Episode #4.4

Will is looking forward to being the new Vicar in town. He also tries to resist Geordie's request for help.

A distressed young boy is at the police station covered in blood and not answering any questions.

Will realises that the boy is deaf and luckily Will knows some sign language.

The boy Adam Carter belongs to a devout Mennonite family, a radical protestant group not too dissimilar to the Amish.

When Geordie and Will take the boy back to his family farm. They discover that his mother has died in a fall and his father holds Adam responsible.

The mother's death was first thought to be an accident but Geordie later thinks it is murder.

With Sydney gone, Grantchester can have a soft reboot. No more moping vicar with a tendency to get drunk.

Will and Geordie become a team in no time and Leonard feels his nose out of joint for being overlooked.

There is also the series arc of Cathy Keating's sexual harassment at work. When she complains to her boss, Cathy is told that she is a naive woman.

A wind has blown through Grantchester. The dust has been blown away. It is a change and one with a wonderful feeling of lightness.

Sydney was a troubled man and the the series reflected that.

Will is different and he certainly likes cake, rock n roll and motorcycles. And he smiles!

The first full episode with him is an emotional one. But it is also a marvellous one.

As one other reviewer has stated "Granchester is safe in the hands of its new Vicar".

Tom Brittney gets his first full episode as Will Davenport, and I've got to be honest, he was absolutely marvellous, I thought the show had run its course, but on this evidence, that is definitely not the case.

I loved last week's, but I think this was even better, the main plot was terrific, so original, made all the better by a top notch performance from Alex Hassell as the pious Mr Carter. The tragic, horrible story for poor Cathy was tough, awful seeing her suffer, let's hope her nasty colleague gets his comeuppance.

Grantchester is in safe hands with its new Vicar. 9/10

If you couldn't see it before, this episode clearly reveals the disdain the writers have for religion. There are several gratuitous if not formulaic moments. For example one of the girls refers to red flowers as being "the Devil's color" (said ominously). And the little boy Adam is supposedly "of the Devil." This episode was chock full of scenes that made the Mennonites appear as simpletons.

And so Sidney Chambers' multiple drinking and smoking scenes start to make sense as we realize the writers were anti-religion from the very start. We begin to realize that both Sidney Chambers and Leonard Finch were consistently portrayed as hypocrites. And this episode is merely the fruition of what has been brewing for several seasons.

This episode opened my eyes and I've stopped watching this series. Season One was great. Season Two was almost great. Season Three was alright. And now Season Four has jumped the Shark.

Final point: The sexual harassment shtick with Geordie's wife is pure garbage. In real life she would go home and tell Geordie. Then, he being the violent type of guy he is would track down the masher and beat the livin' crap out of him. End of story. Everything else is PURELY to create gratuitous melodrama. The whole premise reeks of fabrication.

What started out as a wonderful mystery series degraded into a tawdry soap opera. Goodbye Grantchester!

This takes the series on a new direction. It had become a bit stale. The new vicar is learning on the fly and will be facing the same obstacles that Sydney did. We also have Finch's efforts to keep going after the dramatic discovery by the landlady. And there is the unresolved business with Geordie's wife and that cad she works with. There's serious homophobia and sexism and religious intolerance all bundled up in one episode.