Want To Solve A Murder? Ask These Anglican Priests For Help.
(REVIEW) There’s something about priests solving murders in small towns that people love. From “Father Brown” to “Broadchurch” to “Wake Up Dead Man” to “Evil” to South Korea’s “The Firey Priest,” it’s fascinating to see how common the trope is when you start looking. Particularly when you see how long some of these shows have been running.
A long-running series in this genre that’s just ended is “Grantchester.” For 11 seasons, the BBC “Masterpiece Mystery” series follows a series of young, good-looking vicars in the fictional sleepy British town of Grantchester in the 1950s — who partnered with local Det. Inspector George “Geordie” Keating — to solve murder after murder and grow together through their relationship. The show is typical low-brow murder-mystery soap opera fare. But it’s for this reason that it gives a good idea of what the appeal is of the genre overall.
The strength of “Grantchester” is its core concept. A British vicar and a local cop solving crimes in a small town. In each episode and throughout each season, we see the two butt heads because of their different personalities, life stages and beliefs, but they change each other for the better. We see them solve murders and deal with personal problems.
Sidney, followed by Will, then Alphy, teach Geordie to be more empathetic and look to restore sinners, not just lock them up. Geordie acts like a father to them and teaches them to grow up. The vicars walk with Geordie through his marriage problems, and he walks with them through their dating and identity problems. This is particularly effective after these relationships span years and we see how they’ve grown and changed during that time.
The show illustrates why there’s such an appeal in the “mystery-solving priest” archetype. A police procedural is only built to address one solution to the problem of violent crime: locking the villain up and putting them in jail.
But as murder mysteries set in small towns show, that is never the full story, even with the worst offenses. The murder is always the last link in the chain of things that already were broken. Whether that’s on the individual level — bad parents, cheating spouses, individual selfishness – or the social level — classism, racism, sexism. The priest character sees and addresses this part of the world that’s gone wrong and can help repair it.
Unfortunately, the execution of the series is pretty consistently mediocre to awful. It leans pretty hard on the vicars’ good looks rather than their performances. Most of them play their roles pretty flatly, and the interpersonal chemistry is carried by the co-lead Robson Green (Geordie). Most of the plots and character drama are pretty melodramatic and contrived, with characters switching personalities on a dime for the sake of causing conflict.
What really makes the series a slog is its vicar characters, who range from passable to inexcusably terrible. They are constantly emotionally immature, lose their faith in god, sleep around, get addicted to drugs, yell at and punch their best friends, and leave the church or the country and abandon their responsibilities at major life events at the slightest provocation.
Oftentimes this causes their friend and family to have to pick up the pieces for them. You could chalk this up to the writers simply doing lazy drama for drama’s sake. But they don’t do that with the other characters.
This is particularly hard to take regarding the vicars’ sex lives. The writers try to excuse the vicars’ crashouts as a response to their suffering. Whether that’s the death of a parent or rejection by the church. But that’s not very persuasive. Other characters suffer worse and behave better.
As a preacher’s kid, I watched my dad and many laypeople go through a fair bit of suffering. I’ve seen people of faith (and without faith) deal with as bad or worse things than Sidney, Will or Alphy have. (Often in circumstances they had very little to blame themselves for, unlike typically these characters do).
And most of them have dealt with it with a lot more maturity, and without causing harm to others in the process. So I don't have much sympathy for these characters and wish they’d get defrocked already.
Why does this matter? Partly because the drama of the series rests on you liking and rooting for these characters, but that is hard to do when it consistently makes the co-lead hard to root for. But also, as a Christian, it’s deeper than that. Because this show is claiming, in a way, to represent me and my faith. So when it represents me in a way I can’t relate to and find off-putting, not only does it ring false, but I know it causes people who watch it to have a false perception of Christians.
It’s clear that the writers of “Grantchester” have a lot of issues with Christianity – particularly with the church. The show never misses an opportunity to make the church look bad. Whether trafficking in all the cliches about how prejudiced and corrupt the church is, or having the church be the bad guy on every social issue it brings up.
A lot of the series’ central conflicts revolve around the vicar having to fight the church over their “antiquated” rules. Sydney is unable to marry his lady love because the church was against priests marrying a divorced woman. Will has to watch the lovable Leonard be defrocked for being discovered as gay.
Alphy watches the church protect corrupt priests while he and Leonard are frozen out because of racism and homophobia. Christians who wanted to argue that the wider culture hates them without understanding them only really have to point to a random episode of the show to make their point. But unlike religious movies like “Conclave” and “Wake Up Dead Man,” this series doesn’t even do a good job of showcasing how real-life progressive religious people navigate their love for the church while disagreeing with its doctrines.
This fits the modern Hollywood trend to push individual spirituality as good and organized religion as bad. (Despite most of the data saying the opposite). Whenever a vicar’s work is defended, they are defended as individuals, but the church isn’t. When someone mocks the church for not having a reputation for peacemaking, Alphy responds that his church will be different. He does not point out how the church historically, and today, is much better than its reputation suggests.
And what makes a “good person”? In the show, people are considered “good” if they are largely politically and socially left, as nearly every episode has the “real villain” be something that is " conservative-coded.”
This seems to map onto the decline of mainline Christianity in the West – of the Anglican church in “Grantchester” is a part. The show often discusses the shrinking of churches, but does so ignorant of the fact that their ideology is partly responsible for it.
Sociologist George Yancey notes that in America during the 20th century, the mainline churches evolved to see liberal politics as more central to their identity than faith. Sociologist Ryan Burge has often chronicled the collapse of the mainline churches during the same time period (something that he acknowledges is echoed in the British context that “Grantchester” exists in). It’s the theologically conservative Evangelical churches that have maintained, and in some cases, gained members.
It's deeply unfortunate. Because at its core, “Grantchester” clearly is speaking about something we all deeply want and need to hear right now. That institutions we need, like the church and state, can work for our good to help redeem a broken world. But if shows like “Grantchester” undermine our basis for believing it, it will stay a cozy fantasy rather than reality.
All 11 seasons of Grantchester are available to watch on PBS.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.