New vicar makes long-running series of murder mysteries visible again Canon City Daily Record

LONDON, ENGLAND MAY 09: Rishi Nair attends the ITVX Comedy Showcase photocall at Bike Shed Moto Co. on May 09, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Joe Maher/Getty Images)

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.

But let's go back. Before Alfie has a chance to introduce himself to anyone, Mrs. C, the vicarage housekeeper (played with flavor by Tessa Peake-Jones) breathlessly announces that there is a gentleman who is is broken into the presbytery. A swarthy gentleman. Later she comments that it is very modern, I suppose, to have a vicar of

Whatever you say, don't say it, someone will stop it.

I was only going to say about the empire, she insists. Alfie chimes in: I'm from Bromford, actually. But Mrs C presses on: another village, she says, has a vicar from Devon. They think they have I have something to brag about.

The series does not pretend that Grantchester is a colorblind utopia. People are insensitive at best, stubbornly bigoted at worst, and there's a decent balance between that reality and maintaining the show's wispy, feel-good “We Were All Friends Here” approach.

This also applies to Leonard's ongoing story. A former vicar who left the church because he is gay, Leonard (played with real depth by Al Weaver) has always been the beating heart and conscience of the series. He is the first to make an effort to welcome Alfie. You'll find that it takes time for the village to soften to something different, Leonard told him. Have they softened towards you, asks Alfie? God no!

Leonard still feels like an outcast, but he has been warmly embraced by a detective and each successive vicar. How ironic that the two most conservative institutions in the village, the police and the church, are also the most humanist and open-minded!

It's a nice fantasy, anyway.

Grantchester Season 9 3 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: 8 p.m. Sunday on PBS Masterpiece

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.