This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on Saturday 11th October 2014.
Grantchester:
Monday, STV
Paul
Whitelaw
If I may make so bold a
generalisation, then for anyone starved of thrills since the demise
of Tom Bosley's ecclesiastical crime thriller Father Dowling
Investigates – Murder She Wrote in a dog collar, no less
– the arrival of Grantchester must've felt like manna from
murder mystery Heaven.
Set in 1953 in the titular
Cambridgeshire village, and written by James 'Son of Archbishop'
Runcie, it follows a frustrated young vicar who gains a new lease of
life when he becomes an amateur sleuth.
Operating a million country miles
from his disturbing performance as Happy Valley's chief
psychopath, the versatile James Norton plays Sidney Chambers as a
handsome and progressive clergyman who, lest anyone doubt his modern
credentials, enjoys whisky, jazz, cigarettes – note that
all-important comma - and frolicking in lakes with frightfully nice
young ladies.
This workaday existence is changed
forever when the grieving mistress of a suicide case approaches him
to cry murder. A depressed alcoholic lawyer, he'd told this poor
woman that, once he'd left his wife, they would “live as we have
never lived!” I mean, I ask you, are those the words of a suicidal
man?
Gripped by this compelling evidence,
Chambers' eyes widened. As the mistress explained, helpfully setting
up the premise, who better to investigate a mystery than a pillar of
the community who can go anywhere and ask any question? A romantic
dreamer desperate for excitement, Chambers plunged into the case with
schoolboy-ish enthusiasm, much to the short-tempered chagrin of
lovable Police Inspector Geordie Keating.
Yes, it's come to this for the
personable Robson Green, he's finally playing a character called
Geordie. Has the man no self-respect? Would Ray Winstone accept the
role of a character called Cockney Ardman in a six-part ITV crime
drama? Yes, he almost definitely would if the money was right, but
you take my point.
Anyway. Gimmick-led detective dramas
are as old as Marconi's folly itself. There's nothing wrong with the
concept, just how it's delivered. Grantchester is delivered
professionally, smoothly, like a tray of Baileys to an elderly group
of lunching ladies. It also provides dialogue, plotting and
exposition as subtly as an anvil through a vestry window.
The shadow of the war hangs over this
sleepy little village like a vast, heavy-handed subtext. The dead
man's wife was a sad-eyed German given to quasi-poetic soliloquies.
Chambers is a veteran himself, as was every other whisky-driven male
character. That makes sense dramatically, historically, humanely.
There's something to be explored there. More concerned with scenery
and mood, Grantchester reduces it to a man staring solemnly
over a cornfield.
Oh, I dare say we'll soon be treated
to a scene in which someone challenges Chambers on why God allows
such suffering. That'll pass for depth before the case at hand is
solved.
This tolerable slice of sub-Agatha
Christie is a pot-boiler, a page-turner, just another blood-stained
slice of genteel comfort viewing, forever destined to gather dust on
ITV3 in the afternoons and maybe, if it's lucky, be given away free
with The Daily Mail. It's polished in the sense that dutifully
tended silverware is polished, as robustly inoffensive as oatcakes,
bell ringers and the face of Martin Jarvis. It's a big old tassled
pouffe of nothing, but at least it rests your heels for an hour of a
dark Monday evening.
I can't praise fainter than that.
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