Midsomer Murders, ITV1

It'll be interesting to see what the recent race row - or more accurately, lack-of-race row - does for the ratings of Midsomer Murders. Possibly nothing, if the research that says that people from ethnic groups all hate the show and never watch it is to be believed. It certainly defies logic that producer Brian True-May has been made to walk the plank for saying that the programme has an all-white cast when... it does. Somehow, everybody has contrived not to mention this ever since Midsomer began in 1997.

That aside, it was nonsense as usual for last night's opening episode of series 14. The big news, for Midsomer habituees, was the replacement of John Nettles as DCI Tom Barnaby with Neil Dudgeon as his cousin, DCI John Barnaby. Apparently the rationale behind making sure England's busiest rural copper kept the same surname was that several overseas territories call the show Barnaby, and as we know, continuity and absence of change is the name of this long-running game. The possibility exists that the departure of the beloved Nettles, as closely identified with the show as PG is with Tips, could be a Pearl Harbor moment.

The programme's blithe detachment from reality - it's reminiscent of those Agatha Christie telly-isations, where you can never tell if it's 1933 or 1964 - must be part of its appeal, but even MM's tweediest, most Aga-fixated fans would surely admit that Death in the Slow Lane was a pretty scanty concoction with which to pad out a juicy two-hour slot. Still, at least it chimed with the imminent start of the Formula 1 season by concerning itself with a pair of veteran racing drivers. The opening sequence made a neat job of splicing in news footage of motor-racing legends Tony Brooks and Stirling Moss with its fictional characters Duncan Palmer and Peter Fossett, and there were further treats in store for auto-buffs with a parade of classic cars, held at Darnley Park girls school.

But dramatically, it resembled an ancient grandfather clock that had been dredged out of a canal. David Warner (pictured right with Jason Hughes as DS Jones) did his best to impersonate the villainous Fossett, who brutally impaled the idiotic DJ Dave "Doggy" Day on the end of a starting handle and came within seconds of dropping the new DCI Barnaby from a great height onto some lethal agricultural machinery, but every time he appeared you could see a big metaphorical sign saying "He's Behind You!"

Meanwhile an epidemic of improbability had infested Darnley Park school, like mice in the wainscoting. The principal was the snobbish and patronising Harriet Wingate (Susan Engel), seemingly an Edwardian relic smelling of mothballs until she was implausibly revealed as a Sixties wild child who'd been having it off with the dashing but deceased driver Duncan Palmer (the resentful Fossett had shot him).

Around her, the Darnley Park girls scampered about in teasingly short skirts, taking saucy videos of everybody on their cellphones. One of them, Charlotte Cameron (Clara Paget, pictured left), looked about 28, dressed like a super-slutty Gwyneth Paltrow, and ran a cocaine-dealing racket from her dormitory.

As the new Barnaby, Neil Dudgeon mooched about among the thickets of cardboard characters and plywood plotlines with an expression of glum scepticism. His second-in-command, DC Ben Jones (Jason Hughes), is about as much use as a wax kettle, so Barnaby wisely confined most of his remarks to his amusing terrier, Sykes. In the end, Barnaby unravelled the tangle of deaths and illicit liaisons with the aid of a stack of back issues of Motor Sport magazine, whose distinctive green-and-black logo was given more screen time than most of the actors. No bad thing, frankly.

• Watch Midsomer Murders on ITV Player

• Find Midsomer Murders on Amazon