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Grantchester

It’s hard out there for a vicar. Especially one who’s trying to dodge a murderer and date a single mom at the same time.

Yes, our darling dishy vicar Sidney Chambers (James Norton) has to come face-to-face with his many sins and shortcomings in this week’s Grantchester. It all starts off mildly enough. He has an interview with his new “boss” — I’m lapsed Catholic and don’t know the Anglican for “vicar’s boss” – and gets a bit of a warning. “We must put duty above our own needs,” he tells Sidney. “We must lead by example.”

Cut to: Sidney dirty dancing with Amanda (Morven Christie) in a neon-lit rock ‘n roll dance club. Quoth the Kool-Aid mad: Oh yeah! The two suck face and then take a blissful bike ride home. Amanda wants Sidney to stay the night, but he’s a man of god! And she’s technically still married to her husband. So, he skips off, sexually frustrated, and fully aware that he’s dallying with the devil.

Things take quite a turn when he gets home. The front door to the vicarage is wide open and Dickens is uncharacteristically growling at a shut door. Inside the room, things go full Hitchcock. Sidney is accosted by an angry black crow (or is it a raven?) and met by another dead one. It sits like the black spot upon his desk. The phone rings and a voice admonishes him to stop fondling his girlfriend. Scared? The voice is Geordie (Robson Green) calling Sidney to investigate a complicated crime that I will attempt to poorly explain in just a few short paragraphs.

A beloved town doctor is murdered in his church’s soup kitchen. Cause of death? Drowning. The case is a puzzler because the man in question is considered a saint by the community. However, back at his home Geordie and Sidney find another dead crow. There’s also a connection to a nurse who died months prior. Sidney only recognizes the woman because he delivered her eulogy. She was, in his words, “an angel on earth.” As the case unravels it seems that the woman’s niece, Hilary, remembers another dead crow in the house before her aunt’s death. She also conveniently remembers a letter that she snagged from the collection basket. She tries to burn it, but Leonard of all people finds her out. The letter was addressed to none other than Sidney Chambers.

Now before we get to the big reveals, let’s step back and talk about the cinematic language of this episode. It’s like a horror film. There are dead crows (or ravens?), dark shadows, creepy dolls, phone calls from murderers, and even a resurrection of sorts.

Sidney feels haunted by something. He naturally assumes that whoever is now calling him up out of the blue and threatening to kill him is doing this because he’s dabbling with a fallen woman. Geordie correctly points out that guilt is Sidney’s problem. He wants to bone Amanda, but feels like to do so would cross a moral line. Geordie shockingly says, “You think God gives a rat’s ass what anybody gets up to in the bedroom?” His advice is to sleep with Amanda to get the tension out of his system.

Ironically, Geordie is also suffering through a bout of guilt himself. He’s still hung up on his extra-marital affair with Margaret. It’s ruining his marriage. We know this because Esme, his oldest daughter, plays hooky to go to the vicarage, where she tells Sidney that she knows her father’s not in love with her mother anymore. We also know because Geordie full on makes out with Margaret in his office. Bad Geordie.

The twist is that Sidney is not being targeted by the murderer because he’s been canoodling with a single mother. He’s being targeted because the murderer tried to get him to investigate the hospice where both the murdered nurse and murdered doctor worked. Sidney and Geordie visit the place, which is less of a place of kindness and care, and more of a horrifying dumping ground for people with special needs. All is not well here. It’s a place where there’s an imposing matron, terrified residents sworn to silence, and a “TB ward” no one is supposed to enter. Sidney and Geordie launch a real investigation into the place and (with the help of Margaret, who should be a detective and not a secretary) discover that the place had been torturing patients to death in said “TB ward.” It turns out the murderer they are after is a bitter father whose daughter was drowned by the staff. She wasn’t the only one. At the end of the episode, Sidney finds a cemetery of shallow graves, barely covered by moss and grass, behind the hospital.

What’s fascinating to me about this episode — and Grantchester in general — is what it says about morality. Sidney is literally haunted by guilt throughout the episode, but it’s misplaced guilt. His romance with Amanda is unseemly, but born of love. Sidney is being targeted by the murderer for doing nothing in the face of true evil. The implication is that allowing real, potent malice to fester and grow under your nose is a far worse transgression than a little consensual nookie.

Sidney isn’t the only person suffering with their morals versus their desires. Poor Leonard gets a far harsher warning in his meeting with the, uh, “vicar boss.” The man calls out Leonard’s misfire of a romance with another man and implies that Leonard needs to wife up and pop out a couple of kids. By episode’s end, Leonard is awkwardly asking a grieving Hilary out on a date. Sidney may not have an issue with Leonard’s homosexuality, but Sidney is a good man with a forgiving heart. He may be too forgiving.

You see Sidney has been transformed by love. No, not just his love for Amanda; His love for her baby Grace. Sidney has a spring in his step and has quit smoking. (YES, HE QUIT.) He’s completely enraptured by the girl. “Fatherhood” has changed him. So much that when he thinks Grace is being threatened by a well-meaning homeless man, he lashes out. Indeed, it’s when Sidney finally understands the power of paternal love that it suddenly dawns on him who the killer is.

It’s this realization that also impels Sidney to encourage Amanda to make a reconciliation with Guy. No, they’re not getting back together, but she does finally let him see Grace. Sidney sees the moment that Guy’s cold heart melts for Grace and realizes the party is over. He is, as Maury would say, “NOT the father!” A heartbroken Sidney lets himself out and lights up a cigarette. Once more into the abyss of self-loathing…