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With umbrella, charm and melon

Crime programmes are just as popular in Germany as they are in Britain. And English murder mysteries like Inspektor Barnaby (as Midsomer Murders is known), and Sherlock, have gripped their audiences on both sides of the North Sea.

Judging by the frequency with which locals kick the bucket in Midsomer, the worms must be well fed.  And Krimi (crime programme) loving Germans tune in every week to see what Barnaby will find this time. It’s usually on after the popular crime series Tatort (‘crime scene’), and turns Sunday nights into a true murder fest. Even Angela Merkel, a country girl herself, loves Barnaby. She reputedly watched an episode with David Cameron when she visited him at Chequers. Perhaps the chatty ladies, taciturn farmers and other quirky characters, common features of village life everywhere, are not unknown to her. And whenever Barnaby is off duty, Lewis checks alibis in Oxford.

My personal British crime favourite must be Evil under the Sun with Sir Peter Ustinov as Poirot straining his little grey cells. I have seen it so many times I could play all the parts myself. In fact, the film’s title has become quite a quip in my family, spoken with the typical Poirot accent: “there iz eevil under the sun”.

Germans have a loving and lasting relationship with British crime programmes. If you flick the channels on a lazy afternoon you are bound to come across the odd Miss Marple film with Margaret Rutherford pursing her lips in thought. The quaint English country life is seen as the archetypal setting for the British Krimi, with eccentric detectives sniffing out murder. Recently, there have also been repeats of the strangely translated sci-fi/crime series The Avengers or, as it’s rather whimsically known in Germany, With umbrella, charm and melon. For years this had me wondering when the melon would make an appearance, until I finally realised that it was just a clumsy way of saying bowler hat.

More recently, when the modern take on Sherlock aired earlier this year, the otherwise terrestrial-channel-shy under 30s loved it. Possibly, Guy Ritchie’s blockbuster had helped boost viewing rates, but the show itself is just one example that Britain has a knack for great crime, even reinventing a well-known theme, whether as literature or on the small screen. Seriously, I can’t wait for more. Let’s hope there’s plenty more evil under the sun.

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One response to “With umbrella, charm and melon”

  1. Cornwall is a very popular destination with German tourists and also popular with the TV viewing public so after reading this post about Midsomerland and British crime authors, I thought this may be a good place to mention L A Kent’s murder mystery series featuring the Cornish Detective Inspector Treloar.

    The books are now in EPUB and PDF format as well as Kindle (and paperback) and available from lots of bookshops in Germany as ebooks. They are also available for Tolino and from Google Play books.

    L A Kent lives in Cornwall and each book is set in a different part of the fabulous county. A map at the beginning of each book shows where.

    There are three titles so far – Rogue Flamingo, Broken Dove, and Silent Gull, the fourth, Sad Pelican, is in progress.

    Cornwall is really as great as it looks on the TV and Broken Dove won a Best Adult Fiction award in 2017 – the judges were super impressed with how well it brought the county alive (amongst other things)!

    Apologies if this was not the right place to post this, but I couldn’t help it!

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