LONDON, ENGLAND – As a genre, the cozy murder mystery eschews graphic violence in favor of something less macabre despite the crime in question: the careful piecing together of a puzzle. A subgenre particular to England involves the clergy in all this research in one way or another. Grantchester (on PBS Masterpiece) pairs a vicar and a police detective, and like the similarly themed British imports Father Brown and Sister Boniface, these shows are all set in the mid-20th century. For what? Beats me. Now in its ninth season, Grantchester has a new vicar. That’s very good news.
The show had become increasingly boring in recent years. But with Rishi Nair as Alfie, the new man with the collar beginning with episode 3, there’s suddenly spirit and life in this series (renewed for another season earlier this week). Alfie is self-possessed and vigilant, but also dashing; Nair holds the screen with real charisma. Ten minutes after his first appearance, he took off his shirt and I admitted to laughing. The church may be one of the main locations, but the role has always been assigned with sex appeal in mind.
Nair brings a certain style and panache that was otherwise lacking with Tom Brittney as the previous vicar, named Will, who had become a self-pitying bore (ditto for the vicar he replaced, played by James Norton). So here we are on Vicar #3 and the series is self-aware enough to poke fun at the idea that each The vicar would like to solve crimes with warmly gruff police detective Geordie Keating (Robson Green).
Once Will leaves, Geordie is lost and morose. So he timidly approaches Alfie at the pub: I’ve already come to your predecessors to ask for help. Alfie takes a sip of his beer, impassive. Geordie insisted: I need your help with a case, will you help me or not? No, comes the answer. But ultimately, curiosity gets the better of Alfie and he succumbs.
