So a detective and a minister walk into a bar: Review of PBS show Grantchester

 

I don't generally enjoy mysteries in any form, whether book, television, or movie, and my taste is a bit too lowbrow for most PBS shows.  So I can't comment  about where Grantchester, a PBS mystery series available on Amazon Prime, falls in the pantheon.  I can say that it is weird, in a way I suspect but don't know that most PBS mystery shows are, and engaging enough that I watched the whole series and actually paid for the most recent season.

 SPOILERS AHEAD

 

 

The first few seasons follow the adventures of Sidney, an Anglican minister is a small town outside of Cambridge, England, and Geordie, a police detective stationed nearby, in the 1950s.  Sidney is an alcoholic suffering from PTSD as a result of the one battle he fought during World War II.  He pines for a woman, Amanda, who pines for him, but, alas, they are star-crossed lovers.  Amanda is married, and then divorced, and -- despite the entire Church of England having been founded because King Henry VIII wanted to get divorced and remarried -- Anglican ministers are forbidden from marrying divorcees.  So Sidney mopes a lot and drinks a lot.  At one point he tries to quit his job (which he seems to spend very little time at), but his housekeeper, Sylvia, and his curate (assistant minister), Leonard, convince him that his tiny little church cannot possibly survive without him.

Geordie, the detective, is an asshole.  He also suffers from PTSD from the war, and also drinks a lot.  He's married with four kids, and is a terrible husband and father.  When his infant son has a potentially fatal fever, he stays away from the house because dealing with the possibility of his son's death is just too hard for him.  Aw, poor man.  So he leaves his wife alone with their dying son.  

Sidney and Geordie team up to drink and to solve murders -- because, like in all TV shows about cops, in this world police solve murders by actual detective work instead of waiting for a witness or informant to tell them whodunit.  And what a lot of murders there are.  It's like Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Sunnydale around here.  If Sidney and Geordie were not already suffering from PTSD, they surely would be after they realize that every time they go to a nightclub, party, river, or lecture, someone ends up dead.  At some point you would think that someone would realize that they are the common denominator in all these deaths. 

Sidney gets written off the show after the fourth season, in a way that is an insult to his entire character  arc.  Luckily it turns out that his little church can survive just fine without him.  Along comes Will to replace him, another whiny minister who is somehow allowed to ride along on all of Geordie's investigations. Will is different from Sidney because he rides a motorbike and has a family of origin. Also, he likes rock and roll instead of jazz.  And he's hotter.  The bodies continue to pile up.  Leonard, the curate, and Sylvia, the housekeeper and best thing about the show, get some more character development.   

The show is overall very, very silly but also kind of delightful.  And now that I've watched an entire PBS series (thus far), I can stick my nose a little higher in the air.