My favorite screenwriter of all those who work for Midsomer Murders is Michael Aitkens, but this time it has been his failure, to my mind. It's obvious that he's exploiting the same tricks that he used in his previous works and, judging by this episode, he starts running out of ideas (I haven't seen The Sword of Guillaume yet). First of all, as in all his episodes, the first murder occurs very late, half an hour after the beginning of the series - remember "Vixen's run" or "The Axeman cometh" or "Shot at dawn". Then, again this motive of revenge which was significant both in "Vixen's run" and "Shot at dawn", I don't even speak about "The Axeman cometh" - in the end Jenny Frazier pronounces the same words that were spoken by Jack McKenley: "They deserved it". But, unlike "The Axeman cometh", "Secrets and Spies" is a very unconvincing episode, the motives that moved Jenny to murder are doubtful, the skull matters absolutely far-fetched (no wonder they never showed it in use!), the espionage theme played no in the full tune. As being a big fan of Aitkens, I was extremely disappointed, he totally fell into the self-plagiarism. I hope, that "The sword of Guillaume" will not bring me into the same disillusion. An extraordinary poor episode.
Review of Secrets and Spies
