Grantchester, series 4 episode 1, review: Don't write this crimebusting clergy drama off as cosy, it's much deeper than that
Certain series are derided – usually by people who haven’t seen them – as cosy or sentimental when, at their heart, they hide something flintier, deeper and darker. Call the Midwife is one such, and Grantchester another. You can see why these assumptions are made – television shows featuring crimebusting clergy don’t tend to push boundaries or probe taboos, whether it’s Tom Bosley in Father Dowling Mysteries or Mark Williams in Father Brown.
The opening to the fourth series of Grantchester would have changed few minds, as Rev Sidney Chambers (James Norton) and DI Geordie Keating (Robson Green) engaged in some light-hearted banter about the culture wars stirring in 1956. “I blame that fella with the pelvis,” grumbled the latter, citing a lack of respect among the youngsters. “What’s his name?”
And then we were off into a knockabout chase after a knife-wielding ruffian that offered for Sidney sweet relief from the tiresome rounds of church committee meetings, village fetes and sermons to the same old faces. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine a bit of projection from Norton here. This will be his last series of Grantchester before relative unknown Tom Brittney takes up the dog collar as Geordie’s new partner, Will Davenport. Perhaps he too had become tired of the routine.
The exact circumstances of his departure remain a mystery, but don’t be surprised if they have something to do with Violet Todd (Simona Brown), the comely young African American Civil Rights campaigner accompanying her father, Paterson Joseph’s charismatic preacher Nathaniel Todd, on a fundraising visit to Britain. The chemistry crackled as soon as Sidney and Violet locked eyes, and it wasn’t long before this man of God fell once again into sin. And with a grieving woman, no less, for Violet’s brother Charles (Tok Stephen) had recently been murdered during a racially charged fracas at the Parish church.
The fallout embraced death threats from the shadowy Phineas Society and the roping in of Will Davenport, who was given the opportunity to establish himself as both honorable and pragmatic by first guarding a confessor’s confidentiality and then turning them in.
As the culprits were whittled down, it came as little surprise to learn that Samuel West’s right-on academic Professor Henry Barkley was too good to be true. His liberal persona disguised a darkly misogynist streak – he had shot Charles in revenge for the handsome young black man having danced with his wife at a house party the night before. A brutish unveiling set the seal on a solid opening episode which offered an accurate distillation of its strengths.
Gay curate Leonard Finch’s (Al Weaver) homoerotic ode to Spring at the village fete perhaps laid the laughs on a bit thick, but Paterson and company’s Deep South accents were essayed with conviction. Most crucially, fans can rest assured that Norton’s stultifying performance in the limp McMafia looks like an aberration rather than a trend. Brittney and Green’s brief exchanges, meanwhile, were sufficiently promising that the parishioners of Grantchester shouldn’t rest too easy – killers are likely to plague this sleepy corner of Cambridgeshire for a few series yet.
