Midsomer Murders star opens up on Neil Dudgeon after 15 years
Midsomer Murders star Fiona Dolman has opened up about working with Neil Dudgeon after 15 years as Sarah Barnaby, saying the pair clicked from day one and now play like an old married couple — with a dose of on-set naughtiness — in a repeat of Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh.
Key Takeaways
- Fiona Dolman, 56, discusses her 15 years as Sarah Barnaby on a repeated Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh episode first aired in 2022.
- She says she and Neil Dudgeon, who plays DCI John Barnaby, got on from day one and share a playful, slightly bickering chemistry.
- Host Alan Titchmarsh teased her about the show’s body count; Dolman pleaded, “Please don’t kill me off!”
- Her real-life pregnancy was written into the series as Sarah and John’s daughter Betty.
- The ITV chat show repeat airs Sundays at 10am.
What did Fiona Dolman say about Neil Dudgeon?
On the repeated Mirror-reported interview, Titchmarsh, 77, noted their clear rapport. Dolman replied that they got on from “day one,” calling Dudgeon “a fantastically good actor” and “great fun to work with.”
She described a “real naughtiness” on set: they plan a scene, then he “throw[s] something slightly different.” After a decade together when she spoke, she said actors rarely get that longevity, so they “fall into that role of being that old married couple.”
They “slightly bicker,” she added, and she laughs reading scripts because she can already see what he will do or how he will say a line — the kind of lived-in partnership fans of true crime and mystery TV recognise in long-running procedurals.
Why did she plead not to be killed off?
Titchmarsh joked that Midsomer Murders had then been on air for 25 years with a staggering 400 on-screen deaths. He warned that if scripts hinted their marriage was “getting a little rocky,” she should “be very worried,” comparing a black spot in Treasure Island to a death sentence in Midsomer.
Dolman’s witty reply was blunt: “Please don’t kill me off!” The plea underlines how rare her survival has been in a series famous for rural body counts.
How long has she played Sarah Barnaby?
Dolman has portrayed Sarah Barnaby for 15 years opposite Dudgeon’s DCI John Barnaby, her on-screen husband. The show first aired in 1997 with John Nettles as DCI Tom Barnaby; Nettles retired at the end of 2010 after series 13, and Dudgeon joined that year as Tom’s cousin, John.
Her real-life pregnancy was woven into the plot when Sarah and John welcomed daughter Betty, with twin girls cast as the baby. In 2015 she said downtime with the infants brought out “the clown” in Dudgeon, while he called filming with the twins “challenging” but praised their “spontaneous quality.”
Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh airs Sundays at 10am on ITV. The Chilterns-area Buckinghamshire locations, and neighbouring Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey, remain the series’ near-exclusive backdrop.