Location file · Buckinghamshire
Little Missenden
A recurring village double whose streets, church, manor and Red Lion helped establish the look of Badger's Drift and later communities.
What it played on screen
From Little Missenden to Midsomer.
A recurring village double whose streets, church, manor and Red Lion helped establish the look of Badger's Drift and later communities.
The description above records what the real place supplied on screen. The list gives each linked case and its principal fictional setting; a production may use only one building or street rather than the entire settlement.
Beyond the camera
About the real place
Little Missenden follows the River Misbourne through a wooded Chiltern valley. Its old houses, waterside setting and parish church form a coherent village scene that has changed relatively little in outline, which helped it establish the visual language of Badger's Drift in the earliest episodes.
St John the Baptist Church is especially rewarding for its medieval fabric and wall paintings, but the surrounding lanes and many recognisable houses remain part of a living residential community. Public footpaths offer the best way to appreciate the valley without intruding on private property.
Curated archive
Connected cases
The Killings at Badger's Drift
An apparently natural death draws Barnaby into a village of immaculate gardens and very untidy secrets.
Open case →S4 E2 · 2001Destroying Angel
A hotel inheritance, a missing manager and some lethally expert mushroom knowledge produce an unusually patient reckoning.
Open case →S4 E4 · 2001Who Killed Cock Robin?
A doctor's late-night collision and a body recovered from a well turn two missing men into one unusually tangled village case.
Open case →S5 E2 · 2002A Worm in the Bud
An apparent suicide in Setwale Wood points instead to a land dispute, two observant children and a concealed family story.
Open case →S9 E2 · 2006Dead Letters
Oak Apple Week revives a festival-queen contest after eight years, and a body in the stream brings back faces from an earlier case.
Open case →S9 E8 · 2006Four Funerals and a Wedding
A 90-year battle of the sexes erupts around a Skimmington Ride after an elderly feminist is poisoned.
Open case →S10 E5 · 2007Death and Dust
A doctor is killed in a hit-and-run while driving his colleague's car, suggesting that the wrong man may have taken the impact.
Open case →S10 E6 · 2007Picture of Innocence
A feud between traditional and digital photographers becomes personal when a man is strangled and the evidence points towards Barnaby.
Open case →S11 E7 · 2008Talking to the Dead
Two couples vanish from cottages beside reputedly haunted woods, leaving blood, folklore and a body in a shallow grave.
Open case →S12 E5 · 2009Small Mercies
A man is found bound like Gulliver in a model village, beginning a case about families distorted by secrecy and scale.
Open case →S13 E1 · 2010The Sword of Guillaume
A Causton business trip to Brighton ends in a ghost-train beheading and introduces Tom to his cousin DCI John Barnaby.
Open case →S14 E3 · 2011Echoes of the Dead
Wedding-themed murder scenes and lipstick messages turn Great Worthy into a disturbing imitation of crimes from the past.
Open case →S19 E1 · 2016The Village That Rose from the Dead
An abandoned wartime village is opened to competing redevelopment plans before one bidder is crushed by a tank.
Open case →S21 E3 · 2021The Sting of Death
The theft of prized bees at Apley Court precedes a doctor's death by stinging and exposes a carefully marketed miracle cure.
Open case →S22 E6 · 2023The Witches of Angel's Rise
A psychic fair opens with a ritualised death, leading Barnaby through tarot readings, spiritual businesses and an older tragedy.
Open case →S25 E1 · 2025Treasures of Darkness
A riverbank discovery intensifies a rivalry between mudlarking groups before a suspicious drowning revives an old disappearance.
Open case →