All-white Midsomer show defended

One of the creators of ITV1’s Midsomer Murders has claimed it “wouldn’t work” if there was racial diversity in the village life it portrays.

Producer Brian True-May told the Radio Times the long-running drama was a “last bastion of Englishness” and should stay that way.

He said he had not previously been tackled about the issue.

A study in 2006 found the programme to be “strikingly unpopular” with viewers from ethnic minorities.

Mr True-May told the magazine: “We are a cosmopolitan society in this country, but if you watch Midsomer you wouldn’t think so.

“I’ve never been picked up on that, but quite honestly I wouldn’t want to change it,” he said.

Of his all-white portrayal of rural life in Britain’s murder capital he said: “Maybe I’m not politically correct”.

The programme – which has run for 14 series – appealed to a “certain audience”, he said.

Mr True-May added: “We just don’t have ethnic minorities involved. Because it wouldn’t be the English village with them. It just wouldn’t work.”

Asked why “Englishness” could not include other races who are well represented in modern society, he said: “Well, it should do, and maybe I’m not politically correct.

“I’m trying to make something that appeals to a certain audience, which seems to succeed. And I don’t want to change it.”

Midsomer Murders, based on the books by Caroline Graham, was launched in 1997 and has featured 251 deaths, 222 of which were murders.

The producer has banned swearing, violence and sex scenes from the show but has tackled diversity issues other than ethnicity.

“If it’s incest, blackmail, lesbianism, homosexuality… terrific, put it in, because people can believe that people can murder for any of those reasons,” he told Radio Times.

Actor Jason Hughes, who has played the programme’s DS Jones, said he had pondered why Midsomer continued to have no ethnic minorities.

“I’ve wondered that myself and I don’t know,” he said.

“This isn’t an urban drama and it isn’t about multiculturalism. That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for multiculturalism in the show. But that’s really not up to me to decide.

“I don’t think that we would all suddenly go, ‘a black gardener in Midsomer? You can’t have that’. I think we’d all go, ‘great, fantastic’.”

Actor John Nettles’s final appearance on the drama was watched by an average of 7.1 million viewers last month.

The 67-year-old bowed out of the series after 14 years playing DCI Tom Barnaby. He will be replaced by Neil Dudgeon, who will play his character’s cousin.