what it seems.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Lord Argo, murdered two years previously, was an abusive bully.
- Buried Alive: The murderer stuns their last victim, Stella Starling, with a taser and then rolls her still living body into an open grave (intended for a previous victim) and fills it in. They get interrupted by some of the convention-goers, and Barnaby and Winter then arrive in time to save her.
- Captain Ersatz: Winter is dressed essentially as Hawkman, though the viewer never learns the character's actual name.
- Disability Alibi: Fleur determines that Barrett Lounds' arthritis was so bad that he could not have drawn the last issue of the Aequitas comic, or wielded the Hollywood Glasscutter to cut a perfectly circular hole in the glass. Unfortunately, this is a case of Acquitted Too Late.
- Embarrassing Hobby: Winter is called in from his day off to assist in a murder investigation. He was attending the comic convention and shows up in full superhero cosplay. Naturally Barnaby and Fleur have a field day with this.
- Everybody Did It: There are "only" two murderers, who carried out separate attacks, but just about every single guest character in the episode ends up being guilty of something.
- Faking and Entering: Dr. Juno Starling discovered her husband's body and realized that her son, Timothy, had killed his father. She attempts to disguise the murder as a burglary gone wrong. Barnaby's "Eureka!" Moment comes when a witness describes hearing the sound of breaking glass after she heard the scream of the woman discovering the body.
- Hollywood Glasscutter: In The Teaser, the thief uses a Laser Cutter to cut a perfectly circular hole in the glass of the kitchen door.
- Laser Cutter: In The Teaser, the thief uses a laser cutter to cut a perfectly circular hole in the glass of the kitchen door.
- Loony Fan: One of Mrs. Barnaby's students gets a bit carried away with his enthusiasm for one of the guests at the convention, but he doesn't have anything to do with the murders.
- Rage Helm: Several of the cosplayers are wearing scowling gargoyle-like masks paired with a black hood-and-cloak outfit. Unsurprisingly, the murderer ends up using this as a disguise.
- Serious Business: There are a lot of people who really want to occupy the mostly-ceremonial office of Sheriff.
- Shout-Out: Most of the outfits in the episode are painfully generic, but the costumed villain's taser-attack on Stella is made to look like a scene involving a Sith using Force Lightning in the Star Wars franchise.
- Stab the Salad: Dr. Juno Starling is seemingly stalked through the cemetery by a sinister masked and robed figure. The figure picks up speed and catches up to Dr. Starling...and then overtakes her and joins up with a group of similarly costumed people on the road. They are a cosplayer on their way to the local comic convention.
- Sickbed Slaying: Francesca Lounds is in a coma. The murderer enters her room and shuts off her life support. When she awakes and sits up, the murderer finishes the job by shoving a comic book down her throat, choking her to death.
- Symbolic Blood: Barrett Lounds runs a print shop and is murdered by having his throat cut with a paper guillotine. As they do so, the killer knocks over bottles of blue and yellow ink that spill and pool under the victim's chair like blood.
- Vader Breath: There's a bit of this with the various people wearing the aforementioned Rage Helm outfits.